I don’t think this is offensive at all. There’s lots of crazy stuff in the bible that everyone ignores. Why NOT ignore the anti-gay stuff too? Dan Savage:
People often point out that they can’t help it, they can’t help with the anti-gay bullying, because it says right there in Leviticus, it says 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.
kindness
Dan Savage rocks. Gotta admire someone who can cut through all the bullshit and not slander his opposition and still discuss topics in a respectful manner.
Will Bill O’Donohue shreik & wail that Dan is the devil incarnate? Does the Pope shit in the woods?
GlenInBrooklyn
Savage was right: most of it is BS. So the fundies’ wittle feewings were hurt and they walked out? Aww… Did any of them kill themselves after the experience?
aimai
One of the little biblical bitches who walked out says she walked out, shouting “bull!” (which, apparently, isn’t short for bullshit in their eyes) because Savage said that the bible was pro slavery. The whole thing is amazing to watch. Good for Savage for making his point. If people don’t like the feeling of being “bullied” by having someone lecture them about their belief in the bible maybe they will stop and think before they bully others lecturing them about their sexuality based on a book of zero relevance to their lives.
aimai
jibeaux
Sure. In addition to all the nutty stuff in the Old Testament, I don’t think most Christians go around cursing fig trees that don’t produce, and that’s JESUS, even. Pro tip: It’s often the critters’ fault. There are some stealthy fig-lovin’ motherfuckers around here.
khead
Will repeat this post I guess…..
Weird, but I figured our resident Kaplan-haters would be all over that chat. It was pretty pitiful.
MattR
@kindness:
The Pope and a rabbit are taking a shit in the woods. The Pope turns to the rabbit and asks, “Hey rabbit, do you have trouble with shit sticking to your fur?”. The rabbit says “no” so the Pope picks up the rabbit and wipes his ass with it.
Pharniel
They already ignore most of Liviticus anyway (*cough*kosher rules*cough*) – there’s no reason they can’t drop the rest of it.
That is selective enforcement at it’s finest.
PeakVT
Savage is correct that most fundies (and fundie-curious Catholics) pick and choose, but the phrasing was pretty damn inflammatory, which probably was his goal.
Scott S.
I’d take them more seriously if they insisted on following all the other Thou Shalt Nots in Leviticus. But they don’t. Because they want to eat shellfish and bacon.
Widespread and thoughtless hypocrisy is how Modern American Christianity operates now. It’s a feature, not a bug.
Hal
This reminds me of watching Julia Sweeney’s letting go of God, and how she talked about how her parents flipped when they found out she was an atheist. Great monologue that reminds me of Catholic grade school and the moment I thought; “This is all bullshit” and stopped worrying about my eternal soul burning in hell for whatever reason the Church decided, which of course changed week by week.
dmsilev
Off topic but hilarious. After the Romney campaign whined that Obama was being mean by pointing out Romeny’s …varied viewpoints on hunting down bin Laden, some reporter asked Obama about it:
That second part is a thing of beauty.
Patricia Kayden
Which Christians actually follow the Bible word-for-word? Let’s be honest. There are none. Savage is absolutely correct.
Southern Beale
There’s lots of non-crazy stuff in the Bible people ignore, too. Love your neighbor, turn the other cheek, easier for camel to pass through a needle’s eye than a rich man to enter heaven, blah blah.
Soooo tired of people pretending to get their fee-fee’s hurt over this stuff. Stop using the Bible as a cudgel. Then again, the Church Lady crowd has done more harm to themselves with behavior like this than than any godless liberal homosexual could hope to do.
So, keep it up. Just affirms why nobody wants to be in your stupid club.
forked tongue
@MattR:
Wait–wouldn’t the rabbit make a better buttwipe if the shit did stick to his fur? Seems that way to me, but if the Pope says different, well, he’s infallible, so….
