With Zombietime posting a major piece detailing the extensive involvement of Harry Hay, a man who “inspired” the president’s safe schools “czar” Kevin Jennings, in the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) “a group which advocates for legalization of sexual relations between adult men and underage boys,” right-of-center bloggers are again writing about the story.
Now, let me first say that just because Hay inspired Jennings does not mean that that latter agreed with everything the pioneering gay activist said or did. Indeed, well aware of Hay’s activism, I had been unaware of his support for NAMBLA until bloggers brought it out in stories about Jennings. Maybe Jennings didn’t know either.
But, combined with his reaction to the student (who told him he was having sex with a man he met in a bathroom) there is increasing evidence that Jennings countenanced (or at least did not disapprove of) sexual relations between adults and minors. I commend Zombietime for his thorough investigation and for inviting the Obama Administration official to do something to show that he does not countenance the type of relationships Hay so regularly encouraged. (The blogger offers several suggestions of the actions Jennings might take).
Please let me know if you have evidence that Jennings was unaware of Hay’s involvement in NAMBLA or has distanced himself from that aspect of a man on whom he has lavished much praise.
As it is now, Jennings’s prominence only helps reinforce certain stereotypes about gay people. And that is why, I believe, he should resign.
What kind of sick witch hunt is this turning into, Dan?
One of the tactics I hate so much on both sides of the aisle is to take a tangent and then use it to try and characterize an entire person. Somehow characterizing Bush as stupid or Palin as vapid or McCain as senile for isolated incidents is wrong, but you can take one sentence out of a person’s mouth and somehow encompass his entire body of work, how he’s spent his life, his secret underlying political philosophies and want to call for his resignation.
Your narrative about his secret support (and the gay’s community’s) for child molestation is COMPLETELY baseless and without evidence. Even to satisfy you, the kid has come forward and provided his DRIVER’S LICENSE to the media to satisfy your charges of child molestation, and you and others are still blogging about it. I have a feeling NO piece of evidence or fact will dissuade you from the tirade once you’ve launched onto it.
FACT:The kid in question is verifiable old enough to consent in his state. He was not molested. Kevin Jennings was not advocating child molestation. Yet here you are asking for his resignation because in a speech once, came out of his mouth, “One of the people that’s always inspired me is Harry Hay.” NOT Harry Hay inspired me to touch kids, rape kids, or anything. He was a figure in the early gay rights movement and did some good there, and had a personal life and political involvements BEFORE and AFTER. Yet you can somehow extract his love and kid touching from these few words.
Kevin Jennings is a man who has dedicated his life to ending hate and bullying of gay, black, minority, and all students in schools. He has 20 years of work which qualified him for this job. He has the endorsement and support of every major education association in America. Yet, you are going to ignore the entire life’s work and tireless ambition of this man to make schools better for kids, based on the extraction of a sentence he said once in 1997 that you can somehow link to your already skewed view of people you disagree with. You even state twice that you don’t think he knew about Hay’s NAMBLA involvement or even was approving of touching kids or condoning child molestation…
AND STILL you think he should resign, just because the appearance of the disproved allegations, which you now don’t even believe, reinforce certain stereotypes??? This is the third time you’ve had to change your position on this issue due to EVIDENCE and FACTS coming out apart from wild allegations you latched onto because they reinforced your worldview. Despite the fact that you’ve chastized people in the census killing for not changing their minds due to facts, despite the fact that you yourself blogged that people like Roman Polanski are gifted film makers and should be judged separately from their deeds and work, you still think the allegations, completely disproven, which you don’t believe, are enough for him to lose their job. Is this really the standard you hold up to people? If the mud thrown at them is bad enough it might be bad cause it reinforces “stereotypes” (and has nothing to do with facts, evidence, events or that everything was disproven) then they should lose their job.
C’mon. I guess now those whole Constitutional amendments about right to fair trial, facing accusers, providing evidence, speedy and fair trial, jury of peers should all go out the window thanks to your new standard of whether allegations reinforce negative stereotypes. Lord help anyone if you ever become a judge…
What advice would you, Gay Patriot, have given to the 16-year-old student?
Would you have told him NOT to use a condom? Would you have told him to die and get AIDS? (Would you avoided the whole subject and hoped, or maybe not cared, that he figured it out himself?)
Would you have reported the activity to the police? Risking the possibility that this student, in 1988, would be kicked out of his home by his parents? To become destitute or homeless for the rest of his life? Or kill himself? Or be bullied/beaten at school when other students found out? Or have to switch schools?
