Obama Appointee Kevin Jennings Can’t Remember Saying the F-Word to Bash Christians — in a Church

Double Standard for “Gay” Appointees? If a conservative Republican presidential appointee had told gays to “drop dead” and said, “[F**k] ’em” to the religious left — in a church — he would be dumped in a heartbeat due to liberal media pressure. But Kevin Jennings — who wears his hatred of religious conservatives on his sleeve as America’s leading activist “promoting homosexuality” in schools — is so far untouched as Obama’s “Safe Schools” deputy in the Department of Education. TAKE ACTION: urge your Congressman and Senators (202-224-3121; www.congress.org) to push for this dismissal of this troubled man whose abject bigotry and reckless promotion of wrong and unhealthy lifestyles make him a poor role model for children.

Peter LaBarbera

Check out FoxNews.com’s first major piece on the controversy surrounding Kevin Jennings, President Obama’s “Safe Schools” Education Department appointee and the nation’s leading activist promoting homosexuality in schools. Much of the article’s information against Jennings — including Brian Burt’s firsthand piece from a GLSEN conference exposing Jennings’ open desire to “promote homosexuality” in schools — came from Americans For Truth’s work (and that of our previous publication, Lambda Report).

What the FOX report left out was that Jennings used the F-word in 2002 to convey his hatred of the “religious right,” in a church no less. He says he can’t recollect” making the comment. Back in 2002, Americans For Truth and this writer (then writing for Concerned Women for America), obtained the audio tape from Jennings talk at the liberal Marble Collegiate Church in New York City — which I transcribed for the 2002 report by CWA below. (The tape has since been misplaced and FOX won’t report Jennings’ church expletive until an audio of the speech is produced.)

Here’s our AFTAH article highlighting the CWA paper exposing Jennings and GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, which he founded :

GLSEN’S JENNINGS: !&%#! THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT!

Addressing a church audience on March 20, 2000 in New York City — just days before “Fistgate” — GLSEN Executive Director Kevin Jennings offered a stinging (and quite intolerant) assessment of how to deal with religious conservatives:

“Twenty percent of people are hard-core fair-minded [pro-homosexual] people. Twenty percent are hard-core [anti-homosexual] bigots. We need to ignore the hard-core bigots, get more of the hard-core fair-minded people to speak up, and we’ll pull that 60 percent [of people in the middle]   over to our side. That’s really what I think our strategy has to be. We have to quit being afraid of the religious right. We also have to quit — I’m trying to find a way to say this. I’m trying not to say, ‘[F—] ‘em!’ which is what I want to say, because I don’t care what they think! [audience laughter] Drop dead!” — Kevin Jennings speech to Marble Collegiate Church, March 20, 2000.

“[It should be noted that GLSEN and Jennings make heavy use of the words “respect” and “tolerance” in their public rhetoric and in descriptions of their programs. GLSEN’s also sponsors a “No Name Calling Week,” which includes “No Dissing” in its advice to kids as part of a school-based program to “eliminate bullying.”]

Now you would think that telling conservative Christians to “Drop dead!” and using the F-word to describe your hatred of them is something you’d remember. But according to the liberal website Think Progress:

There appears to be no full transcript available of this 2000 speech; it seems to first appear in a 2002 article on the right-wing website Concerned Women for America. The same day that article was published (4/10/02), Jennings told NPR that he had “no recollection of [that] quote whatsoever.”

Note how Jennings did not flat out deny making the nasty anti-Christian comments, but just said that he cannot recollect making them. It could be possible that Jennings — whose paper trail of “religious right”-bashing is extensive — is the type of profane liberal whose habit of cussing is so entrenched that even doing so in church would not be memorable.

We are searching Americans For Truth’s research archives for the tape of the Jennings speech — to jog his memory. The tape is apparently no longer available from the pro-homosexual Marble Collegiate Church, based in New York City. Calls by AFTAH to the church requesting the tape went unanswered, and FOX News also was unsuccessful in its attempts to secure a copy.

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The following is excerpted from the FoxNews.com report, “Critics Assail Obama’s ‘Safe Schools’ Czar, Say He’s Wrong Man for the Job,” by Maxim Lott:

Conservatives are up in arms about the appointment of Kevin Jennings, Obama’s director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, saying he is too radical for the job.

Jennings was appointed to the position largely because of his longtime record of working to end bullying and discrimination in schools. In 1990, as a teacher in Massachusetts, he founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which now has over 40 chapters at schools nationwide. He has also published six books on gay rights and education, including one that describes his own experiences as a closeted gay student. …

In 1997, according to a transcript put together by Brian J. Burt, managing editor of the student-run Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Jennings said he hoped that promoting homosexuality in schools would be considered fine in the future.