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I want to live in a world where gayfolk are free to marry, adopt kids, raise families, and everything else that the fundies raise a fuss about now, and closeted GOP Senators have to use an airport bathroom stall in order to get a shrimp cocktail.
fasteddie9318
Look, DougJ, it’s simple. Jesus H. Christ changed everything from the Old Testament except the parts that the Elect still like and that aren’t socially unacceptable. Obviously the list of things the Elect like and that aren’t socially unacceptable changes over time, but the immutable laws of Skyman can be mutable because God mysterious ways something something. So slavery is now out but the butt-piracy is still bad bad bad.
jl
Back away from the shrimp, DougJ, back away now. And take off the blend shirt you are wearing. You are in danger.
Southern Beale
Don’t know cuz I wasn’t there but I read that the “walkout” was staged, and only 8 people out of a crowd of over 2,000 left anyway,
ornery_curmudgeon
It’s fairly straightforward to just read the Gospels with Christ’s words in red, and see there is nothing against gay people but many things about judging others and listening to false prophets (ravening wolves).
It is impossible to use the actual Gospels to run a society the way Conservatives wish to run it … so they dig back into the Old Testament.
Christ came to bring a New Testament, however, so using rules from Leviticus in Christianity is wrong.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@PeakVT: He did apologize for his name-calling.
Omnes Omnibus
Is that a cotton-cashmere sweater I see before me?
Martin
@Pharniel: All religions play by Calvinball rules. Attacking Calvinball is to attack religion – all of them.
sneezy
@Scott S.:
There is, of course, a specific reason for that. See Matthew 15:11 and Mark 7:18. This is usually cited as the reason that Christians don’t follow Jewish dietary laws.
Warren Terra
Anyone who cites the Bible to hate Gay folks but eats pepperoni pizza is pretty clearly a massive hypocrite.
(Not that it would be OK for some Chasid to hate on Gay folks, but at least they would be fairly consistent).
Enlightened Liberal
The only thing Dan should have done different is he shouldn’t have apologized for the “pansy-ass” comment.
Why?
1. He was correct.
2. The people who walked out will NEVER accept his apology, so f- em
3. If you are apologizing you’re losing. NEVER apologize or concede a point to your enemy. Dan Savage’s enemy would prefer that gay people cease to exist. They deserve nothing hinting of moderation.
Spaniel
I am sorely disappointed with this reasoning of Savage’s. Where is the dialog of compassion and rooting evils like corruption? It sounds like there is a rise of the Pharisees to keep out the unclean for the ritually cleaned — how did that work out for the Pharisees? Not saying what Savage is wrong, but the manner reminds me of the log in the Sermon of the Mount.
MattR
@forked tongue: You’re gonna have to talk to Eddie Murphy. Its his joke (I think) though I changed the bear into the pope. I thought it would have been rude to have the pope play the rabbit’s role.
Roger Moore
@Scott S.:
And blood. The stuff about clean and unclean animals is actually relatively minor; if you eat an unclean animal, you’re unclean and have to follow some minor purification procedures before participating in any religious ceremonies. Eating blood, including eating flesh from an animal that hasn’t been thoroughly drained of all its blood, is treading onto God’s territory, and is supposed to be punished by being cut off from God’s people, and there’s no suggestion given of a way to atone for it.
Roger Moore
@ornery_curmudgeon:
The parts in red aren’t there to be highlighted; they’re optional. Didn’t you get the memo./wingnut
Nutella
@PeakVT:
I was taken aback that Savage called the people who walked out “pansy-assed” to mean cowardly.
Isn’t it weirdly homophobic to say that?
He’s right about the bible, of course. Judicious selection of one or two passages can ‘prove’ pretty much anything at all.
PurpleGirl
@Pharniel: I like the prohibition against mixing fabrics better.
MikeJ
Jesus never said one thing about gay people, but there was one group he could not stand. talked about them over and over again and said repeatedly there was no way they were ever going to get into heaven. Rich people.
Legalize
@dmsilev:
It is. He’s needling the media to do its fucking job for a change as well. We’ll see where that goes ….
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
I’m getting sick of how the press manages to enable such stupid contrarianism and projection from these twits. Dan Savage uses ‘bullshit’ when talking about the Bible, so now he’s an even worse super-offensive bully than those telling gay people that everyone hates them so they should just die!!! Pelosi, Obama, and Dems are raising the specter of anti-woman laws, but Hillary Rosen said something mean about Ann Romney so Dems are the real perpetrators of the grand War on Women and shame on fucking them!!
