LGBT POV

No sooner had Equality California’s Alice Kessler tweeted out news that Gov. Schwarzenegger signed the Harvey Milk Day and the out-of-state marriage bills, than California’s conservative right chimed in with their disappointment.

The Religious Right and ultra-conservative–funded Capitol Resource Institute, which tries mightily to give Equality California some competition, was down right freaked out.

Karen England, executive director of Capitol Resource Institute, said in a press release:

“This is tragic news for California families. The governor has chosen to completely undermine the will of the people — the millions of Californians who have twice stated that they intend for only traditional marriage to be recognized in our state. By signing SB 54 [Sen. Mark Leno’s marriage bill], the governor thumbs his nose at the initiative process and the voters who trust that their vote means something.”

But England’s reaction to the Milk bill borders on hysterical. She noted that Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar bill last year – he said assassinated San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk was more of a local influence than a statewide or national one. That was before the movie “Milk,” before President Obama conferred upon him a postuemous Medal of Freedom and before the Governor inducted Milk into the California Hall of Fame. England chalks it up to Hollywood.

“We don’t know why the governor suddenly changed his mind and decided to impose a radical social agenda in every classroom. One possible explanation is the influence of the governor’s Hollywood friends. After a biopic on Milk received Academy Award recognition earlier this year, Hollywood political activists began lobbying the governor to sign the resurrected Harvey Milk Day bill. It seems that the governor places more value in the opinion of his Hollywood friends and their values than the values of the people who voted him into office……

Parents are outraged that their young children — including kindergarteners — will be forced to participate in activities ‘commemorating’ the life of a man known for his sexuality. Parents and voters are deeply disappointed and outraged by the governor’s signing of these two unnecessary, agenda-pushing bills.”

Among other student-related efforts, England also worked up the Save Our Kids Coalition – which tried to mount a referendum to overturn SB 777, former State Sen. Sheila Kuehls’ Student Civil Rights Act, which Kuehl worked hard to defend.

California Family Council (CFC) said Schwarzenegger caved to pressure from special interests – us. That their organization exists to shore up support for the Religious Right somehow escapes consideration as its own “special interest.”

CFC said:

California Family Council (CFC) is disappointed that Governor Schwarzenegger has placed the interests of a specific group over the educational needs of students. SB 572 wrongly encourages schools to sacrifice students’ class time in order to appease special-interest groups.

CFC’s director Ron Prentice – who Californian gays remember as the chair of the Prop 8’s winning Protect Marriage said:

“Despite tens of thousands of California citizens expressing their opposition to SB 572 by phoning or writing his offices, Governor Schwarzenegger has abandoned parents and students to assuage special interest groups. Commemorating Harvey Milk in public schools, primarily because of his sexual orientation, goes against the values and expectations of the majority of California’s parents.”

The CFC press release goes on:

Research has found that student achievement is directly equated with the amount of time a student is engaged in academic learning. Regardless of one’s opinion about Milk or the homosexual lifestyle, SB 572 inappropriately pressures schools to divert scarce resources and time away from educational needs, focusing instead on controversial, non-academic topics.

Of course, what Prentice and CFC conveniently leave out is how kids need to feel “safe” in school to be able to learn in the first place.

This is far from a new or controversial argument. In the mid-1980s, Fairfax High School science teacher Virginia Uribe became aware of a 14 year old gay student who was kicked out of his home after he came out and dropped out of school because of the continual sexual harassment. Uribe, a lesbian, started a support system for students during her lunch break. That was the beginning of Project 10 – one of the first student support groups to deal with issues of gender identity as well as sexual orientation that paved the way for GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian Straight Education Network) and the GSAs (Gay Straight Alliances) that followed.   (The GSA Network has a celebration of October as LGBT History Month on their website’s front page).

In 1984, Dr. Uribe told an interviewer from the Los Angeles Times:

“Every young person has a right to a sense of self-respect and dignity. In public education we serve the needs of all our students. Some are gay and lesbian and we need to serve them too. We’re supposed to be teaching them to live in an increasingly diverse society. This shouldn’t be a place where prejudice is fostered. It’s where discrimination should be fought.”

In those days, Uribe and then closeted LA Unifed School District Board president Jackie Goldberg had to endure endless tirades from Rev. Lou Sheldon and his odd gay-sex-obsessed Traditional Values Coalition. Sheldon and TVC are more interested in tea parties in Washington DC these days, apparently.

But Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council is using gays and kids to continually whollop former GLSEN head, Kevin Jennings, now ensconced at the US Department of Education.