“One of our board members” was called to testify before Congress when they had hearings on the promotion of homosexuality in schools,” Jennings said. “And we were busy putting out press releases, and saying, “We’re not promoting homosexuality, that’s not what our program’s about. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…. ‘

“Being finished might someday mean that most straight people, when they would hear that someone was promoting homosexuality, would say ‘Yeah, who cares?’ because they wouldn’t necessarily equate homosexuality with something bad that you would not want to promote.”

The group Jennings founded has also been accused of promoting homosexuality in schools. At a GLSEN conference in 2000, co-sponsored with the Massachusetts Department of Education, the group landed in hot water when it was revealed that it had included an educational seminar for kids that graphically described some unorthodox sex techniques.

A state official who spoke to teens at the conference said:

“Fisting (forcing one’s entire hand into another person’s rectum or vagina) often gets a bad rap….[It’s] an experience of letting somebody into your body that you want to be that close and intimate with…[and] to put you into an exploratory mode.”

At the time, Jennings said he had concerns about events at the conference, but he also criticized attendees who filmed it.

“From what I’ve heard, I have concerns as well,” Jennings told the Boston Globe in May 2000. “GLSEN believes that children do have a right to accurate, safer sex education, but this needs to be delivered in an age-appropriate and sensitive manner.

“What troubles me is the people who have the tape know what our mission is, they know that our work is about preventing harassment and they know that session was not the totality of what was offered at a conference with over 50 sessions,” he said.

But Peter LaBarbera, President of “Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, said Jennings’ reaction was weak and unacceptable.

“He never really apologized. If a conservative group had done that, they would be out of business,” LaBarbera said.

The religious right is also alarmed by Jennings’ personal views about religion. In his memoir, he wrote of his views while he was in high school:

“What had [God] done for me, other than make me feel shame and guilt? Squat. Screw you, buddy — I don’t need you around anymore, I decided.

“The Baptist Church had left me only a legacy of self-hatred, shame, and disappointment, and I wanted no more of it or its Father. The long erosion of my faith was now complete, and I, for many years, reacted violently to anyone who professed any kind of religion. Decades passed before I opened a Bible again.”

Terkel said Jennings was writing about a “low point” in his life, and he now considers himself a religious person.

“Since then he has been involved in the Union Theological Seminary,” she said. “He does consider himself religious. He tithes — I just don’t see any evidence that he is hostile to religion.”

Jennings is on the board of the Union Theological Seminary, which describes itself as “progressive and evangelical.”

Another controversy from Jennings’ past concerns an account in his 1994 book, “One Teacher In 10,” about how, as a teacher, he knew a high school sophomore named Brewster who was “involved” with an “older man”:

“Out spilled a story about his involvement with an older man he had met in Boston. I listened, sympathized, and offered advice. He left my office with a smile on his face that I would see every time I saw him on the campus for the next two years, until he graduated.”

The account led Diane Lenning, head of the National Education Association’s Republican Educators Caucus, to criticize Jennings in 2004 for not alerting school and state authorities about the boy’s situation, calling Jennings’ failure to do so an “unethical practice.”

Jennings threatened to sue Lenning for libel, saying she had no evidence that he knew the student in question was sexually active, or that he failed to report the situation.

But a professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, Warren Throckmorton, has produced an audio recording of a speech Jennings gave in 2000 at a GLSEN rally in Iowa, in which Jennings made it clear that he believed the student was sexually active:

“I said, ‘What were you doing in Boston on a school night, Brewster?’ He got very quiet, and he finally looked at me and said, ‘Well I met someone in the bus station bathroom and I went home with him.’ High school sophomore, 15 years old’ I looked at Brewster and said, ‘You know, I hope you knew to use a condom.'” [Audio is available on the professor’s Web site.]

The Washington Times reported in 2004 that “state authorities said Mr. Jennings filed no report in 1988.” A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department for Children and Families, the department to which Jennings — as a Massachusetts teacher — would have been legally obliged to report the situation, did not return calls from FOXNews.com.

GLSEN spokesman Daryl Presgraves told FOXNews.com that all the attacks on Jennings were hate-motivated smears, but he declined to address individual issues.

“From falsehoods to misrepresentations to things taken out of context to outright smears — all of which have been fully debunked — these groups will stop at nothing to ensure that no effective action is taken to address bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression in America’s schools.

“They have failed to derail and slander GLSEN’s well-respected work in the education world, which includes partnerships with numerous national education organizations, and they now seek to tarnish Kevin Jennings’ highly regarded career as an educator.”