Thursday, May 3, 2012

Dan Savage Clarifies Condemnation of "Pansy Ass" Christians


Dan Savage - the activist responsible for the It Gets Better campaign in response to bullying - stirred up a bit of controversy this week when he gave a speech at the National High School Journalist Conference in Seattle and told those in attendance:

We can learn to “learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people.”

Savage went on to compare these passages to those regarding shell fish, menstruation and, especially, slavery, saying the bible is a "pro-slavery document," but we've grown to look past those parts while honoring what's really important within its pages.

Watch video excerpts of the lecture now, as about a dozen attendees get up and walk out in response to Savage's comments:

“It’s funny, as someone who’s on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible, how pansy-ass some people react when you push back,” he said to students leaving in protest, although Savage apologized for this phrasing in a blog post on Sunday, writing:

I would like to apologize for describing that walk out as a pansy-a---- 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. But that’s a distinction without a difference—kinda like when religious conservatives tells their gay friends that they ‘love the sinner, hate the sin.’

They’re often shocked when their gay friends get upset because, hey, they were making a distinction between the person (lovable!) and the person’s actions (not so much!). But gay people feel insulted by ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ because it is insulting. Likewise, my use of ‘pansy-a----’ was insulting, it was name-calling, and it was wrong. And I apologize for saying it.

But is Savage sorry for his analysis of the bible? No.

“I did not attack Christianity. I attacked hypocrisy," he says.

SHOULD Savage apologize? You tell us:

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