The student himself says the Kevin Jennings gave him good advice. Who the hell are you to question it?
Careful with your answers, Gay Patriot, you’re beginning to expose the fact that NARTH is actually behind the creation of this website.
#1
Here’s a towel for all that spittle. Do you think you could edit out the stupid, in that long diatribe, and narrow it down to something, I dunno…..coherent?
Speaking of stupid:
I’m sorry, but didn’t Jennings try to inspire the kid to come out at school?
Here’s a towel for all that spittle. Do you think you could edit out the stupid, in that long diatribe, and narrow it down to something, I dunno…..coherent?
Thanks for the coherant, reasoned, non-attacking response to my points. I’ve come to expect such adult, logical answers to my points lately. Oh no, wait, Just joking!
By your standards, I lied “Great Balls of Fire,” so I must want to fuck my underage cousins. All those people clapping and singing to “Rock and Roll Part 2” at football games? They all love child porn! That’s your level of evidence needed to ask people to resign these days? Grow up.
TGC, I gave plenty of clear arguments, if you can’t read or just want to make personal attacks, it says more of your character and intellect than anything I could type.
I never knew that Harry Hay was a longtime speaker, etc. for NAMBLA. Now I know, and my opinion of him has gone down accordingly. Way… WAY… down.
I can only speak for myself of course, but as I’ve said now in several previous threads: Jennings should have instinctively explained to the kid (who BTW was 15, by Jennings’ own account) that the older guy was a predatory creep; that it wasn’t a good idea for the kid to be having sex with the predator; and if the kid wanted out, Jennings would be there to help him.
To the best of my knowledge, Jennings never took any of those positions.
I have to agree with one part of Tim’s remarks: this does appear to be turning into a full-blown witch hunt. I hate those because they are NOT about truth, but instead engage in the most base of innuendo and slander. I had that uneasy feeling before which is only growing every time I see the lack of substance by many on the right attacking Jennings lately. This strongly resembles convicting a person and seeking anything that will give even the appearance of sticking to justify it. It’s the same kind of “just asking questions” BS I despise from the Left. If you have evidence that Jennings knew of Hay’s involvement with NAMBLA or supported NAMBLA himself, produce it. Otherwise this is the same kind of slimey tactic I’ve seen this blog rightly condemn the Left for. I never heard about Hays myself until his death when I read about it in the news and was repelled by this man’s sick perversion. If I had heard of him before then and only knew of his pro-gay activism, I too might have found his story somewhat inspirational (I say “somewhat” because I’m not much of an in-your-face rabble-rouser myself).
Esuriance:
Speaking only for myself, how about: “Geez Louise, Brewster, if you’re gonna do crazy stuff like fooling around with a total stranger you met in a restroom, please tell me that you had the basic common sense not to do anything more than trading handjobs. At least that way you can pretty much cross AIDS and other diseases off your list of things to be worried about, although you could still get arrested or beaten up or raped or worse by picking up strangers.”
Followed by: “And speaking of handjobs, just because you’ve already been fooling around with guys doesn’t mean you can’t take a couple steps back, rely on your own right hand, and choose to abstain from any more sex with other dudes for a few more years — at the very least till you’re old enough to vote. I know it can be lonely and frustrating when you’re all full of hormones, but no one ever got into bad trouble by putting off sex for a while longer.”
“Use a condom” should be the LAST item on the advice list, right after “by the way, if you’re going to totally ignore everything else I’ve already said…”
By the way, I think this is in some ways the biggest scandal here:
The “scandal” being that biographies and obits of Hay in a lot of gay media outlets and in the MSM have politely omitted any mention of Hay’s NAMBLA boosterism.
Which is why there are plenty of well-informed gay people (definitely including myself and GPW, and possibly including Jennings) who already knew that Hay founded the Mattachine Society and the Radical Faeries, and was an avowed Communist, and maybe even the amusing piece of celeb-trivia that Hay once had an affair with Will “Grandpa Walton” Geer — yet this is the first time that many of us are hearing about the NAMBLA stuff. And that’s worth getting pissed off about even if you think that there’s no story here in re Jennings.
Um, Tim, where, at any point in your rant, do you address any point that I made in this post? What witch hunt? What? Fair trial? What? In the post, I ask for evidence that he distanced himself from Harry Hay.
