Nothing Hoft says about GLSEN is ever true

I honestly thought we were done with this garbage. And yet, Jim Hoft returns today to the same lies he was so fond of trumpeting a few months back about about Education Department official Kevin Jennings and the organization he formerly ran, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), along with a brand-new falsehood.

Under the headline, “Figures. Highland Park School Official Won't Send Students to Arizona But She'll Send Them to Secret GLSEN Gay Sex Classes,” Hoft writes:

Suzan Hebson, assistant superintendent of Highland Park, Ill., School District 113, won't allow teen girls to travel to Arizona but she'll send them to secret GLSEN gay sex classes and make them sign a statement promising not to tell others. The teen sex classes promoted by Hebson are part of Obama's Safe Schools Czar's teen sex indoctrination.

I'm sure you will be shocked to learn that the Highland Park school in question, Deerfield High School does not send its students to “secret GLSEN gay sex classes.” As the articles Hoft links to point out, the school features a number of panels for freshman students intended to help them adjust to high school; the classes are mandatory, but parents can keep their kids out of any specific panel they wish.

In one of those panel sessions, according to a March 8, 2007, Chicago Tribune report, “students who belong to a club called the Straight and Gay Alliance talk about personal experiences, such as what it feels like to be bullied or to be a straight friend of a gay classmate.” The Tribune goes on to report:

“The whole point of the presentation is to help students understand how they--maybe even flippantly, intending to communicate with others--can be perceived or misperceived by others,” Hebson said.

Erin Kaplan, 17, a senior, who describes himself as the only transgender student at Deerfield, said he believes that the climate at school has improved since the panel discussions began five years ago. He said the student alliance began the practice “after a really big wave of homophobic comments, targets for being gay.”

Kaplan, a panelist for the last three years, tells students that he was born a boy--his parents gave him the name “Evan”--but that he has always felt like he should have been a girl. He wears feminine clothing at times but has a man's narrow hips and husky voice.

The panel this year consists of seven students. Four students identify themselves as gay, bisexual or transgender, and three are heterosexual, he said.

“What is important is that we learn to respect each other as peers,” Kaplan said. “That's really the heart of what we talk about.”

Question: What type of human being does one have to be to turn something like this into a rant against “teen sex indoctrination”?

Hoft uses his Highland Park falsehood to rehash a series of false claims he's been making for months about Jennings and GLSEN:

Barack Obama's Safe Schools Czar's GLSEN organization also promotes porn books to children that romantisize child rape and gay orgies for first graders. GLSEN advisors hold talks on anonymous sex in parks. GLSEN trainers discuss the joys of pi$$ing on your sex partner and tips on teen fisting.

Hoft then posts a photo which he captions, “This kit for fisting was distributed by Planned Parenthood at the Fistgate II GLSEN Conference. GLSEN was founded by Kevin Jennings, Barack Obama's 'safe' schools czar.”

That may actually be a new record for most complete falsehoods in fewer than 75 words. OK, here goes.

The “porn books to children,” “anonymous sex in parks,” and “pi$$ing on your sex partner” bits reference an explicit safe-sex booklet that a community health group -- not GLSEN itself or one of its members -- “left about ten copies” of on an informational table it rented at a 2005 GLSEN conference. The group reportedly apologized for doing so; GLSEN stated that if it had known the booklets had been at the conference, it would have demanded they be removed; and the Brookline school superintendent reportedly said he believed no students had actually taken the book.

The reference to books that “romantisize child rape and gay orgies for first graders” is about books that included sexually explicit content that GLSEN recommended for students in grades 7-12. The organization specifically stated on its book list website that “some titles for adolescent readers contain mature themes” and recommended that “adults selecting books for youth review content for suitability”; further, schools regularly teach books that contain sexually explicit material. Martin Garnar, chair of the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee, has condemned this line of attack on Jennings and GLSEN. Also, that's not how you spell "romanticize."

“GLSEN trainers” did not provide “tips on teen fisting.” This is a reference to a recorded exchange that occurred during a “Queer Sex and Sexuality” workshop during a 2000 conference sponsored by the Boston branch of GLSEN. In fact, Jennings reportedly criticized some of the workshop's content when the recordings were first released in 2000, and the people involved in conducting the controversial discussion were state employees and contractors, not GLSEN employees.

Finally, that isn't a picture of a “kit for fisting.” While the conservative newspaper Massachusetts News -- cited by Hoft -- reported in 2001 that the kits were “intended for 'fisting' or oral sex,” the paper described the kit's contents as “a single plastic glove, a package of K-Y lubricant and instructions on how to make a 'dental dam' out of the material,” and offered no support for their claim that the kits were “intended for 'fisting.'” FoxNews.com has reported that Hoft “alleged that Jennings and GLSEN were involved in Planned Parenthood's purported distribution of 'fisting kits,' ” but that the kit “was actually for making a 'dental dam' -- designed to prevent STD transmission during oral sex.”

If Hoft is writing about Jennings or GLSEN, you can be sure that what he says is wrong.