How does the press keep falling for this shit, and why do we always end up getting the ass end of their idiocy when it results in tangible effects on the discourse?
Heliopause
@PeakVT:
Yes. Doug isn’t offended and neither am I, but that’s hardly the point. There is no objective standard for what is offensive and Savage wasn’t speaking to the likes of me or Doug.
Yes, but everybody does this. The beauty of a text as big and diverse as the Bible is that one can easily take from it whatever is desired. That includes the hippie version that is somewhat popular on the left. Savage may or may not have been deliberately trying to cause offense, I don’t know, but from my personal point of view he seems reluctant to take that final step; that the Bible is a collection of disparate, ancient texts that were written in entirely different cultural contexts from the one we occupy, and that except for its sociological and historical interest we can safely “ignore” the whole thing, not just the “bullshit”. But that’s just me.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Spaniel: I, too, am concerned.
Jay in Oregon
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
One might think that the MSM and the Village have an agenda in portraying every situation as “The Democrats are being partisan/obstructionist/political” at worst or claiming that “both sides do it!” at best.
I wonder what it could be?
Dave
John 13:34
Full stop. That is the essence of Christianity. And anyone who says it is about hatred, or bigotry, or making money is practicing something completely different.
Bullsmith
Evangelical/fundamentalist theology basically ignores every word attributed to Jesus, preferring Revelations, the Epistles, and selected OT passages. Anything with judgment and retribution rocks, anything about forgiveness, charity and love is quietly ignored like an embarrassing distant relative on a temporary visit.
Martin
@Nutella:
Calling homophobes ‘pansies’ for a cowardly act is designed to cut extra deep.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Dave:
Tell that to the Christian standard bearers who have made the faith into a hateful bludgeon for political and social gain. So many goddamn Political Christians who may as well call themselves Pharisees instead.
Jewish Steel
Christians! Contact me for rock bottom interest rates!
Usurious Steel®
Southern Beale
@Dave:
Also when Jesus is asked which Commandments were the most important he said there are only 2 commandments: Love God, and Love your neighbor. Everything else is redundant.
But you can’t fundraise off of that if you’re Tony Perkins!
sublime33
“Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s”. I guess because the Bible doesn’t specifically say “Obama”, it is OK to ignore that line also since Caesar has been dead for awhile.
Steve in DC
@Snarxist
The press isn’t falling for anything, they know it’s bullshit. The press loves a fight, remember politics is a contact sport. They act like the announcer at a boxing match. They call shots and blows and make them sound dramatic to draw in the consumer. They don’t want a one round knockout and to admit that the champ is fighting someone out of his prime, out of his weight class, and out of shape. What they want is the multi-round pummeling to make things sound interesting.
For most of the country politics is still sports. You cheer when your team lands a blow and jeer when their team trips and falls. You can see this in the very language they use, it’s straight out of sports and combat in some cases “blasts” “lands a blow” “draws fire”.
The press long ago stopped making the story about the consquences of the outcome and turned into the story of the struggle. And thus there must be a struggle and a fight or there is nothing for them to report on.
goblue72
@Nutella: I’m sure that was part of Savage’s intent – to get called a pansy-ass by a very out gay man. Kinda like if a drag queen told you to man up. Sorta leaves a mark…
Dave
@Southern Beale:
Of course not. Because actually trying to follow those two commandments is very, very hard. Much easier to hate on certain types of people and pretend that God wants you to do it.
MosesZD
Lots of them miss these parts:
Leviticus 20:13 “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.”
No hetero-anal.
Leviticus 11:10-19 – (6) “But anything in the seas or the rivers that has not fins and scales, of the swarming creatures in the waters and of the living creatures that are in the waters, is an abomination to you. They shall remain an abomination to you; of their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall have in abomination. Everything in the waters that has not fins and scales is an abomination to you.”
