The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

“If the city requires this, we can’t do it,” Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. “The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that’s really a problem.”

Several D.C. Council members said the Catholic Church is trying to erode the city’s long-standing laws protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination.

The clash escalates the dispute over the same-sex marriage proposal between the council and the archdiocese, which has generally stayed out of city politics.

Catholic Charities, the church’s social services arm, is one of dozens of nonprofit organizations that partner with the District. It serves 68,000 people in the city, including the one-third of Washington’s homeless people who go to city-owned shelters managed by the church. City leaders said the church is not the dominant provider of any particular social service, but the church pointed out that it supplements funding for city programs with $10 million from its own coffers.

“All of those services will be adversely impacted if the exemption language remains so narrow,” Jane G. Belford, chancellor of the Washington Archdiocese, wrote to the council this week.

The church’s influence seems limited. In separate interviews Wednesday, council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) referred to the church as “somewhat childish.” Another council member, David A. Catania (I-At Large), said he would rather end the city’s relationship with the church than give in to its demands.

“They don’t represent, in my mind, an indispensable component of our social services infrastructure,” said Catania, the sponsor of the same-sex marriage bill and the chairman of the Health Committee.

The standoff appears to be among the harshest between a government and a faith-based group over the rights of same-sex couples. Advocates for same-sex couples said they could not immediately think of other places where a same-sex marriage law had set off a break with a major faith-based provider of social services.

The council is expected to pass the same-sex marriage bill next month, but the measure continues to face strong opposition from a number of groups that are pushing for a referendum on the issue.

The archdiocese’s statement follows a vote Tuesday by the council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary to reject an amendment that would have allowed individuals, based on their religious beliefs, to decline to provide services for same-sex weddings.

How pathetic. D.C.’s stance is basically that the Catholic Church should abandon its principles if it wants to keep working with the city, because this is going to pass whether they like it or not, and they have to make this awful choice — but they, of course, are the bad guys. This is, of course, the liberal meme, because anyone who is against gay marriage is prejudiced and backward and wrong and might as well be the KKK. Check out this explanation from Feministing:

The closing of a major homeless shelter and budget cuts have worsened the situation in a city already struggling to serve its poor and homeless residents. As someone who organizes for access to abortion I have obvious problems with gaps in the services provided by Catholic Charities. But that does not discount the vital work they do for the 68,000 D.C. residents who rely on Catholic Charities for shelters, health care, and food programs.

The Archdiosese is making a clear statement: it considers keeping rights from same sex couples more important than the needs of this city’s most vulnerable. Their willingness to use the lives and health of 68,000 people in need as pawns in their fight for the right to discriminate is unconscionable. D.C. needs more social services, not less. I hope the Archdiosese can put aside the politics of hate for a moment to recognize what I would think they would consider a moral obligation to do vital life saving work.

With all due respect, this isn’t a choice the church can fairly make. They didn’t ask for this bill, and their input was completely ignored when it came to amendments in the bill. The passage of this bill puts Catholic Charities in the worst kind of situation. For the Catholic Church, this isn’t a political situation, which is what liberals want to make it into. For the Catholic Church, this is a religious issue, it’s a moral one. The church cannot just abandon its principles, and that’s what liberals are forcing the church to do. And if the church caves on this, it won’t stop here. Liberals will start putting the pressure on about abortion, and performing gay marriages, and who knows what else. Where will it stop? It’s disgusting that liberals are putting the blame on the church here, when they are the ones being forced between a rock and a hard place. The church is not the one using homeless people as pawns; the city is. And it is wrong for the government to be legislating religious beliefs, which is basically what has happened here. This is, at its core, a subtle attack on our rights to religious freedom. And apparently, there is no one who is going to stand up for religion in this case.

If this is the change you voted for, then I hope you’re happy.

Cross-posted from Cassy’s blog. Stop by for more original commentary, or follow her on Twitter!

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The news for Republicans and conservatives was pretty good with most of the elections yesterday, with a landslide for the Virginia GOP and a great win in New Jersey. Conservatives and Republicans did well in other parts of the country, too. One of those other areas was in Maine where the voters rejected a gay marriage proposal.