I’m not asking for his incarceration, merely his resignation. I’m not calling him a criminal, merely saying he acted inappropriately, something that he acknowledged himself. Paricularly inappropriately for a guy in his current position.
Yeah, so “Brewster” has provided his driver’s license. In 2000, Jennings said that he thought the kid was 15 at the time he “counseled” him. He thought he was talking to a boy below the age of consent.
Oh, and it’s not just one sentence in 1997. It’s a reference he made in a book–and at public conferences.
So, please go read my stuff before you level angry accusations. And note the careful distinctions I make. Let me repeat a primary point (and likely the subject of my next post on the matter): had Jennings not talked about the issue–of his own accord–I would likely cut him some slack, but it’s that he talked about the issue as if providing an example of how to address such situations.
And he never showed any indication that he thought he should have handled the situation differently, that is, until the issue became a political hot potato. And since you’re so convinced I’m on some kind of witch hunt, please note that I have, in past posts, said I might change my mind if evidence emerges that, before September 2009, he said he wished had handled the situation differently. Do you have such information? Or the information I requested in the post to which you attach your comment?
esurience, please read my past posts on the matter as the answers to all your questions are there. I think he should have strongly discouraged the kid from having sex with adults, particularly those he met in public bathrooms.
And thanks for your mean-spirited allegations, they do show that you’re not interested in what I have to say, but in pigeonholing someone who offers a viewpoint at odds with your own.
I would have told the kid’s parents. It’s their job to take care of the kid, regardless of my opinion as to whether they are “open-minded” enough to handle his orientation. I would have told the father the name of the man who was molesting his son. And I would have told the police about the child molester. And my principal.
Tim would have asked if he had a younger brother.
#7 John, please see the attached link to Zombie, who documents quite effectively Mr. Hays connections to NAMBLA. http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=927. There is, in fact, no question as to his involvement and support of NAMBLA and he was quite public about it. If Mr. Jennings is going to praise him in public, he had a responsibility to know all there was to know about Hays, he didn’t hide his associations for a moment, in fact he flaunted them.
sorry, forgot to add (all about the citations) Tim saying that adults having sex with 15 year olds is fine.
BULLSHIT! If this ass clown is supposedly speaking for us, isn’t it fair to ask what exactly he meant by his comment? I’d think he should explain himself rather than hiding behind bleeding vages like Tim the Sputtering Pedophile and e-surance.
See, I’ve studied “gay history” a bit over the years (though less than some) and read pieces on Hay, and never heard that he was an avowed Communist either. There has been a real whitewash of Hay, it appears. In the “official” history, all that one hears about is what an incredible pioneer he was with the Mattachine Society.
Amen. Why is it so hard (that’s what she said) (Shut up, Michael) for some gay men to reject sleazy, inappropriate, even illegal activities with minors? WTF is wrong with you people?
When I was in college, I knew a guy who became HIV positive at 17 as the result of hooking up with a guy in his thirties. What would Tim and esurance say to him? “Hay, look at the bright side. You had a good time and nobody judged you!”
For the same reason (I suspect) that some straights are defending Roman Polanski;
Their lives are bitter, empty, and meaningless, with those moments of sexual satisfaction the only non-chemical way for them to feel more than the pathetic wretches they are.
V the K,
Tim would likely ask if he had a younger brother
Um, Tim, where, at any point in your rant, do you address any point that I made in this post? What witch hunt? What? Fair trial? What? In the post, I ask for evidence that he distanced himself from Harry Hay.
I ask for evidence he needed to. He made reference specifically about what accomplishments he admired. He didn’t say anything about kid touching.
I’m not asking for his incarceration, merely his resignation. I’m not calling him a criminal, merely saying he acted inappropriately, something that he acknowledged himself. Paricularly inappropriately for a guy in his current position.
You’re right, he shouldn’t go to jail, just lose his job. Again, your standard of evidence for firing people is suspect when you can’t produce evidence of any crime and all the facts that have come out have completely vindicated him
Yeah, so “Brewster” has provided his driver’s license. In 2000, Jennings said that he thought the kid was 15 at the time he “counseled” him. He thought he was talking to a boy below the age of consent.
How do you know that? How do you know he had any inkling or knowledge of age of consent laws? Again, no proof, just accusations.
Oh, and it’s not just one sentence in 1997. It’s a reference he made in a book–and at public conferences.