So much for catfish, shrimp, lobster and crab. Yet the Red Lobster is full of these mouth breathers.
Deuteronomy 18:10-12 “When you come into the land which the LORD your God gives you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, any one who practices divination, a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD; and because of these abominable practices the LORD your God is driving them out before you.”
So, that covers a lot, from your NCAA bracket to listening to football prognosticators, or those TV spirt guide charlatans and homeopaths.
Deuteronomy 22:5 “A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.”
Well, that covers the kilt… :) And women wearing pants. But what about shirts?
Proverbs 17:15 He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD.
That covers Fox News…
And so on…
Mnemosyne
@sneezy:
So do people avoid citing Acts in their defense of not eating kosher because that makes it all too obvious that Jesus wasn’t really talking about food, but was metaphorically talking about people?
Fred Clark explains it all.
Roger Moore
@Dave:
Unfortunately, the “Christians” have made a great practice of trying to twist Jesus’ meaning to serve their ends. So they’d say that Jesus meant only that his disciples had to be good to one another, and by extension that Christians only have to be good to other Christians. They’ll say something similar about Matthew 25:31-46 for why that doesn’t mean you have to be good to the poor in general. When Jesus says “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me”, the brethren mean good Christians, so it’s fine to be bad to non-Christians.
g
@PeakVT: Dan is not politically correct.
kindness
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
You missed the memo. The ‘Liberal MSM’ isn’t liberal nor main stream. The MSM is batting for the other team and will continue to portray any crazy ass republican talking point as valid and good at the same time portraying liberal beliefs as somewhere between treasonous, communist & socialist.
Did you get the secret decoder ring Marcos sent out?
Linda Featheringill
St. Paul of New Testament fame came out in support of slavery many, many times.
We are talking about real slavery. And anyone who thinks the Romans were easier on their slaves than New World slaveholders is mistaken.
samson141
Forget the picking and choosing. Where they fall down is in bullying and shaming. Jesus certainly didn’t treat sinners that way. He had compassion and offered forgiveness, he challenged those who were throwing stones as hypocrites for they were sinners too. Jesus didn’t exhort his followers to police God’s laws. God judges, Christians forgive and love.
Steve in DC
The bible justifies and condemns all sorts of crazy stuff. A lot of it makes sense on some level if you are living in primitive conditions way back then. Specifically the assaults on various food stuffs were so as not to get sick and die. And the various sexual rules to encourage as much procreation as possible and limit the spread of disease.
The problem with the bible is we are no longer a bunch of dirty ass nomads running about the desert with no sort of sanitation. So all those rules are really rather stupid.
For the church this is horrible though. Because the fewer religious rules you actually need to properly live your life the less valuable religion actually is. And as modernity has fixed countless problems (pork and lobster isn’t all that likely to kill you now) the value of the texts is near nothing.
They’re basically fighting to the death to keep their text relevant as a stick for what you should and shouldn’t do with your life. Most of it’s already been proven to be bullshit. Homosexuality is all they have left along with some sexual issues. Because lets face it, if you waged a war against shrimp cocktail that fight is long over.
LanceThruster
@aimai: I was sanctioned (i.e. told to shut up) in the company vanpool for offering to the co-rider studying to be a future Protestant “elder” who claimed to bible is clear and unambiguous in all things, that there were denominations both insisting that slavery was either biblically OK or forbidden.
I said they can’t both be right. He said there was only one correct interpretation (even though it says masters be good to your slaves – NOT employees).
An all-knowing god might anticipate the confusion and set in stone that it was wrong for one human being to “own” another one.
That that is not the case seems yet another point against the existence of an all-benevolent god.
I like the comic who said, “Yeah, I believe in God. It’s just that *my* God is a capricious pr1ck.”
MBunge
@Enlightened Liberal: “3. If you are apologizing you’re losing. NEVER apologize or concede a point to your enemy.”
Yes, a world where liberals and conservatives are united in being gigantic a-holes will be a better world by far.
Mike
AdamK
Pansies are delicate flowers, like which gay people are manifestly not (given the political and social courage it takes to stand up against the shit) and christian pearl-clutchers manifestly are. The term was accurate and correctly used and should not be apologized for.
