Dan Savage desecrates Minnesota on June 22nd

At the Pantages Theatre.

Dan Savage was to discuss his “anti-bullying” campaign at the JEA/NSPA Spring National High School Journalism Convention in Seattle. He launched into a hyperbolic and profane anti-Semitic and mostly anti-Christian diatribe in front of high school students, causing a walkout.

The Bible. We’ll just talk about the Bible for a second. People often point out that they can’t help – they can’t help with the anti-gay bullying, it says right there in Leviticus, it says it right there in Timothy, it says right there in Romans – that being gay is wrong.

We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people, the same way – the same way we learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation – we ignore – bullshit in the Bible about all sorts of things. The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waved Bibles over their heads during [the] Civil War in justifying it.

The shortest book in the New Testament is a letter from Paul to a Christian slave owner about owning his Christian slaves – and Paul doesn’t say “Christians don’t own people”. Paul talks about how Christians own people. We ignore what the Bible says about slavery because the Bible got slavery wrong.

Sam Harris, in “A Letter to a Christian Nation” points out that the Bible got the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced – wrong. Slavery. What are the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong – one hundred percent.

The bible says that if your daughter is not a virgin on her wedding night, if a woman isn’t a virgin on her wedding night, she shall be dragged to her father’s doorstep and stoned to death.

Callista Gingrich lives.

And there is no effort – there is no effort – to amend state constitutions to make it legal to stone women to death on their wedding night if they’re not virgins – at least not yet. We don’t know where the GOP is going these days.

People are dying, because people can’t clear this one last hurdle. They can’t get past this one last thing in the Bible – about homosexuality. What they want to talk about is (laughs) – so you can tell the Bible guys in the hall they can come back now, I’m done beating up the Bible.

It’s funny how someone who’s on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible – how pansy ass how some people react when pushed back. I apologize if I’ve hurt anyone’s feelings – but – I have a right to defend myself, and to point out the hypocrisy of people who justify anti-gay bigotry by point to the the Bible, and insisting we must live by the code of Leviticus on this one issue and no other.

Dan Savage is bigot.

Not only is Dan Savage a bigot, he is an ignorant bigot.

I already called the Journalism Education Association. I was instructed to write to them, because they will be compiling the responses. Their contact information is here. The National Student Press Association is in Minneapolis, and their contact information is here. Ask them: with Dan Savage’s history and his authorship of a graphic sex column being public knowledge, why would the JEA and NSPA even consider his appearance in front of high school students? Both these organizations must provide an explanation. (Note: The JEA and NSPA have issued a joint apology, not saying that his behavior was wrong – just inappropriate.)

The Hennepin Theatre Trust is allowing an anti-Semite who says someone like this to use their venue (WARNING: The link contains graphic obscene and violent descriptions). Call or write the Hennepin Theatre Trust and ask them why an anti-Semite will be allowed to use their facilities. (I have written to the Hennepin Theatre Trust.)

If it wasn’t for a Christian Pastor using Exodus as a guide, there would be no civil rights movement.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Of Blessed Memory.