http://mediamatters.org/research/200910020016The smear campaign continues: Fox Nation, Washington Examiner manufacture Jennings-NAMBLA link
October 02, 2009 12:57 pm ET — 81 Comments
The Fox Nation and The Washington Examiner linked Department of Education official Kevin Jennings to the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) based on a 1997 speech in which Jennings praised gay rights activist Harry Hay, who had spoken in support of the organization. But like many obituaries written about Hay upon his death in 2002, Jennings was touting Hay as a gay civil rights pioneer for his role in helping start "the first ongoing gay rights groups in America" in 1948, and Jennings' comments had nothing to do with NAMBLA....
....Jennings' 1997 speech: Nothing to do with NAMBLA
Jennings inspired by Hay, "who started the first ongoing gay rights groups in America ... the Mattachine Society." Peter LaBarbera, president of a group that seeks to "expos and counter the homosexual activist agenda," published a transcript of Jennings' 1997 remarks at the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network's (GLSEN) mid-Atlantic conference that LaBarbera said was reprinted from the Lambda Report. In that speech, Jennings said, "One of the people that's always inspired me is Harry Hay, who started the first ongoing gay rights groups in America. In 1948, he tried to get people to join the Mattachine Society." Jennings' remarks include no mentions of NAMBLA.
From LaBarbera's transcript of Jennings' remarks regarding Hay:
One of the people that's always inspired me is Harry Hay, who started the first ongoing gay rights groups in America. In 1948, he tried to get people to join the Mattachine Society . It took him two years to find one other person who would join. Well, 1993, Harry Hay marched with a million people in Washington, who thought he had a good idea 40 years before. Everybody thought Harry Hay was crazy in 1948, and they knew something about him which he apparently did not -- they were right, he was crazy. You are all crazy. We are all crazy. All of us who are thinking this way are crazy, because you know what? Sane people keep the world the same old way it is now. It's the people who think, 'No, I can envision a day when straight people say, 'So what if you're promoting homosexuality?' Or straight kids say, 'Hey, why don't you and your boyfriend come over before you go to the prom and try on your tuxes on at my house?' That if we believe that can happen, we can make it happen. The only thing that will stop us is our lack of faith that we can make it happen. That is our mission from this day forward. To not lose our faith, to not lose our belief that the world can, indeed, be a different place. And think how much can change in one lifetime if in Harry Hay's one very short life, he saw change from not even one person willing to join him to a million people willing to travel to Washington to join him. You can see the same changed happen in your lifetime if you believe you can.''
Obituaries described Hay as helping pioneer gay rights movement -- just as Jennings did
Hay broadly recognized as gay rights pioneer. Upon Hay's death in October 2002, numerous obituaries (retrieved from Nexis) noted that Hay was a pioneer of the American gay rights movement -- just as Jennings noted in his 1997 speech:
NYT: Hay "founded a secret organization six decades ago that proved to be the catalyst for the American gay rights movement." The New York Times wrote on October 25, 2002: "Harry Hay, who founded a secret organization six decades ago that proved to be the catalyst for the American gay rights movement, died early Thursday morning at his home in San Francisco. He was 90. Although little known in the broader national culture over the years, Mr. Hay's contribution was to do what no one else had done before: plant the idea among American homosexuals that they formed an oppressed cultural minority of their own, like blacks, and to create a lasting organization in which homosexuals could come together to socialize and to pursue what was, at the beginning, the very radical concept of homosexual rights."
AP: Hay was "a pioneering activist in the gay rights movement" who founded "the Mattachine Society." The Associated Press wrote on October 25, 2002: "Harry Hay, a pioneering activist in the gay rights movement, died Thursday, according to family members who said he had suffered from lung cancer. He was 90. Hay, among the first to argue that gays represented a cultural minority, devoted his life to progressive politics and in 1950 founded the secret network of support groups for gays known as the Mattachine Society."
SF Chronicle: Hay "considered by many to be the founder of the modern American gay rights movement." The San Francisco Chronicle wrote on October 25, 2002: "Henry 'Harry' Hay, considered by many to be the founder of the modern American gay rights movement, died Thursday at home in San Francisco at age 90."
The obituaries made no mention of NAMBLA.
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