Kevin Jennings Funded “Gay" Prize at Harvard; Helped Radicalize University

“Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings has gone beyond corrupting and radicalizing K-12 school children through his organization GLSEN. He also convinced the useful idiots at Harvard University to put that institution’s imprimatur on his sexual radicalism at the college level.

In 2007, Jennings established a senior thesis prize fund at Harvard University with his “partner” Jeff Davis. The “Eugene Cummings Prize … will go to the undergraduate who has done the most outstanding scholarship on LGBT issues in the university that year, and that will forever keep the memory of Mr. Cummings alive in this university.” … “The [$1,500] prize will be awarded at the Women, Gender, and Sexuality end-of-year party in May.
left: Kevin Jennings [photo: Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus]

The prize name comes from a Harvard dental school student, Eugene Cummings, who committed suicide in 1920 after the administration had expelled him -- as Jennings tells it --over his homosexuality. Cummings was “denied” his “opportunit[y] for self-expression.” The 2009 prize was awarded for a senior thesis titled "On the Surface: Conceptualizing Gender and Subjectivity in Chinese Lesbian Culture."

The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus (HGLC) gave Jennings their “Respect Award” in 2007. He announced the prize fund at that awards dinner. (See the video here.) The group credits him with leading the fight to get the gay students’ rights bill passed in Massachusetts. He is also described as a leader in radicalizing Harvard University, organizing the first “open” reunion events specifically for GLBT alumni.

The speaker introducing Jennings says:

Kevin and GLSEN nevertheless led a successful effort in Massachusetts to make Massachusetts the first state to outlaw discrimination against public school students on the basis of sexual orientation. In 1993, they helped establish a program called “Safe Schools” for gay and lesbian students. Kevin became GLSEN’s first executive director in 1995 and has built it into an established national organization with a presence in all 50 states and strong support from the education establishment, including the National Education Association. …

He served as the 1997 HGLC co-chair, was keynote speaker at our 2000 dinner, and organized our LGBT events for his class’s tenth, fifteenth, and twentieth reunions. …

But most importantly, Kevin has changed the face of American education. He’s made it possible for an entire generation of LGBT students and educators to learn and to work in safer schools and to be who they are.

In his HGLC speech (transcript here), Jennings urges his audience to donate to MassEquality and their “gay marriage” cause. (At that time, MassEquality had also announced the “transgender rights” bill as a priority).

Now, before I launch into my remarks, which are actually prepared and outlined, one of my former students from Concorde [sic] Academy, Liz Pinsky, or as I should now call her, Dr. Elizabeth Pinsky, who is seated right here, is probably like wow, Kevin always just pulled it out of his ass when he taught, but he actually has an outline this time. Before I do that, I want to make an unpaid and unsolicited political advertisement. 

This is the Mass. Equality envelope. Pick it up! I don’t even live in this state, but I can tell you as a national LGBT leader this: if we lose the right to marry in Massachusetts, we will not have the right to marry anywhere in America in my lifetime. You must fill this out with however much you can put on it. If it’s ten, if it’s a hundred, if it’s $1,000, if it’s $10,000, fill it out and do what I’m doing and hand it to Robin before you leave. [emphasis added]

Jennings is in foul company with other HGLC awardees. In 2002, they gave porn promoter Frank Kameny their achievement award. The bio at HGLC refers to Kameny’s heroic past, including his arrest in Lafayette Park across from the White House, “a popular gay cruising area.” (Maybe it would have been less heroic at a highway rest stop?)  Kameny started the D.C. chapter of the Mattachine Society, founded by NAMBLA supporter Harry Hay. Kameny “was instrumental in getting the American Psychological Association to declare that homosexuality is not a mental illness.” He was a founder of the extremist National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which promotes sexual sadomasochism.  “In 1998 in one of his most recent protests, during a gay radio program on an Alexandria radio station, Frank solicited the entire adult population of the state of Virginia to engage in sodomy with him …”

In 2005, HGLC gave Alice Wolf, far-left radical State Representative and former mayor of Cambridge, their “Ally for Justice” award. She has carried water for every anti-family cause imaginable, including Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and MassEquality.

Also at Harvard, Jennings’ funded a museum exhibit (including pornographic materials) celebrating the radical group ACT UP. (Jennings was himself a member of ACT UP.)

Over-the-top activism at Harvard University by GLBT activists profoundly hurts us traditionalists with ties to the University. In its support of sexual radicalism, Harvard seems to have a death wish, buying into destructive trends that undermine the Judeo-Christian values upon which it was founded. Jennings is just one of those activists.