HelpThe99ers
Paging President Bartlett… President Bartlett to the debate, please…
Martin
Because in any discussion of selective Bible reading, a convenient link to the best expression of it on TV should be provided.
Dave
@Roger Moore: Believe me, I know. Which drives me crazy because Jesus associated with the poor and non-Christians and “undesirables” of all kinds, and never differentiated between any of them.
I may not agree with atheists. But after seeing the way humanity has twisted religion to excuse it’s most base instincts, I don’t blame them for not believing.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Roger Moore:
__
Strangely enough, last November the English translation of the Catholic Gloria was changed to sound (at least to this speaker of English) more ecumenical rather than less. The old version was: Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth. The new version is: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will. [emphasis mine, to highlight the change]. I’ve been told this was to more accurately reflect the literal wording of the original Latin. The new version certainly strikes me as not rolling off the tongue in English as easily as the old version, although force of habit may have something to do with that. How this ties in to the more politically conservative stance of the US Bishops, I have no idea. I also don’t know how many of the folks have mouthing these words in Mass have noticed that the phrase “people of good will” sounds a fair bit more inclusive than “his people” since it seems to imply the inclusion of people of other faiths who are of good will. We’ll see what happens as this settles in.
Taylormattd
Seriously, don’t select Dan Savage as a hill on which to die.
Yet another example of how my fellow gays are disproportionately represented in the “progressive” blogosphere by warmongerers, former republicans, and/or PUMAs.
All you need to know about Savage can be gleaned from this revolting editorial demanding we invade Iraq, complete with Cheney-like Nazi comparisons: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=12237
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Roger Moore: Which seems a little hard to justify since Jesus wasn’t a Christian.
beergoggles
Ugh, and it was only a matter of time before he stuck in an apology in there. Srsly, what is it with apologizing for speaking the truth.
kindness
@Taylormattd: Troll much? Si, troll mucho.
Taylormattd
And how could I forget to mention he despicable anti-black person jihad in the wake of Prop. 8 passing. Honestly, fuck him.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
Dan Savage did it perfect.
Taylormattd
@kindness: whatever. Some of us here in Seattle don’t care to hear from the fuck, given his history of right wing bullshit.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
@Steve in DC:
unless brittish petroleum is the tactical arm of jesusINC.
Bulworth
I love Dan Savage. And I’m not even gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
HelpThe99ers
@Martin: You owe me a Coke.
Sleeper
It’s foolish and rather dangerous trying to parse what Jesus “really” meant and using one passage to dispute other passages. They’re all so vague as to support whatever interpretation you like. Plenty of homophobic Christians feel that they are loving their fellow neighbor by refusing to accept their abominable lifestyles and therefore helping them to be more godly. It’s internally consistent and doesn’t trouble them at all.
The sooner we stop covering up for this goofy book of fables and stop trying to impose 21st century progressive ethics on a 1st century itinerant rabbi who may or may not have had delusions of godhood (and who may or may not have even existed at all), the better. There’s no real Christianity. If someone says they’re a Christian, then they’re a Christian. “Self-identification as a Christian” is the criterion we demand that the Right use for Barack Obama, is it not? Since Christianity, like all religions, is not based on objective reality, then people can say Christianity means whatever they want it to mean. We would do well just to encourage people to think for themselves and jettison the “Good” Book altogether.
Enlightened Liberal
@MBunge:
Your concern is noted.
Martin
@HelpThe99ers: Yeah, that was just mean of you to be a few seconds faster than I.
I’ve got a case of Mexican Coke in the garage. Swing by any time for one.
John - A Motley Moose
Hmmm…
slag
@dmsilev: Shorter Obama: “Why are you asking me? Go ask him.” Seems about right.
And yes, Savage was right on in this speech. People walking out reminded me of Jim Inhoffe’s being “outraged by the outrage” regarding torture. Someone saying “bullshit” in front of you is not the same as someone throwing rocks at your head or even someone saying that God hates you and you’re evil. And if you can’t figure out the difference, well, then you’re only fit for one thing in this life–being a Republican congressperson. Assholes.