As I pointed out earlier, Perkins uses Jennings as a fundraising tool – using his photo in an unrelated email where he’s not even mentioned.

But today Perkins is out with a full-on move to “remove” Jennings. Here’s his latest missive:

Help Remove (Un)Safe School Czar Kevin Jennings
October 12, 2009

With each new nominee in the Obama Administration comes more and more revelations on how they seek to undermine America’s morals and economy. However no Administration official is more deserving of removal than Kevin Jennings, whom President Obama put forth to run his Safe Schools program at the Department of Education. What is Mr. Jennings’ definition of a “safe school?” He has proudly boasted of an incident (when he was a teacher) in which upon learning that a young boy in his class was having sex with a much older man, he did nothing to discourage him. The only advice this future “Safe Schools” czar gave the young boy was “be sure to bring a condom.”

Additionally, according to Mr. Jennings, it is heterosexuality that is the problem in our schools. In a speech that Kevin Jennings gave to a group in Iowa, he said, “Every time kids read Romeo & Juliet or they’re urged to go to the prom or whatever it is, kids are aggressively recruited to be heterosexual in this country.” Recruited to be heterosexuals? Does Kevin Jennings actually believe that a child’s sexual orientation is the product of some educational conspiracy? The only conspiracy I’m aware of is Jennings’ attempt to indoctrinate kids with a pro-homosexual agenda.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) agrees. Earlier this week, he launched a campaign to oust Jennings (and his radical record) from the Department of Education. In a letter that he’s circulating to his House colleagues, Rep. King tells the President, “There is more to safe and drug-free schools than can be accomplished from the narrow view of Mr. Jennings who has, for more than 20 years, almost exclusively focused on promoting the homosexual agenda.”

He’s taken up our cause — now let’s help him advance it. Contact your congressmen today and urge them to sign on to Rep. King’s letter.

Thank you and God bless you.

Contact Your Representative Today

Sincerely,

Tony Perkins

President

The attacks on Jennings have gotten really nasty. But as this CBS News report notes, the incident conservatives are so riled about happened in 1988 when teachers had little training in how to deal with LGBT issues and the primary concern was over HIV/AIDS:

“The Obama administration Wednesday defended an Education Department official over advice he gave a gay student about sex 21 years ago.

The official, Kevin Jennings, says he should have handled the situation differently when he told the boy he hoped he had used a condom during a sexual encounter with an older man.

Jennings, who now heads the department’s Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, has been under fire from conservatives and right-wing groups for not reporting the incident to authorities or to the boy’s parents.

In a statement Wednesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Jennings has devoted his career to promoting school safety.

“He is uniquely qualified for his job, and I am honored to have him on our team,” Duncan said.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs addressed the situation Thursday.

“I think there are many good people from every political persuasion that seek to serve their country and serve in government,” he said. “…I hope that, as people watch, they’ll match up some of the actual truth to what is being said on some of these occasions, and start to provide a little reality check to some of what’s going on.”

Jennings was teaching high school in Concord, Mass., in 1988 when a sophomore boy confessed of an involvement with an older man in Boston.

Telling the story a dozen years later, Jennings described how the boy told of meeting the man in a bus station bathroom and going home with him. Jennings said he told the boy, “My best friend had just died of AIDS the week before. You know, I hope you knew to use a condom.” Jennings was speaking during a conference of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, which he founded.

Conservative psychology professor Warren Throckmorton unearthed an audiotape of Jennings’ comments to the conference and posted it on his Web site recently.

In the Education Department statement Wednesday, Jennings said, “21 years later, I can see how I should have handled the situation differently.”

“I should have asked for more information and consulted medical or legal authorities,” he said. “Teachers back then had little training and guidance about this kind of thing. All teachers should have a basic level of preparedness. I would like to see the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools play a bigger role in helping to prepare teachers.”

The department noted that Jennings has won honors from groups including the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the National Association of Independent Schools, the National Education Association and the Massachusetts Counselors Association.

Some NEA members protested their organization’s award to Jennings.”

But other educators have come to his defense.

Meanwhile, Media Matters for America has been tracking and responding to the attacks.

Smears of “sick and immoral” “pervert” Jennings: the worst of the worst

In recent weeks, the right-wing media have embarked on a witch hunt against Department of Education official Kevin Jennings, often advancing the repeatedly debunked falsehood that Jennings failed to report or even encouraged a 15-year-old student’s relationship with an adult or the baseless smear that Jennings has “advocate[d]” for the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). Media Matters for America has compiled some of the most egregious attacks on Jennings that conservative media figures have made based on these smears, including calling Jennings “sick and immoral,” a “pervert,” someone who “facilitated” statutory rape, and “a zealous advocate of NAMBLA.”

