Iowa Congressman Steve King is calling on President Obama to fire Kevin Jennings, the openly gay director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.

King is the first member of Congress to ask for Jennings' resignation.

“Kevin Jennings lacks the appropriate qualifications and ethical standards to serve in a presidential administration,” King said in a statement released Monday.

“Despite serving as the 'safe schools' czar, Jennings has demonstrated a willingness to look the other way on sexual abuse. His life's work has been the promotion of homosexuality, even in elementary schools, and he has demonstrated no qualifications to make students safer in our schools. Jennings is committed to the 'safety' of only a narrow portion of American students, while expressing disdain for religion and traditional values.”

“President Obama should fire Kevin Jennings immediately,” King added.

Jennings, 45, is the former executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a group he founded to address the issue of discrimination based on sexual orientation in the nation's school system.

Conservatives charge that Jennings is unfit to serve because twenty-one years ago he failed to report that one of his students was having a sexual relationship with an older man. Jennings reportedly told the student to “use a condom.”

Critics claim the boy was 15 at the time, charging Jennings with failing to report the “sexual abuse of a minor.” In fact, the boy was 16, above the age of consent in Massachusetts, where the incident occurred.

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King, an ardent gay rights foe, has previously compared gay men and lesbians to fairy tales, “Unicorns, leprechauns, gay marriages in Iowa – these are things you will never find because they just don't exist,” and continues to insist that being gay is a choice.

Earlier in the year, during a Judiciary Committee hearing on the House version of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a bill that would expand federal hate crimes legislation to include disability, gender and sexual orientation, King asked “Why are we valuing sexuality as more important than veteran status or old age, for instance?” as he and fellow Republicans attempted to drown the bill with irrelevant amendments.

“Their agenda is to shut down preaching of faith from the pulpit,” King told One News Now on the subject of Hate Crimes legislation. “Their agenda is to force approval of the homosexual agenda. And destroy marriage nationally is the follow up piece of this.”

The Obama administration continues to back Jennings.