On Bullying and Bullcrap
Bullying. It’s one of the 21st Century’s new buzzwords. I always thought it meant when a big strong kid physically intimidated a smaller weaker one. Maybe when a really popular person leverages his influence to coerce a more vulnerable person.
So what if I told you that a speaker at a conference for high-schoolers ridiculed those who did not share his views? What if I said he called their beliefs “bullcrap?” (Actually he used the more profane word for bovine excrement). And what if – when some of the offended students walked out – the speaker called them “pansy-a**ed?” Out loud.
If the speaker had been some red-faced Christian evangelist condemning homosexuality, of course. But what if the speaker was a homosexual activist who called the Bible “bull***t” and the Christians who left “pansy-a**?” In fact, not only was that the case. The speaker was THE Dan Savage, the guy whose “It Get’s Better” anti-bullying pro-gay campaign went viral not long ago.
Pause for a moment if you need to to check to make sure I said he was speaking to high school students. Yes, I did.
Now, does Mr. Savage have every right to believe that the whole Bible is cow poo? Does he have a right to say that? And a right to call Christians hypocrites, and worse? Does he have a right to fight for the civil rights of homosexuals?
Yes, yes, yes, and yes.
And the rest of us have a right to call him the ultimate hypocrite.
He decries bullying BY bullying? He revels in his right to free speech by insulting those who exercise their right to walk out? HIGH SCHOOL KIDS?
What a pansy.
In a later non-apology, Dan Savage said the only thing he was condemning was hypocrisy. Because Christians shouldn’t pick and choose which verses of the Bible form their moral views. Really? I’ll skip over the sermonette about idiots like Savage who apparently have NO CLUE how to rightly interpret Holy Scripture. Somebody needs to tell pansy Dansy to BE consistent himself.
Any consistent evolutionary materialist should know that biology does more to condemn homosexuality than does the Bible. The compatibility of male and female isn’t a particularly complicated biological reality. And in evolutionary terms, “bullying” isn’t just a reality; it’s an evolutionary ADVANTAGE.
And if the Bible is bulls**t, where do the Dan Savages in our culture get the idea that anybody’s views are “wrong?” That ANYTHING is right or wrong? Or that the views or actions of the minority, the weak, the disenfranchised should be respected? To what authority do they refer? Nature?
Dan Savage is the latest exhibit in something I very strongly believe: Many of the liberal, open-minded, tolerant protectors of civil rights are some of the most closed minded, intolerant, rights-trampling people you’ll ever encounter.
Somebody somewhere has the right to fire whoever invited this bullying hypocrite to BE the speaker that day.
But he won’t.
And THAT is bull.
The idea that evolutionary biology condemns homosexuality is quite silly. Biology is descriptive, not prescriptive. That is, it describes the way things are, rather than prescribing what is right and wrong. Condoms also hurt reproductive success, but you can’t say “condoms are wrong because of evolution!” Evolution isn’t a system of morality, it merely describes how we evolved.
You argue that it doesn’t make sense to bully in response to bullying. That’s completely wrong. In self-defense, for example, you’d presumably be fine with committing violence when threatened with violence to defend yourself. Bullying is similar. Condemning a religion that wants to ostracize gays is not bullying, but self-defense against the biggest bully in this country.
You missed the point. Twice. I’m well aware that evolution is only descriptive (although predictable principles are drawn from it), but it is inevitably used to validate normalcy. Evolutionary biology, until two males can conceive, negates the oft-trumpeted “normalcy” of homosexuality.
And your analogy of responding to violence WITH violence falls flat. He belittled the beliefs and actions of HIGH SCHOOL kids. And he’s the guy screeching about how such actions lead to suicides and marginalization.
I’ll take Dan Savage’s expertise on the Bible over your expertise on biology any day.
I’m sure it’s not worth the trouble to post this, but there are quite a few good evolutionary explanations for homosexuality. Just do a google search and take your pick: http://tinyurl.com/7hb4tq8
And again, as the previous poster said, evolution does not make value judgments or “validate normalcy.”
