By Paul Esau (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: May 9, 2012
As creator of the “It Gets Better” campaign against bullying, sex educator and activist Dan Savage is not someone who fits the description of “bully” very well. Much of Savage’s career has been spent advocating for LGBT rights and spreading awareness of sexual issues, yet in the last week Savage has been heavily criticized – not for defending the oppressed, but instead for being one of their oppressors.
The criticism is in response to a speech Savage gave last month to a group of high school students at a journalism conference in Seattle, during which Savage branched off on a tangent criticizing the “bullshit” within the Bible, using the following words (taken from a video of the event):
“We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people, the same way we have learned to ignore the bullshit about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about virginity, about masturbation…the Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waved Bibles over their heads during the Civil War.”
A number of students were disturbed enough by Savage’s rhetoric to leave, while others responded with sustained applause. Savage himself ended the segment by calling the reaction of the walk-outs “pansy-assed,” saying “you can tell the Bible guys in the hall that they can come back now because I’m done beating up the Bible.”
Despite the unfortunate flaws in Savage’s theological and historical analysis (at least in the opinion of this writer), this is not the time or the place to delve into a theological or historical critique. The fundamental problem with his speech is not in its perspective, but in Savage’s apparent inability to recognize in himself the qualities which he so condemns in others.
There are a couple details here that are important. The first is Savage’s status as a recognized columnist, here also in the role as an influential speaker before an audience of high school students – legally still children. The second is his willingness to humiliate a minority of these students by not only describing their holy text with expletives, but also calling down derision upon their decision to leave the room during his speech. So much of the LGBT movement is about celebrating diversity, and so much of Savage’s work (especially his “It Gets Better” campaign) is about championing the oppressed – so why does he feel the need to humiliate these young men and women simply for disagreeing with his opinion?
The answer, according to Savage himself, is a matter of self-defence. “I apologize if I hurt anyone’s feelings,” Savage continued in his speech,”but I have a right to defend myself.” Anyone familiar with the inflammatory nature of Savage himself and his various campaigns will agree that he has faced heavy criticism, sometimes violent, and he has a right to defend his views against the attacks levied against him, yet one has to wonder where Savage considers the line between defence and offence to fall. As a figure of authority speaking to a roomful of young adults, many of whom are cheering him on, who exactly did Savage consider to be the immediate threat? Who, ultimately, was he defending himself from while he was mocking the actions and opinions of a select group of students?
Some will say that he was making a point to a larger community, perhaps enacting a small portion of justice for what he himself has faced over the years, yet it is hard to argue conscientiously that victimizing one group is just retribution for the sins of another. J.J. McCullough of the web comic Filibuster put it best in commenting on one of Savage’s earlier antics involving Google and Rick Santorum, stating “two wrongs don’t make a right. If it’s wrong to bully young gays and lesbians simply for who they are and what they believe, as Dan Savage rightly holds, then it should be equally wrong to use those same tactics against innocuous critics of homosexuality. The idea that the appropriate response when encountering people with whom you disagree is to harass and belittle them until they recant in a position of weakness and shame is a stance as abhorrent as the luridly well-documented tactics of certain fanatical gay ‘fixing camps’.”
This quote is obviously not meant to belittle the struggles which Savage and the communities he represents face, just to conclude that the most important goal of any activist should be to rise above the cycle of reaction and injustice, rather than to perpetuate it. In a different venue, addressing opponents that have indeed attacked him, Savage’s comments could be construed as defensive, yet in context they can be seen only as an aggressive belittlement of a vulnerable minority. In this instance Dan Savage became the bully that he so loathes, and in doing so lost the opportunity for a meaningful impact on a group of young adults.
Savage did attempt to apologize on his blog (SLOG) after the incident, yet his statement reads more like a rewording of the argument rather than a withdrawal. While he apologized for using the term “pansy-assed,” his comments about his theological analysis ends with the following: “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.”
This is essentially saying that anybody who does not agree with Savage’s theological views is a hypocrite, and therefore his attack (now aimed at hypocrites rather than a religious community) was fully justified.
Humility is the mark of a strong leader, Dan Savage, and humility is about respecting your opponents enough to give them the dignity of an apology when you step beyond the bounds of conscionable behaviour. The students who were brave enough to walk out—as well as many of the rest of us—are still waiting for that apology.
