I've never heard of this guy, and he's a local politician from Georgia, far away from my state of Nevada. But I simply couldn't resist the headline. It's kind of like that Carl Paladino guy in New York, ranting against gay people, while having been a landlord for a couple of gay bars.
[Excerpt]
GOP Legislator Who Crusaded Against College Sex Ed Classes Owns Company That Sells Kinky Sex Gadgets
In the winter of 2009, Georgia state legislator Rep. Calvin Hill (R-Canton) led a high-profile campaign against the teaching of public university courses that dealt with sexual health and related topics. Hill was joined by a small cadre of other conservatives who sought to end the teaching of courses dealing with topics such as male prostitution and gay history, and some of his acolytes even called for firing professors who taught these courses. Hill even appeared on CNN and boasted about an award he received for leading the battle to shut down courses dealing with sexuality. . .
Go to any arch-right-wing web site, and if the subject of homosexuality comes up (in virtually any context), several very predictable things will happen:
- Sub-Junior High School level homophobic "jokes" are volleyed as though they are the height of hilarity.
- A strange preoccupation with a particular sexual act involving posteriors (that straight folks also often partake in).
- Religious condemnation, often with the implication that these religious beliefs should be reflected in law.
- Strange theories about the origins of "the gay," including molestation, distant father, clinging mother. . .things long ago discounted by psychologists.
- The implication that gay people got together and decided to lie to the public at large about all sorts of things, so only hard-right Republican heterosexuals are qualified to speak on the issue.
- The notion that homosexuality is something that can be "disagreed with" or "promoted." That if you teach kids that gay people exist and you shouldn't be mean to them, you are indoctrinating them.
That last one is in the news again this week, with the spotlight on a school district with "age appropriate" sex education. This is only the latest version of an age-old conservative argument that any sex education is bad. I was in fifth grade all the way back in 1977, and remember then parents keeping their kids out of class during our (oh-so-unsexy) first round of sex ed.
I suspect that many conservatives have extraordinarily lurid imaginations. What else explains their knee-jerk reactions to any story having to do with sex? When they hear that kindergartners are being taught about gay people (meaning they are told that gay people exist), why do they jump to the conclusion that the teacher is showing Powertool on the projector?
Listen up, you dirty-minded GOPpers:
- There is nothing less sexy than sex-ed in school, in any form.
- You can't teach kids to be gay. First, it isn't teachable, and second, it comes naturally (nobody taught me!).
- There is no such thing as "promoting" homosexuality. Promotion implies that you're selling something, and that there are buyers out there. It's a bizarre notion that people can be convinced to be gay, or that there is an organized group trying to convert them. It's a fantasy (once again, in those lurid conservative imaginations).
- You can't "disagree" with homosexuality. It exists. Empirically. To disagree would be delusional.
[Excerpt]
Right Wing Apoplectic That Montana School Is Teaching Tolerance, Safe Sex, And Anti-Bullying Measures
Over 500 Helena, MT residents gathered at the Helena School District’s school board meeting Tuesday night to weigh in on a new K-12 health education plan released last week. The 62-page proposal, developed by community members and health officials over two years, promotes a broad health and nutrition education program for each grade. However, there is a small section dealing with sex education that has ignited a firestorm of backlash among conservatives, both locally and nationally. . .
Have you ever had sex? Don't be so sure! Because by some peoples' measure, you may still be a virgin! Of course I find this all ludicrous. They don't call it oral sex and anal sex for nothing. Either is sex. But do we know what the definition of is is? Hmmm. . . Maybe Bill Clinton was on to something after all.
Researchers at Indiana surveyed hundreds of heterosexual adults, male and female, from age 18 all the way up to 96, and asked them if different sexual activities constituted "having sex."
And the results... were amazing. At least the results I saw. As usual, the Liberal Media only published enough of the findings to give us a taste, but not a complete picture.
Fortunately, the good people at The Kinsey Institute at IU were kind enough to provide me with the full results of their study. Good people over at that Kinsey Institute. Totally worth getting it on with one of them, even if you get the feeling they're just doing it for research purposes. . .