Yes I read the whole quote, and he is very specific about WHAT exactly he admired about this man. It’s you who are drawing conclusions to fit your own agenda, completely ignoring that he said in very clear plain language what he admired about the guy.
So, please go read my stuff before you level angry accusations. And note the careful distinctions I make. Let me repeat a primary point (and likely the subject of my next post on the matter): had Jennings not talked about the issue–of his own accord–I would likely cut him some slack, but it’s that he talked about the issue as if providing an example of how to address such situations.
Sorry, didn’t realize reading everything you’ve ever posted (since you seem to post about 10 times a day, even though I thought there were at least 5 contributors to this blog, not just you) was a prerequisite for participating. Yes, you make careful distinctions in order not to have to take a position. You write 2 paragraphs detailing the lack of evidence against him, and completely acknowledging he had no knowldge of Hay’s NAMBLA involvement, and then go on to call for his resignation. Pick a side, instead of taking both and then acting all high and mighty when someone calls you on it.
And he never showed any indication that he thought he should have handled the situation differently, that is, until the issue became a political hot potato. And since you’re so convinced I’m on some kind of witch hunt, please note that I have, in past posts, said I might change my mind if evidence emerges that, before September 2009, he said he wished had handled the situation differently. Do you have such information? Or the information I requested in the post to which you attach your comment?
Who cares? This has no bearing on the issue. This is four posts now you’ve been asking for evidence. Each time new evidence and arguments have emerged and you’re still clinging hard and fast to your position no matter the little ground you still have to stand on regarding your points. We’ve already found hard evidence the boy was NOT underage and you still are calling him a pedophile. You’re obviously not a reasonable person when hard evidence contrary to your position still can’t convince you to reject it.
Asking him to clarify his remarks is one thing, making what appears to be a pre-determined and only slightly veiled conviction beforehand is something entirely different.
Nice hyperbole but this doesn’t help your cause. In fact all it does is make you look like a complete ass.
#13: I was made aware of Hays’ twisted perversions a few years ago when he died and this made the press. There’s no need to convince me that Hays was a schmuck for he most definitely was. Add sick, twisted and evil to that. Yet this wasn’t about Hays, it was about Jennings and the general ignorance most people had, and some probably still do, about Hays’ prepubescent…interests. Nothing has been shown that Jennings even knew about Hays NAMBLA support, instead he is being convicted in the court of public opinion and by rightwing smear machines on just innuendo and guilt by association.
Pam’s House Blend, a VERY liberal blog to put it mildly, has an interesting post up today about Tony Perkins, former GOP Lousiana state rep and now head of the very powerful Family Research Council. Take a look:
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/13356/tony-perkins-and-white-supremacy
Given how influential FRC is in GOP politics and the number of GOP politicians who are heavily connected to FRC, can we now assume beforehand that all these folks are racist based upon this one photo alone? Yes, PHB and the Left in general will charge this anyways but that’s irrelevant here.
17: In fairness I don’t think this is limited to Hays. I was shocked when I first learned about Helen Keller being a die-hard communist as well. How many know about Woodrow Wilson’s racist changes to the Federal Civil Service, undoing what Republicans had put into place before? The number of examples of things like these are simply amazing.
In general our history education in this country sucks massively.
John,
it’s not hyperbole to point out that Tim thinks 16 is not a minimum age of consent. He admits that kids younger than 16 having sex with adults is fine.
esurance also thinks that letting an older man take advantage of a boy is fine, and better than following the law.
As to your post @ 23 John:
Yes, if you find out that someone you’ve associated with is a sleazoid, the correct course of action is to repudiate them. Whether it be NAMBLA or the KKK. The correct action is one of revulsion, not one of sweeping it under the carpet.
25: I read what he posted from the link you provided and I didn’t get that.
26: Well yes, but do you consider them to be like the sleazoid based upon such thin association? No.
No John, I don’t.
But I do disavow them as loudly and as fast as I can when such an association comes to light. I’m also usually horrified when I find out such things.
29: Fair enough. On that point I would agree that Jennings should respond in disavowing Hays. Politicians can sometimes be their own worst enemies by trying to ignore controversies they can make it worse.
Kevin Jennings needs to clarify his praise of Harry Hay? I thought his praise was quite clear in context.
What next? Does the physics community have to clarify its respect for Isaac Newton because the man was a anti-Catholic. Do orchestra’s have to clarify their playing the music of Richard Wagner because that composer was a rabid anti-Semite?
This is ridiculous.