I am sometimes AMAZED at some straight people and their complete lack of knowledge about LGBT people

[La Lioness Priyanka]

This whole "controversy" about Kevin Jennings encouraging a gay boy to have sex with adults because he warned the kid about HIV/AIDS is probably the stupidest fucking thing i have ever heard

And to believe that, you must know absolutely NOTHING of the way young gay people are made to feel ashamed about themselves, especially a decade or so ago. you really have to pretend we didn't have a health crisis in our community. really, you have to live in a much different world of entitlements/rights.

[unpossibles]

1. Should we really be surprised that the rightwing wackos think Jennings is part of TEH GAY AGENDA?

They see equal rights and protection as special rights after all.

[imdjh]

2. You are trying to apply logic to a public response.

If that worked, political campaigns wouldn't pay big bucks to people who know how to play the public, a public which is more ignorant, skittish, and reactionary than those of us in civilized circles can even imagine.

This isn't about straight people and their lack of knowledge about LGBT people. I hate to sound elitist, but I was stunned to find out what was considered a normal range of IQ in an article I read the other day. Moreover, I was amazed at what I read about reading comprehension, it explains a lot, even on this board. For many of the people we're talking about in the reactionary crowd, it wasn't even necessary for them to hear the rest of the story, simply hearing that a male homosexual teacher was talking to a 15 year old male student about sex would be enough. And you expect them to care about context, intent, and truth?

By E.D. Hirsch Jr.
Back in the 1970s, I had a "Eureka!" moment as I reviewed the results of reading comprehension tests. The community college students we tested had done almost as well as students at the highly selective University of Virginia — as long as the passages the community college students were asked to read dealt with familiar, everyday topics. But when they encountered passages that required historical background, they faltered. These Richmond, Va., students had difficulty understanding a passage on Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee because many of them were unfamiliar with the Civil War. That shocked me.
These students had been cheated. They hadn't acquired important general knowledge in their homes and communities, and their schools hadn't compensated for that. Their basic intelligence was sound. They simply did not have the knowledge they needed to make sense of many texts.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-02-24-hirsch-edit_x.htm

[Bluenorthwest]

5. So all that means is that they are both straight and stupid

and those straights who are not stupid need to educate their own community. If they don't they are also a sort of stupid, if you ask me. Leaving ignorance and bigotry unchecked among your own is not a wise thing to do, but the straight community actually nurtures such bigotry, rationalizes it, and holds it dear.
And you do understand that just because it is possible to play the public with a lack of reason, that does not mean it is impossible to play them with logic, to give them the truth. The fact that a person can be deceived is not proof that they must be, or always will be. The fact that criminal forces manipulate a person does not mean that person exists to be manipulated, wants to be, or that they would not react well to reason and truth. And on the other hand, if they are that stupid and easily lead, and we can not lead them, what is said about us? Too stupid to herd sheep?

[FreeState]

8. Just an FYI - he was 16 - legal age, he was not 15 (proof here)

http://mediamatters.org/blog/200910020020

EXCLUSIVE: Media Matters confirms student at center of Fox fueled Jennings controversy was of legal age
October 02, 2009 1:40 pm ET by Karl Frisch

For several days now conservatives in the media have been on a witch-hunt for Kevin Jennings, the U.S. Department of Education's director of the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Led by Fox News, the right-wing media have claimed that 21 years ago, when Jennings was a 24-year-old teacher at Concord Academy in Massachusetts, he "cover up statutory rape" by not reporting to authorities a conversation he had with a student who told him about being involved with an "older man."

They have attacked Jennings with homophobic, anti-gay rhetoric, falsely accused him of covering up or encouraging "statutory rape" and asked for his resignation or firing.

Media Matters for America has exclusively obtained the Massachusetts drivers' license of the student confirming that at the time of the incident, he was at least sixteen years of age -- the legal age of consent in Massachusetts.

Jennings' 2006 memoir, Mama's Boy, Preachers Son, makes clear that he began teaching at Concord Academy, the student in questions school, in late August or September 1987.

[sui generis]

3. yep - I had to put a serious leash on my kneejerk temper

an employee of mine tried to be funny with an allusion to AIDS. After taking ten or twenty hundred breaths, I realized this person is completely disconnected from the world, and from rules of propriety, and it wasn't done with any malice, just really bad taste and ignorance.

"Hey that wasn't really funny - it's not a tragic soap opera disease - that one's for real kiddo."

He got the point and apologized profusely the next day.

Sometimes you have to amend their "knowledge", if they're the kind that can be helped. I haven't even googled Kevin Jennings, guess I'm getting old and out of touch myself! :P What's the low down on that one?

[Ian David]

4. The right-wingers think two things " cure" gays- Teen Suicide and AIDS.

They have a vested interest in not solving either problem.

[mitchtv]

9. the old "Die Quickly" philosphy

fits in this case

[msongs]

6. hey quit picking on religion and its believers ok? nt

[Arkansas Granny]

7. Am I missing something here? I don't see any reference to religion

or believers in the OP.

[ki83760]

10. Agreed. fucking ignoramuses