When I started hearing the name Kevin Jennings, at first I thought, "Who? That guy who won on Jeopardy!?" No, not that guy. Right-wing world, all heady with their take down of a couple of Obama Administration appointees (like Van Jones), has their guns loaded for Jennings, an "education czar," who is also gay. Now they can't just hit him for the gay thing, too blunt, too obvious. No, they have to tie him to NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, a deplorable group to be sure.
As a gay person myself, mentions of NAMBLA usually will give me a simultaneous stomach cramp and an eye roll. I'm sick to death of the conflation of gays with pedophiles. The two things just ain't the same. In fact, I've often wondered if the group even exists in any meaningful way. Yes, there is an organization with this name. But how big is it really, how cohesive? I think you'll understand that I'm less than enthusiastic about the prospect of investigating. Who wants that kind of history trail on their computer? Yikes.
But the bigger question in this case is whether or not it is true that Jennings is somehow involved with them. And it turns out, investigating that question is easier to do. Incidentally, the real reason they're going after this guy, is that he's in education and he's gay. And whether Sean Hannity and the rest really believe that sort of combo is a problem or not, they know that their followers do. So they are cravenly going after this guy for ratings. Simple as that.
[Excerpt]
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. . ."
Hee hee! I just love these guys. Bristol Palin, abstinence, teen pregnancy, and Greta Van Whatsername are the subjects, and Jackie and Dunlap do their usual, hilarious banter. Check it out.
One thing we're starting to learn--as if we didn't already know--is that the policies of the far right don't work very well. Leaving aside the financial turmoil we find ourselves in, and a number of disastrous foreign policy decisions (that's a lot to leave aside, I know), the social policies of the religious right are showing a high failure rate.
How else do you explain the high teen pregnancy rates in red states, and lower rates in blue states? The "evils" of sex education in schools may get right-wingers all atwitter, but it sure seems to work. And "abstinence only?" Well it needs to be renamed. After all, nothing in life is "only," there are always options. And the option to abstinence is to actually have sex. Which teenagers are going to do, blue or red. So why not arm them with information and protection?
Oh, and by the way, something needs to be said about sex education in schools. Things may have changed since I was in school in the 80s, but when we got to the sex part of Heath class, there was nothing sexy about it. We had one or two parents who took their kids out of class, no doubt believing that we were reading Hustler and watching porno films. The reality was far more uncomfortable, absolutely not titillating, and taught by Coach Kane, the fattest, most slovenly Phys. Ed. teacher on the planet. These paranoid parents really have nothing to worry about, their children are not getting hot and bothered in Health class.
Ignoring sex education does not appear to be working very well. Bible studies and pretending as though sex doesn't happen with teens is not a policy. Wouldn't it be nice to see this Congress put an end to the silly abstinence programs that cost so much and deliver consistently bad results? Oh wait, we need to be fair to them too despite the facts. . .
I'm a big Countdown with Keith Olbermann fan, and have made that pretty plain in this blog. I dig his special comments, love his sense of humor, and he covers stories that are actually relevant. Well, except the last 15 minutes of the show, which is fluffy stuff; but even that is treated with the proper amount of irreverence.
Anyway, if you've watched the show, you'd know about a segment called Worst Person in the World. It's a usually snarky, but sometimes serious bit about the lowlifes in that day's news. It is clearly not intended to name the actual worst in the world. The author of the piece excerpted below does not have a sarcasm meter apparently.
He is also a spokesperson for "Concerned Women for America," which is odd considering he's a man. And he is apparently unaware that "abstinence only education" is a flat-out failure. So if you'd like to read a slightly loony take on the sex education debate from a guy who isn't holding a full deck (he may only have a three), read on. . .
[Excerpt]
Who's the Worst Person in the World?
It’s not Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It’s not even Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot or Adolph Hitler. No, according to Keith Olbermann — that blinkered liberal extremist who plays a newsman on TV — Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America (CWA), is “the worst person in the world.”
