Fistgate V: Youth Fisting Instructor Claims Kevin Jennings Knew About Class Content in Advance

by Jim Hoft

In March 2000 Barack Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings was the keynote speaker at a controversial youth conference at Tuft’s University . This conference sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) was fully supported by the Massachusetts Department of Education, the Safe Schools Program, the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, and some of the presenters even received federal money.

An undercover journalist with Mass Resistance was at the conference and recorded a number of workshops. During one of the conference workshops an activist asks 14 year-old students, “Spit or swallow?… Is it rude?” This audio clip segment is posted here.

But that’s not all. The adult leaders also promoted fisting during the “youth only, ages 14-21″ session.

margot abels

Margot Abels led the workshop, “What They Didn’t Tell You About Queer Sex and Sexuality in Health Class: Workshop for Youth Only, Ages 14-21. “During the session she praised the homosexual practice of ‘fisting’”–widely condemned by medical authorities as dangerous–saying that, “It often gets a bad rap.” (Wolcott)

Here is the shocking clip where the GLSEN activists promoted “fisting” at the teen workshop:

After the tapes made their way into the local news Margot Abels was fired. She later said that she was disappointed that she became the Fistgate scapegoat. She also said that the organizers knew beforehand what the “sexuality educators” would discuss with children at the “fisting” workshop. Kevin Jennings, as co-chair of the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth education committee, was one of the organizers of the “educational” material at the state level.

Mass Resistance blog reported:

Jennings, after all, worked hand in hand with the Mass. Department of Education from the beginning, as co-chair of the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth education committee, which set up the statewide program, “Safe Schools for Gay and Lesbian Students” in the DOE. That is the program the fisting workshop instructors worked for…

Rod Dreher wrote in the Weekly Standard (July 2000):

The [Fistgate] tapes went out anyway [despite GLSEN's threat of a lawsuit for "illegal wiretapping"] and became a talk radio sensation. On May 19, state education chief David Driscoll canned Abels and Netherland and terminated Gaucher’s contract. But Driscoll also insisted that the controversial workshop was an aberration that shouldn’t be allowed to derail the entire program. Abels fumed to the press that the education department had known perfectly well what she had been doing for years and hadn’t cared until the tapes had surfaced. Camenker, ironically, agreed.

The Mass News website also confirmed this in 2001, via Mass Resistance:

“[W]e flew sort of below the radar screen for a long time,” Margot Abels told Boston’s homosexual newspaper, Bay Windows.

She taught them sex because she thought she knew better than the parents what should be taught to the children. She says she had the support of state officials during her seven years at the state Department of Education.

“We always knew that we were working in an area that in certain places was considered really controversial and we also knew that we were doing cutting edge work and that there are plenty of people that don’t support doing work with gay kids. But I think that we flew sort of below the radar screen for a long time and were able to, and had the complete support of our agency. Maybe David Driscoll [Commissioner of Education] didn’t always know everything that we did, but certainly our supervisors did,” said Abels.

And, in an interview in Ocotber 2001 with Massachusetts News Brian Camenker from Mass Resistance also confirmed that the DOE leadership knew exactly what was being promoted at the GLSEN meetings:

Camenker: Well you see the DOE tried to paint her as this anomaly, someone who just came in and did something bad. The department is made up of people just as radical as she is and in many cases more radical. And so, when Driscoll, the Commissioner, and the others tried to say that what she had done was unusual and said it would never happen again, they were a bunch of liars. In fact, they weren’t shocked at all. They knew what was going on. They helped her plan it and they approved it at every level. When the people there heard about what she was doing when we first told them about it, they weren’t surprised. This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the DOE knew about it and planned it and was actually very comfortable with what she did. The only reason that they fired her was because of the immense public outrage.

Kevin Jennings, as co-chair of the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth education committee and founder of GLSEN, helped plan and organize the “educational material” at the conference.

Today Kevin Jennings is Barack Obama’s National Safe School Czar.


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Posted Dec 10th 2009 at 9:41 am in Culture, Education, News, Obama, Politics | 170 Comments