Michael Wolff: Will the White House Defend Its Gay School Czar? Probably Not

Written By: admin on October 18, 2009 No Comment

Here’s the setup: There’s a gay guy named Kevin Jennings who’s made a career dealing with the issues of gay kids in American schools. In what must have seemed like a kinder-gentler-bureaucracy good idea, the Obama administration gave him a job promoting school safety, which seems to be about dealing with bullies instead of recruiting more crossing guards. Of course, we can reasonably assume this is a lot more well-meaning than it is effective, and a lot more bureaucratic than it is enlightened, but that’s not the point.

The point is the Republicans can conflate a gay person with school kids, and promoting safety with promoting homosexuality (in Republican and Fox News parlance, he’s the “safe schools czar”). Helpfully, for the Republicans, Mr. Jennings contributed to a book titled, Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue About Sexualities and Schooling.

We have here Democrats and Republicans in their typecast roles. The Democrats are tortuously, and to minor (if any) effect, trying to use a bureaucratic backdoor to promote some basic social progress. The Republicans, with rhetorical élan, are turning this into a major outrage. Fifty-three Republicans in the House have signed a petition calling for Jennings’ ouster. Fox News, of course, is on the story.

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