Dan Savage has done much to combat the bullying of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) youth. His 2010 “It Gets Better” campaign was praised by the homosexual community and even many lawmakers.
But apparently it gets better only for LGBT youth.
It most certainly should not for Bible-believing Christians, as far as he is concerned. Bullying of Christians is actually encouraged by Mr. Savage, as evidenced by his recent speech at the National High School Journalism Conference.
In a very telling display of classic bullying, Savage attacked Christians (or “Bible guys”) calling them “pansy-a**ed.”
Savage lived up to his name on his treatment of the student’s deeply held religious beliefs, to the point where they had to walk out of the auditorium. Once he had shamed them because of their faith, he said:
You can tell the Bible guys in the hall they can come back now because I’m done beating up the Bible. It’s funny to someone who is on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible how “pansy-**s” people react when you push back.
To Savage it is deplorable for anyone to bully LGBT youth, but Christians, that’s another story. He humiliated those who believe in the Bible in front of a very large group of students and felt really proud about it.
He would not apologize for his remarks, even though he tried, as every bully does, to qualify them. “I was not attacking the faith,” he said.
Right. You see, we just misunderstood the part where he called the Bible “bulls**t.”
Anyway, those present disagreed with him. And most definitely those he offended. The Blaze reports one teacher said:
If he was doing this with a bunch of college journalism kids, that would be a different story – that’s more rough and tumble. How many of the kids who didn’t walk out felt backed into a corner? To me, that’s bullying behavior. It has all the symptoms, as far as I’m concerned.
But Savage is not the issue. He will certainly reap what he sows.
The issue is what is to be done moving forward with all speakers like him. There is no question that his type of attack should not be sponsored by any respectable organization or school. Yet in a statement, the Journalism Education Association and the National Scholastic Press Association, who sponsored the event, said only that they did not have a prior transcript of the speech and wished he had stayed more “on target.”
That’s just simply not enough.
Such an anemic response is yet more evidence that there is a growing anti-Christian, anti-conservative sentiment that taints the liberal elite. You will most certainly not hear much about this incident in the evening news. And it goes without saying that if the tables were turned and a Christian speaker called LGBT students “pansy-a**ed,” the outcry would have been deafening.
This double standard and hypocrisy is not confined to speeches and the media. We have exposed efforts on Capitol Hill before to stop “bullying” by protecting LGBT youth alone and elevating their status above others. Such efforts are going on at the state level all over the country.
The result of such misguided policies is “Dan Savage” – policies that say it is okay to bully Christian kids in the name of preventing bullying against LGBT youth. Policies that say if you hold on to the traditional or Biblical definition of marriage, you are a bigot. Policies that say we must respect other people’s beliefs, unless they are Christian conservatives.
I hope this incident helps us wake up to these shenanigans.
All bullying is reprehensible. Anti-bullying efforts should be aimed against all bullies and protect all victims.
In this case, they should work against Dan Savage to protect Christians.