Today, Robert Croonquist sent a blog to White Crane journal defending LGBT movement and Mattachine Society found Harry Hay, who has been linked to Jennings and the pedophile scare tactics of the Religious Right.  The blog is addressed to the Radical Fairies.

Subject: Defend Harry Hay’s Reputation at the National Equality March

Dear Rad Faes,

As thousands of LGBT activists prepare to march on Washington, Harry   Hay, one of the most important and beloved founders of the modern gay movement, is being used by right wing extremists as a bogeyman to destroy the career of Kevin Jennings, the Obama Administration’s highly qualified Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.

http://www.ed.gov/news/staff/bios/jennings.html

Most recently Sean Hannity has mounted the attack.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/08/stephanopoulos-scolds-han_n_314745.html

Harry Hay is being branded as a pederast and anyone who has ever spoken praise of Harry is being condemned as a supporter of pederasty.

As one of the six heirs to the Estate of Harry Hay and John Burnside, I feel it incumbent upon myself to defend his reputation against the attacks that have become a staple of those members of the right-wing establishment who are bent on destabilizing the Obama Adminstration and destroying the careers of members of his administration through guilt by association.

Let us make it clear:

Harry Hay was never a member of the North American Man Boy Love Association, known as NAMBLA.

His defense of the organization at several points in his 90 year history (sic) of speaking truth to power was based on his experiences as a young teenager exploring the world of sexuality with older men, himself being the aggressor.

These experiences were very positive for the young Harry and are described in Stuart Timmons’ excellent biography, The Trouble With Harry Hay.  There are no records of the

adult Mr. Hay ever having had sexual relations with under-aged youth.

It is also innacurate (sic) to say, as it is frequently written, that NAMBLA promotes the “legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men.” Hay agreed with NAMBLA that in many cases initiation into sexuality, as has been the case across cultures and millennia (sic), is better suited to those with experience than with other youth who also have no knowledge of the complexities and responsibilities of

sexuality.

Hay also concurred with NAMBLA that age of consent laws

are out of step with the age of sexual awakening and exploration. Harry Hay’s ideas concerning youth and sexuality were based on his desire to protect youth, not to exploit and abuse them.

The second instance of his defense of NAMBLA was in 1994 at Stonewall 25: Spirit of Stonewall March in New York City.  ILGA, the International Lesbian and Gay Association, had been granted NGO status by the UN the previous year.  As a result, the US Senate unanimously passed a motion sponsored by the right-wing senator Jesse Helms that the USA would withhold funds of more than 118 million dollars due to the UN and its sub-organizations unless the President of the USA could certify to the Congress that no agency of the United Nations “grants any official status, accreditation or recognition to any organization which promotes, condones or seeks the legalization of pedophilia or which includes as a subsidiary or member any such organization”.

On June 23, the week of the march, NAMBLA was expelled from ILGA, on the motion of the executive committee, and it was decided that “groups or associations whose predominant aim is to support or promote pedophilia are incompatible with the future development of ILGA”.

Hay felt that if the emerging gay movement allowed the outside to define it, outside forces would then control it.  It was in this context that Hay was critical of ILGA’s position and stood in defense of NAMBLA.  We again stand at a similar crossroads.

It is morally and intellectually dishonest and patently false to

reduce the life and work of Harry Hay to one of pederasty.  He was a courageous hero who pioneered the movement for the equal rights of an entire class of people denied the basic civil rights guaranteed to them under the Constitution of the United States of America.

A Dutch friend who spent some of his youth in a Japanese Concentration Camp in Indonesia told me recently that if Americans remain silent at this critical juncture in our history we will live to regret it.

Speak out.  Defend the reputation of our beloved Harry Hay.

Robert Croonquist aka Covelo

Will this, too, be controversial? No doubt. Other than a spell in the 1960s when the chant was “Make Love, Not War,” America seems to prefer its discussion of sexuality to be puritanical and furtive. Images are a different matter: this is capitalism, after all and sex sells – well, fantasies from a white straight male POV sell, anyway.

So next year, when stories of Harvey Milk are taught in California schools and young LGBT and questioning kids discover that they, too, can aspire to be an important person – watch for more of an outcry that the Religious Right will tie to the 2010 elections. But perhaps by then, the public will tire of the same old complaints. Perhaps by then the US Department of Education will be inspired by what happens here and not only will Kevin Jennings still have his job – but perhaps he will help replicate the Harvey Milk Day bill around the country.

Well, one can dream….