Voters in Maine repealed a state law that allowed gay marriage, becoming the 31st state to reject gay marriage via popular vote.

As of USA Today’s report, with 87% of the votes tabulated, the opponents of gay marriage had 53% of the vote.

Nearly every state that puts this issue up to the voters finds the majority opposing gay marriage. In Maine’s case, the law was put in place by the state legislature and Tuesday’s vote was the first time the voters got a chance to put in their say on the matter.

Gay marriage is a loser when the people are allowed to speak. The only way that gay marriage supporters seem to be able to win the day is if they get activist judges that force the matter or state legislatures that create gay marriage by legislative fiat as opposed to being based on the will of the voters.

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A few days ago, Hans Bader writing for Stop the ACLU reported on the hate crimes legislation Bill. This article is intended to be a further discussion of what is behind the language in the Bill. The question is, is double jeopardy a factor in this new legislative language?

The answer is kinda-sorta. It’s really more about The Dual Sovereignty Doctrine negating the double jeopardy clause in the 5th Amendment.

The government now does have the right to try hate crime suspects after they have been tried by the state, and even if already tried and found guilty by the state. This position is confirmed by a letter from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to members of the U.S. Senate. Read it at NationaReviewOnLine. So how does it happen a person can be tried twice for the same crime?

Here is a portion that I believe gives the DOJ the opportunity to retry a hate crime: (The text of the Bill is here).

(b) (1) IN GENERAL – No prosecution of any offense described in the subsection may be undertaken by the United States, except under the certification in writing of the Attorney General, or his designee, that- (C) the verdict or sentence obtained pursuant to State charges left demonstratively unvindicated the Federal interest in eradicating bias-motivated violence; or (D) a prosecution by the United States is in the public interest and necessary to secure substantial justice.

(b) (2) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION- Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to limit the authority of Federal officers, or a Federal grand jury, to investigate possible violations of this section.

This gives the DOJ the right to try any case on behalf of a victim they feel has not received justice, while also eliminating “the badges…and relics of slavery and involuntary servitude.”

A quick reading of the Bill might lead you to think it will simply “support” state’s with money, but it goes much deeper than the $5 million to be given to states in each of the years 2010 and 2011. If a state can “certify” the need for government assistance to “investigate or prosecute the hate crime,” then that state will get that assistance. But read about the”sham and cover” exception a few paragraphs below. We have to ask why this administration believes this legislation is necessary.

The Dual Sovereignty Doctrine expects those administering under the Doctrine to “limit” their actions. This from TheFreeLibrary:

The court did not, however, fully eliminate the double jeopardy prohibition from this context. The dual sovereignty doctrine continues to be limited by what is referred to as the “sham” exception, which was described by the Bartkus Court.

The sham exception provides that a prosecution by one sovereign cannot be used as a “sham and a cover” for another sovereign’s re-prosecution of the same defendant.

This doctrine would operate to prevent, on double jeopardy grounds, a prosecution brought by one sovereign with the encouragement and support of another sovereign that has already failed in its attempt to prosecute the same defendant.

The doctrine is founded on the rationale that the two sovereigns are acting as one. Unfortunately, this exception has been construed so narrowly as to make it difficult to be utilized successfully.

Apparently, this DOJ and Barack Obama believe that justice is not done often enough, and courts do not punish, often enough, those who commit hate crimes. So the question remains: is it possible for any violent crime to be classified as a “hate crime” when it is perpetrated against a Jewish or a white person?

[Emphasis by Lobo]

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Kansas City Chiefs running back Larry Johnson issued his second apology in 12 months Tuesday and was told to stay away from the team while the NFL and the Chiefs complete their investigation into his use of a gay slur.

As Johnson was releasing his apology, a national gay rights advocacy organization called on the league and the team to take disciplinary action against the two-time Pro Bowl selection.

#2

ESPN broadcaster Bob Griese has been suspended for one week for a remark he made about NASCAR driver Juan Pablo Montoya.

