Communist Harry Hay; Should he be Marginalized, or Does He Fit Right In With the Rest of the Gang?

First, some background on why Harry Hay might be of interest to some of us: 

Kevin Jennings is the reason. Kevin Jennings who was appointed assistant deputy secretary to head the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. 

I lifted the following passage from a page of mine here.

". . . if we want to know a bit about Kevin Jenning's world view, we only have to look at this one issue.  It may be true that the "age of consent" in Mass is 16, and it may also be true the child was 16; but, Jennings thought he was 15. 

Think about that.  When Jennings handled this particular situation involving one of his students, he thought the student was 15.  Jennings thought the child was a minor. . ." (more)

I lifted the following link and quote from this page of mine. 

 SmearBuster ... Scroll down to the title, Truth

"Jennings Admired Harry Hay For Founding The First Gay Rights Group... That's It"

"During A Conference In 1997, Jennings Praised Harry Hay For Founding America's First Gay Rights Organization.  According to the anti-gay "Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, while speaking at a conference in 1997 GLSEN founder Kevin 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 [the first American homosexual "rights" group]. It took him two years to find one other person who would join. Well, [in] 1993, Harry Hay marched with a million people in Washington, who thought he had a good idea 40 years before." [Jennings Transcript via "Americans for Truth About Homosexuality," accessed 10/2/09; emphasis added]"

Text Book Points to Incident -(video)

The text below and the page from which it is excerpted, is related to the above video.

". . . Scott Baker points to a textbook that Jennings edited for high school students to indoctrinate them in the legitimization of homosexual behavior teach them about homosexuality.  It’s called “Becoming Visible” and has 17 chapters. Of those 17 chapters, only two focus on individual people. One of them is on NAMBLA advocate Harry Hay. Jennings wrote the intro to this section and some questions used for discussion, but he does not mention that Hay is an advocate of pedophilia. . . ."

But, that's not all.  I remarked on this previously in a couple of comment threads, but I think it's appropriate for the subject to have it's own article because I'm not sure how many people have noted that Harry Hay was an avowed communist.

I've seen it mentioned in several places (including possibly the video above - it's been some time since I watched it), but for credibility's sake and in order to have text to refer to, I'll take the quotes from this page .... " You'll have to scroll down to the article titled, "The Real Harry Hay" ... but I think his communism is mentioned in all three articles on the page.

The New York Times referred to him as "an ardent American Communist, a romantic homosexual," who was a "restless middle-aged man" by the time he formed the Mattachine Society, the first gay-rights group in the United States. .."

". . . The reality is that while Hay may have been a romantic, he was also notoriously promiscuous, and his communism was far more rabid than "ardent." . . ."

". . . This notion was at decisive odds with the view put forth by many other Mattachine members: that homosexuals should not be discriminated against because gay people were just like straight people. By 1954, the group essentially ousted Hay.

It wasn’t the first time Hay had been booted out of a group he helped create. From the 1930s through the early 1950s, Hay had been an active member of the American Communist Party. In 1934, Hay and his lover Will Geer, who later played Grandpa on the long-running television series The Waltons, helped pull off an 83-day-long workers’ strike of the port of San Francisco. Though marred by violence, it was an organizing triumph, one that became a model for future union strikes — such as the one currently under way (but stymied by the Bush administration) at West Coast ports.

During the 1940s, Hay struggled unsuccessfully to be honest about his homosexuality — of which he’d been certain since adolescence — while maintaining his status as a member of the Communist Party, which banned homosexuals from joining. He married a follow Communist Party member and adopted two daughters — even as he worked to form the Mattachine Society. But homophobia eventually won out. After the Mattachine Society gained notoriety in the early 1950s, Hay was unceremoniously kicked out of the Communist Party.""

". . . Often the discomfort with Hay was coupled with an overriding discomfort with his long history of involvement with the American Communist Party. More often than not, though, his relationship with Will Geer was touted as proof that — just like Grandpa Walton — Hay was an icon of safe respectability. . . .

Hmmm ... an "icon of safe respectability" . . .

Well ...Kevin Jennings might only have admired Hay because of his organizing and leadership skills in regard to the gay movement, and he may or may not be a communist or marxist himself; but it sure does seem funny how that kind of leftist communist marxist maoist socialist stuff just keeps popping up all around the President and his appointees. 

Coincindence? I don't know ...

What I do know is, I can count up all my friends and relatives and among them I find no one who thinks Castro, Chavez, or anyone of their ilk are the good guys. 

Further, as I recall snippets of deep conversations as well as offhand comments over the years of my life, no one I know idolizes or even simply admires anyone who admires that kind of "democratic" leader. 

In fact, I think it's safe to say that neither my family, friends, or acquaintances nor theirs would allow a Castro or Chavez to even walk their dogs or pick up their trash, much less allow that anyone who followed their leanings or admired them would make a good presidential adviser of any kind, neither as an adviser or 'officer' in charge of "safe" schools,  nor in communications ie: FTC Mark Lloyd. . . Anita Dunn.

I dunno . . . I dunno.  Yes, we have already been on this

path for some time now; but it seems to me more and more

 that we are in a critical mass situation.  A fork in the road, a

 jump off the fence, choose a path, kindof situation.