Denies attacking Christianity
Dan Savage sparked much debate recently when he said, “We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people,” at the National High School Journalist Conference in Seattle, a remark that prompted some students to walk out of the conference.
After the students walked out of the speech, Dan Savage said, “It’s funny, as someone who’s on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the bible, how pansy-assed some people react when you push back.”
For those who are unfamiliar, Dan Savage is an outspoken columnist and LGBT-rights activist who founded It Gets Better, an Internet-based project intended to prevent suicide among LGBT youth.
In a blog post on Sunday, Dan Savage apologized for his word choice on the walk out, but he stood by his remarks about homosexuality and the Bible. “I would like to apologize for describing that walk out as a pansy-assed move. I wasn’t calling the handful of students who left pansies (2800+ students, most of them Christian, stayed and listened), just the walk-out itself… my use of “pansy-assed” was insulting, it was name-calling, and it was wrong. And I apologize for saying it.”
As for what Dan Savage said about the Bible, “I was not attacking the faith in which I was raised. I was attacking the argument that gay people must be discriminated against—and anti-bullying programs that address anti-gay bullying should be blocked (or exceptions should be made for bullying “motivated by faith”)—because it says right there in the Bible that being gay is wrong. Yet the same people who make that claim choose to ignore what the Bible has to say about a great deal else. I did not attack Christianity. I attacked hypocrisy. My remarks can only be read as an attack on all Christians if you believe that all Christians are hypocrites. Which I don’t believe… …and maybe I shouldn’t have used the word bullshit in this instance. But while it may have been a regrettable word choice, my larger point stands: If believers can ignore what the Bible says about slavery, they can ignore what the Bible says about homosexuality.”