Network spokesman Josh Krulewitz said Griese would not be working a college football game this week. Krulewitz said ESPN has spoken to Griese and “he understands the comment was inappropriate.”

During ESPN’s coverage of the Minnesota-Ohio State game on Saturday, a graphic was shown listing the top five drivers in NASCAR’s points race. Fellow analyst Chris Spielman asked: Where was Montoya?

Griese replied, “Out having a taco.”

#3

Pauline Howe, 67, a committed Christian, was questioned by two police officers after she wrote a letter to Norwich City Council about its decision to allow the march.

She wrote: “It is shameful that this small, but vociferous lobby should be allowed such a display unwarranted by the minimal number of homosexuals.”

#4

Florida Democrat Rep. Alan Grayson issued a written apology Tuesday evening for a comment for a month-old comment that has stirred controversy on Capitol Hill in recent days.

During a September radio interview, Grayson called Linda Robertson, an aide to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke who has also worked as a lobbyist, a “K Street whore.”

Hmm, that’s weird, the last one has no consequences, despite being a supposed elected public official. Imagine had he been a Republican. Good thing he didn’t use a gay or racial slur, he might have been in big trouble.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove

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Today, President Obama signed into law a bill that will dramatically expand the federal hate crimes law, enabling prosecutors to bring federal charges against people who were previously found innocent of hate crimes in state court. The hate-crimes provisions were added to a defense appropriations bill, which the President signed in a White House signing ceremony this afternoon at around 2:30 p.m.

The new law dramatically expands the reach of the existing federal hate-crimes law that was already on the books, by getting rid of the requirement that a hate crime affect federally-protected activities to be prosecuted in federal court. It also adds sexual orientation, gender, disability, and transgender characteristics to a law that was originally designed to protect racial minorities.

The hate-crimes bill was opposed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights for allowing the reprosecution in federal court of people found innocent in state court. The Commission called the new law a “menace to civil liberties” because it is an end-run around constitutional guarantees against double-jeopardy.

As explained earlier, the bill’s sponsors seek to use it to reprosecute people in federal court who have already been found innocent of hate crimes in state court, taking advantage of the “dual sovereignty” loophole in constitutional protections against double jeopardy. Civil libertarians like Nat Hentoff and Wendy Kaminer thus object to the bill on double-jeopardy grounds. Backers of the bill, like the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Commissioner Michael Yaki, supported the bill partly as a way of prosecuting all over again people who were either found not guilty, or who were convicted only of ordinary crimes, while being acquitted of hate-crimes (like the teenagers acquitted of hate crimes in the Shenandoah incident, and the California case of Joseph Silva and George Silva).

Such re-prosecutions can be an enormous waste of money, and grossly unfair to the people who are reprosecuted, driving them into bankruptcy to pay lawyers to represent them all over again when they have already been found innocent in state court after an expensive trial. When the government re-prosecutes someone, it gains an enormous tactical advantage over the defendant from using the prior prosecution as a test-run, even if the defendant is innocent — making a guilty verdict possible even if the defendant is in fact innocent.

The bill also raises serious constitutional federalism issues under the Supreme Court’s Morrison decision.

Passage of the bill was aided by lousy reporting, in which some journalists, like Reuters, depicted the bill as simply a harmless measure to add sexual orientation to the list of protected characteristics covered by the federal hate-crimes law, ignoring its many other, far more important (and dangerous) changes to federal hate-crimes law.

Many supporters of the hate crimes bill want to allow those found innocent to be reprosecuted in federal court. As one supporter put it, “the federal hate crimes bill serves as a vital safety valve in case a state hate-crimes prosecution fails.” The claim that the justice system has “failed” when a jury returns a not-guilty verdict is truly scary and contrary to the constitutional presumption of innocence and the right to trial by jury.
But it is a view widely shared among supporters of the hate-crimes bill. Syndicated columnist Jacob Sullum pointed out in 1998 that Janet Reno, Clinton’s Attorney General, backed the bill as a way of providing a federal “forum” for prosecution if prosecutors fail to obtain a conviction “in the state court.”