But anyway, I know there’s not much point in debating with you about evolution, or homosexuality, or bullying, or even biblical hermeneutic. It’s just that… …you’ve really picked your hill to die on, you know? It’s a little sad that “keeping queers in their place” is your be-all end-all. And you know what? Like people today (well, decent people) can be shocked and embarrassed at how racist their grandparents’ churches were in the 1950s, your grandchildren will one day be humiliated at how you squandered your platform on petty bigotry.
Sorry, forgot you can dish it out but can’t take it. I guess calling an entire group of people abominable is okay, but telling a preacher he should be ashamed of it is beyond the realm of publishable comments.
Sorry, I’ve been out of the office and away from a computer for a few days. Unless comments are libelous, I generally “approve” anybody’s. Thanks for taking the time to drop by and weigh in.
I assure you that homosexuality is not my “end-all.” Leading people to Christ is. We can disagree, and we do, but please don’t assume that my agreement with what the Bible calls sin means I hate anybody.
In that case, I apologize for accusing you of not publishing my comments.
Weird that you claim that Savage has no clue how to “rightly” interpret scripture. How do you propose that one knows that their interpretation is “right?” Where’s the way to know that a meaning coincides with what the author meant? If you think the right interpretation is rather (or that the meaning intended by the author would have to be) what God would think, there is no way to know that either. That’s because the only person who could know what God thinks is the person who apparently was inspired by God (whatever that means) while writing that scripture. We have to assume that that means that God told him to write that if this person knows what God said. If the only ‘authority’ is what the scripture says (means), we can’t come to a conclusion on what God would think based on our own reasoning. What God says goes, no matter WHAT he says. But if you believe, rather, that what is moral depends on other factors rather than simply that God said it, then, alas, it does not matter one bit what the Bible says anywhere inside its pages. See: Plato’s Dilemma.
Going back to my original comment, I’m not sure what you mean by what you said. Savage interpreted the verses by what the words literally mean. And, given that other people do that and then believe that it’s true and follow that command/rule, it’s therefore relevant to interpret the verses that way, even if just for the sake of argument. He’s commenting on the interpretation done by people and what it leads to.
Even if the Bible were bullshit, that doesn’t mean that there’s no God who made the laws of morality. He could just have absolutely nothing to do with that book. To answer your question, the Dan Savages of the world get their ideas that things are right and wrong from logic and reasoning based on relevant, important factors, like the rights of persons and other moral patients (creatures that are morally relevant) and the pleasure/suffering of moral patients. People who use the correct method when reasoning about morality take these factors into account rather than blindly believing something that is written by someone else. I believe that everyone reasons about morality this way, even though they don’t realize they do. They believe that the verses in the Bible that condemn homosexuality are God’s own word and are true, but there is something else about the view that homosexuality is wrong that they agree with. This is why they don’t believe the Bible verse that says that one should stone their child if he/she misbehaves is true. They think misbehaving does not justify stoning the misbehaver because the amount of suffering it would cause the misbehaver is not warranted by what they did. Morality IS objective, and moral truths are what they are no matter what people think about them and people cannot change them by disagreeing with them. The “authority” referred to is morality itself. You can learn more about how morality has nothing to do with religion or a law-giver who made up the rules by reading moral philosophy.
And to comment on your article as a whole, Savage felt justified calling the students who left’s reaction pansy-assed because they would rather hold on to their bigotry than listen to an opposing and correct view. Imagine a racist refusing to hear why racism is wrong. It IS pansy. I mean, if you don’t have the tolerance and the decency to listen to what this man is saying without rudely getting up to leave, you’re a pansy. If anything is pansy, it’s that and not being something that you were born that there is absolutely nothing wrong with. That was his point: that gay people are not pansies, people who think gay people are inferior are pansies for refusing to accept the truth. It is completely cowardly and wrong to refuse to learn the truth because you don’t like it, especially when it’s about something this goddamned important. He was talking about how he’d been physically abused by people who believe the same way those people leaving his speech do. And I would not call that bullying because, to me, bullying is immoral and done to someone who doesn’t deserve it. That’s the difference: it’s pansy to leave, but it’s not pansy to leave a speech about why racism is right. It’s not pansy because the racist would be wrong. Yeah, they’re in high school, but they’re not so young that they are unable to realize that thinking gay people are inferior is simple personal preference.