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Loading ...Obama official regrets advice to gay student
10.01.2009 10:07am EDT
(Washington) 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.
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.
I don’t get it. The student was confiding in Mr. Jennings. I am sure that was very difficult for the kid. I could not tell anyone about an anonymous encounter with a hitchhiker under a bridge on my way home from school. Even though I initiated the encounter, it took me years to understand my feelings about that. I wish I had a Mr. Jennings that I could have talked to about these issues. Mr. Jennings it seams showed compassion and understanding. He offered reasonable advice. What’s the problem?
To Alex Parrish:
I think I love you. A brilliant summing up. I hope you get to teach kids.
Kristie:
The ‘boy’ was of legal sexual age when the incident occurred.
That being the case, what he did sexually was none of your or anyone elses business. And that goes for parents as well.
There comes a time when parents have to realize their kids are going to f*** other people – and get over it.
I see no problem whatsoever in telling a kid who is active sexually that “I hope you used a condom” during the 1980’s.
The kid was ALREADY having sex. Kristie is being unrealistic in her desire to know what is going on. No 15 year old boy is going to want to talk with his parents (especially in the 1980’s) about sexual desires (let ALONE gay sexual desires) or sexual episodes in their lives. Get real.
Kevin Jennings did what I wish would have been done for me at that age by an authority figure.
I agree with JonnyBoy, on the “two lines from a speech” to cruicify someone. And to hell with apeasing the wingnuts from the right.
right, and the same parents who would have sent him to theological reprogramming would send their kids to a weekend outing with a predatory priest.
Parents were in denial or totally stupid…I can’t tell you how many guys I know raised catholic, completely straight, who were warned by their parents to stay away from the priests. IT WAS NO SECRET yet abusive parents, seemingly not happy with the abuse they deliver in the form of brainwashing their kids into a cult, still sent those kids in harms way in an effort, I can only surmize, to save their own faith from doubt.
Think about how cruel and evil that is: “I’m not willing to accept the fallability of my priest as it will destroy my faith so instead I will let my kid get raped”.
As people who have had to come out at some point to our parents I’m sure many of you understand the power of parental denial. Combine this with the fear of everlasting hell and you get child abuse.
But rest assured if they had a gay kid they’d fix that pretty fast.
This particular kid was seeking out sex in bathrooms. Sure, mother of 15 year old, you would want to know….but some things are not for knowing. The man should not be doing this to young kids but I see much more harm in outing the kid who obviously needed a parent figure than in turning him in to his parents.
I wish the Obama administration would spend as much time agonizing over DOMA and DADT as it does over appeasing conservatives.
Also, can we all stop taking one or two lines out of individual’s speaches and using them to crucify the person? What was the greater point Jennings was trying to bring up? Could it have been that he was trying to show the kid that there are more dangerous things than simply a lunatic…HIV can kill as well?
Unfortunately, Kristie, you are currently the mother of a 15 year old boy, and you have never been a 15 year old boy, especially not one coming to grasp with his own sexuality in the early 80s.
Additionally, the kid had already done the deed of going with the man – Jennings could not stop him from making the initial bad decision, and convincing a teenager, as you probably know, to do what you desire is often complicated.
We all have instances where we wish, with our 21 year 20/20 hindsight vision, that we had proceeded in a different manner than that which we had. Kudos to Jennings for approaching the topic in a manner which allowed the kid to trust him in the future. I wish I had had a similar role model when I was growing up in the 80’s.
Personally, as the mother of a 15 year old boy (the same age as this kid was) I sure as hell would have wanted someone to let me know if my child was in this situation. This boy was 15 and he had been picked up by some 44 year old man in a bathroom and gone home with him. Of course Kevin Jennings should have told someone what had gone on. It’s not about bringing this boy to the attention of the authorities, but about reporting the adult who had sex with this kid to the authorities. He was putting himself in danger of not only contracting a deadly virus, but he was also putting himself in a position where he could have ended up going home with some kind of nutcase. If he’d told Kevin Jennings what had gone on and then the next week ended up dead thanks to another older man he met and went home with (or the same one) would it still have been right not to say anything?
In reference to Alex_Parrish’s comments,
while there was a lot of less than tolerant thinking going on in the 80’s it doesn’t mean that this kid would have automatically been rejected by his parents or sent off to some kind of anti-gay deprogramming boot camp. And I hardly think that a 44 year old man, having sex with a 15 year old boy is what I could call, “being kind to him”. I’d call it taking advantage of someone much younger and more vulnerable for your own sexual gratification.
The only reason social conservatives want Kevin Jennings denied the position in the department of Education is that he is Gay. A bad decision made 21 years ago is only another excuse for them to press their already established opposition to his appointment. I do not believe that Kevin Jennings should be denied a position for a misstep 21 years ago when it has been proven that his record since then is one of outstanding leadership for safe and caring schools for all students.
Ah yes – interrogate the kid and turn him in to the authorities – instead of giving him the advice he needs to protect his health and life.
The kid was experimenting sexually (as most all 16 year-old people do). It was *he* who was seeking out partners – not the ‘older guys’. Jennings handled the situation correctly (though i would, as a teacher, have counseled the boy against seeking out anonymous sex AND advised him to stick to those closer to his own age.)
And conservatives wonder why the highest teen pregnancy and STD rates are in the South and Midwest…..
It was a very different culture 21 years ago. The fact that this statement was spoken by Jennings himself to a crowded room is enough to say it wasn’t anything he was trying to hide. In the 80’s it was more important to make sure a gay male used protection than to stop him from having sex with an overage man. Condoms saved lives, revealing what the boy had said to him at the time would have probably destroyed his.
I’m sure it would have been far better if he had reported the kid who could then have been shunned by his peers and possibly rejected by his parents or sent to cultists to cure his homosexuality, then put thru the thrill of a trial of someone who had been kind to him and forced to testify so the the man could get jail-time. The kid could have then grown-up feeling the proper amount of shame, hid his orientation and entered a sham-marraige so he could cheat, bring HIV into his home or leave his family, thereby creating another broken-home — or better yet, perhaps the kid might have suicided and save us all the trouble of shaming him.
I m so frigging sick of the right-wing phobia about sex and their success at making the general public think that sex doesn’t exist in children until the age of 18 at which point it springs full-grown from nothingness.Meanwhile the kids of right-wingnuts are having babies and getting STDs in record numbers.
Conservative psychology professor Warren Throckmorton is a quack who has been exposed again and again for his willingness to distort research and lie to push his own sick agenda. Why would anyone listen that idiot? This is non-story brandished by the right-wingnuts to fan the flames of fear and hatred and it looks like they have succeeded.
Stop it! Just stop it!!
“Teachers back then had little training and guidance about this kind of thing.” My first reaction is this is a little bit of a cop-out. Sounds like he made a error of judgment. Plain and simple.