Supporters of the hate crimes bill also see it as a way to prosecute people even in cases where the evidence is so weak that state prosecutors have decided not to prosecute. Attorney General Eric Holder has pushed for the hate crimes bill as a way to prosecute people whom state prosecutors refuse to prosecute because of a lack of evidence. To justify broadening federal hate-crimes law, he cited three examples where state prosecutors refused to prosecute, citing a lack of evidence. In each, a federal jury acquitted the accused, finding them not guilty.

As law professor Gail Heriot notes, “Some have even called for federal prosecution of the Duke University lacrosse team members–despite strong evidence of their innocence.” Advocates of a broader federal hate-crimes law have pointed to the Duke lacrosse case as an example of where federal prosecutors should have stepped in and prosecuted the accused players — even though the state prosecution in that case was dropped because the defendants were actually innocent, as North Carolina’s attorney general conceded (and DNA evidence showed), and were falsely accused of rape by a woman with a history of violence (including trying to run over someone with her car) and making false accusations.

The Obama administration has long supported the hate-crimes bill, which it used as a wedge issue in the 2008 election.

As law professors like Jonathan Turley and Eugene Volokh have noted, the Obama administration recently urged restrictions on hate speech at the United Nations, joining in calls to treat such speech, protected by the First Amendment under Supreme Court rulings, as a human-rights violation in violation of international human-rights treaties. In the U.S., college hate-speech codes have been used to discipline students for criticizing affirmative action, discussing the racial implications of the death penalty, and calling homosexuality immoral. In Canada and Britain, hate speech laws have been used to punish religious criticism of Scientology and homosexuality.

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Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX) says there’s an entire community of people across the world who say that their sexual orientation changed from gay to straight. But they’re not getting their message out, the group says, because libraries across the country refuse to carry literature that describes these experiences or any studies that support them.

So a book like “My Genes Made Me Do It!: A Scientific Look at Sexual Orientation” — which argues that sexuality is shaped by a variety of factors, not just biological — can’t get a spot on the school library shelf.

Neither can “You Don’t Have to Be Gay,” which describes author Jeff Konrad’s struggle to overcome his unwanted same-sex attractions.

If you want to see your book on school shelves, you have to take a very different point of view — i.e., you have to promote homosexuality to children.

“Baby Be-Bop,” the coming-out story of a gay teen, which includes descriptions of his sexual encounters in bathroom stalls with men he never talks to, makes the stacks.

So does “Love & Sex: Ten Stories of Truth,” which describes a gay teen’s relationship with his tutor with excerpts like: “Matt had one leg locked between mine, so that his d— was smashed between his stomach and my thigh. And as his hand jerked up and down on me his hips humped with the same rhythm.”

PFOX Executive Director Regina Griggs turned to the American Library Association for help. After all, the ALA has been promoting its annual Banned Books Week, devoted to shining a light on “the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States” and advancing the Library Bill of Rights, according to which:

• Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.

• Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.

• Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.

But these principles only apply to books that advance the degenerate agenda. Consequently, the liberal establishment’s ALA blew off Griggs, refusing even to issue a statement opposing bans on ex-gay books. When Fox News tried to learn more, the ALA blew it off too, no doubt pleasing The Anointed One immensely.

On a tip from Chad. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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UN “Special Rapporteur” Martin Scheinin recently filed a report with the UN titled “Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism” in which he states that human gender is not a fixed thing but a mere “social construct” that is “changeable over time.”

In this paper Scheinin, the “Special Rapporteur” — I do get a kick out of the pretentiousness of that grandiose title — and the UN leadership (a word I use advisedly) wants terribly to deny both genetics and simple reality. Page eight of this report asserts that a man is not necessarily a man and a women… well, maybe she’s something else entirely… but what ever they are their gender is but a temporary designation determined at the whim of society.

Catch this PC garbage:

Gender is not synonymous with women but rather encompasses the social constructions that underlie how women’s and men’s roles, functions and responsibilities, including in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity, are defined and understood. This report will therefore identify the gendered impact of counter-terrorism measures both on women and men, as well as the rights of persons of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. As a social construct, gender is also informed by, and intersects with, various other means by which roles, functions and responsibilities are perceived and practiced, such as race, ethnicity, culture, religion and class. Consequently, gender is not static; it is changeable over time and across contexts. Understanding gender as a social and shifting construct rather than as a biological and fixed category is important because it helps to identify the complex and inter-related gender-based human rights violations caused by counter- terrorism measures; to understand the underlying causes of these violations; and to design strategies for countering terrorism that are truly non-discriminatory and inclusive of all actors.

Of course, it is patently obvious what this sort of rhetoric is meant to do and that is play to the radical homosexual lobby. If gender is defined as something that can’t be defined, this would help to further legitimize homosexual, transgender and other aberrant lifestyle choices, many of which have been considered mental illnesses in the recent past and in some countries may still be.

The UN has many times tried to get this definition of gender to become de rigueur but has thankfully failed thus far to convince the world’s representatives to go along with such an absurd artifice. But there is a problem here and that is the fact that this language was shoehorned into an official UN report. It is language not accepted by the world, but language snuck into a sanctioned report and presented as accepted fact. It is surreptitious gay activism and nothing else but this sort of underhanded advocacy helps smooth the way for activism later.

After all, at some point, some militant gay activist will present this report as “proof” that gender is subjective and not objective or at least use the fact that this is an official UN report to help buttress their activism. Make no mistake, however, this is what activists want and also why this language was slipped into this report. These activists will not stop until they get their way so anyone that opposes this nonsense must continue to fight against it, must continue to point out the illegitimacy of reports such as this.

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In a city ravaged by the highest rate of AIDS cases in the nation, the D.C. Health Department paid millions to nonprofit groups that delivered substandard services or failed to account for any work at all, even as sick people searched for care or died waiting.

More than $1 million in AIDS money went to a housing group whose ailing boarders sometimes struggled without electricity, gas or food. A supervisor said she was ordered to create records for ghost employees.

About $400,000 was paid to a nonprofit organization, launched by a man who once ran one of the District’s largest cocaine rings, for a promised job-training center that has never opened.

More than $500,000 was earmarked for a housing program whose executive director had a string of convictions for theft, drugs and forgery. After the D.C. Inspector General’s Office could find no evidence that he was operating an AIDS nonprofit group, the city terminated the grant but never sought repayment.

All told, the Health Department’s HIV/AIDS Administration awarded more than $25 million from 2004 to 2008 to nonprofit agencies marked by questionable spending, a lack of clients, or lapses in record-keeping and care, a 10-month Washington Post investigation found.

The conservative solution to AIDS would be to stop spreading it by indulging in degenerate behavior. The liberal solution is to shovel mountains of other people’s money at corrupt ACORN types. Guess which approach will be used under ObamaCare.

On a tip from Puffdaddy. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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I am not a Mark Kirk fan. For me he is, and always has been, far too “moderate” on social issues and his now (maybe) retracted Cap and Tax vote sticks in my craw pretty badly. But Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly blog Political Animal, unfairly and illicitly slammed Kirk on something he said in an interview with The News Gazette of Danville, Illinois.

Benen was ticked at Kirk’s answer about the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy of the U.S. Military. In an effort to show [support for] his LGBT, or BLGT, or BLT fans… whatever they call themselves this week… Benen jumped on Kirk’s claim that DADT works well and that “keeping that all out of the workplace makes common sense.”

But, Benen’s pandering to the fringe, militant gay lobby isn’t my concern here. Benen’s other jab at Kirk was as follows:

By the way, in the same interview, Kirk endorsed sending tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan because Illinois is home to “the tallest building in North America.”

This verges on a lie from Benen. The way Benen phrases Kirk’s reply, it is as if Kirk linked the war in Afghanistan to Illinois having a tall building as if that was the whole of the point Kirk was making. But Kirk’s point was obviously not as quixotic and simple-minded as Benen portrays it.

Here is what Kirk actually said:

He supports Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who has recommended increasing U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan.

“We have no failure option in Afghanistan,” he said. “I think we have a unique concern representing Illinois, because we have the tallest building in North America. Our job is to make sure that everyone working in the Sears, Willis Tower comes home safely every night.”

In the long term, he said, the United States must support Afghan police and army units until they are well-established, a process he said would take “three to four years.”

Only an idiot (perhaps one like Benen) could miss the point Kirk was trying to make. I agree that he did not make it well, but it is painfully obvious that Kirk was saying that keeping the pressure up in Afghanistan will help prevent the Sears Tower (Now the Willis Tower) from coming down in a World-Trade-Tower-like heap at the hands of the terrorists, terrorists that would be made busy over there and not here.

Benen’s ignorant spin against Kirk is a political hatchet job plain and simple.

But, this is the sort of left-wing crap we should expect by a card carrying member of the Old Media.

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Media Matters has come to quickly defend Obama’s “safe school czar”, stating the fact he praised a NAMBLA member is a smear. Their defense is weak, and Zomblog completely deconstructs it.

Media Matters –

You have recently assumed the attack-dog role in the Jennings/Hay/NAMBLA scandal, releasing a nonstop barrage of announcements condemning what you characterize as “right-wing smears.” Before you continue down this road, pause to consider the consequences of this strategy…

Why are you taking actions that will damage Kevin Jennings’ career and get the Obama administration entangled in an embarrassing scandal?

…By advising Jennings to dig in his heels on a story that is only bound to grow in intensity, you are only exacerbating the problem. Enough evidence has already emerged (with more to surely emerge in the near future) that you should recognize the need for Jennings and the Obama administration to enter “crisis management mode”: In other words, they should get in front of the story, apologize, acknowledge mistakes, and vow to never repeat them.

Furthermore, your defense of Jennings is so weak, and so easily debunked, that you have now put your own reputation on the line, not just Kevin Jennings’.

But it’s not too late. I invite you, Media Matters, to join me in encouraging Kevin Jennings to make a public statement condemning Harry Hay in no uncertain terms, and to retract his earlier praise of him.

Jennings was also a member in the extremist gay activist organization Act Up.

These two associations help us to understand Jennings’ agenda behind his major accomplishments: founding GLSEN, and pushing the Massachusetts law banning “sexual orientation” discrimination in the state’s schools.

Jennings worked closely with another Act Up radical, David LaFontaine, who convinced Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld to establish the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth — which directly promoted homosexuality in the schools. (See Jennings, Mama’s Boy, Preachers’ Son, p. 196, excerpt online.) LaFontaine appeared at a 1990 Act Up protest in Boston (the mob reportedly numbered 700), “in which homosexual militants pelted newly ordained Catholic priests (and their relatives) with condoms as they left a church induction ceremony.”

I think these associations reveal a clear agenda from a guy put in a perfectly strategic position to push this agenda. I’m sick of people pushing agendas on my children. Can we get a chorus of people demanding this guy resign already???? C’mon folks!

Gateway Pundit reports that 53 Republicans are demanding Jennings be fired! Get on the phones to your reps! This guy has gotta go!

Fifty-three House Republicans have written President Barack Obama asking him to remove “safe schools czar” Kevin Jennings from that position.

The lawmakers accused Jennings of “pushing a pro-homosexual agenda” and said that Jennings’s past writings exhibit a record that makes him unfit for the position.

“We respectfully request that you remove Kevin Jennings, the Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, from your Administration,” the Republicans wrote. “It is clear that Mr. Jennings lacks the appropriate qualifications and ethical standards to serve in this capacity.”

Jennings has come under scrutiny from conservative personalities like talk show host Sean Hannity for his handling of an alleged incident involving underage sex, as well as Jennings’s own reported personal history with drugs and alcohol — charges the GOP members echoed.

The letter was primarily assembled by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), and was joined by 52 Republican colleagues, including two members of leadership: House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) and House Republican Conference Vice Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.).

Jennings, who founded the Gay and Lesbian Independent School Teacher Network (GLISTeN), was appointed by Obama to head the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, a position Jennings assumed in July.

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