Enlightened Liberal
@slag:
“But both sides do it!”—Villagers
WaterGirl
@HelpThe99ers: @Martin: That was so good, I watched it twice. Once from the first link, again from the second.
gaz
While I could provide a cogent statement by statement rebuttal about the context of each of these individual scriptures, theologically grounded in Christianity, I find this pithy statement to address them all, quite clearly in a way that even the bullies can’t argue with:
Hate the sin, Love the sinner.
kindness
Funny! Remember Brokeback Mountain? Failblog has a 2 minute short that is pertinent to this thread called Lesbian Mountain.
Darkrose
@kindness: Uh, why is it trolling to point out the truth?
Dan Savage is great if you’re a white gay man. He’s also incredibly transphobic and flirts with misogyny on a regular basis. He was sitting next to Andrew Sullivan on the “Prop 8 is Black People’s Fault!” train. And if you’re bisexual, don’t every bother writing to him; bisexuality is just another word for the closet as far as he’s concerned.
I usually stay out of threads praising him, because I just don’t feel like having that particular fight. But in this case, I have to say that Taylormattd is right on the money.
gex
You know what? I’m sick of people on the left claiming that their version of the Bible is obviously right and the others’ is not. Says who? They say the same exact thing and point to the same exact Bible. Just because leftists like their interpretation more doesn’t make them right.
All I know is that if about 85% of voters are Christian and 30 states passed amendments with super majorities, that most voting Christians are anti-gay to some degree. That’s the beauty of single issue votes. The social justice Christians get to vote their hate too.
Ed Drone
@ornery_curmudgeon:
Words written in red that our Savior said in the Bible,
The ones that I find, to change my poor mind, they’re not liable.
I couldn’t discover any words about lovers, it was all about the rich and the poor;
So your message of fear falls onto deaf ears – what is it that you’re fighting for?
…
Ed
gex
And, BTW fuck those Christians who force us to end up debating the Bible when we are really trying to address public policy issues. That’s a quagmire we never get out of.
kindness
@Darkrose: I read my weekly Dan Savage like most Christians read their Bibles….No I don’t agree with every single thing Dan Savage thinks or says but I do agree with most.
What I find trollish about your post is your willingness to paint Dan as part of the problem. I see him as part of the solution, especially his anti-bullying positive orientated ‘It gets Better’ series. That and this section of Dan pointing out fundies hypocrisy rocks. So go ahead. Piss on the good stuff and tell everyone you are the only one who is right. You have lots of company out there.
taylormattd
@kindness: A stopped clock is right twice a day, dumbass. Just because Savage says something right on occasion doesn’t make him a person who should be quoted.
In fact, I’ll eagerly await your post calling DougJ a troll the next time he rips Andrew Sullivan after Sully says something moderately reasonable.
Amanda in the South Bay
The problem with Savage is that he has a history of dismissing groups that are even more marginalized than (white, upper middle class) gay men, such as bi and trans people. And a lot of straight, gay friendly leftists just aren’t aware of that. They see an edgy, sex-positive gay man who is vocal about things they agree with. In a sense its like how Camile Paglia is every conservatives favorite token lesbian, Savage is every left wing sorta secular-ish persons’s go to gay man.
Felinious Wench
@gex:
Exactly. The Bible is not a handbook for public policy. The texts actually made that pretty clear with the whole “render unto Caesar” thing. It has some good things to say about what the GOALS of public policy should be, i.e. feeding the poor, caring for orphans and widows, etc. but it’s not a handbook on how to get there.
The “handbook” parts of the Bible were written within a very specific historical context and do not apply today. I consider the texts on homosexuality, slavery, etc. as handbook texts, and the overarching theme of Jesus of love, compassion, tolerance, humility, etc. as universal constants. Which was the POINT of what he was saying. The handbook rules are NOT what faith IS. It’s the universal constants that matter.
Public policy is how we apply those universal constants in our own time and place…or don’t apply them, in the case of many people who claim to follow the teachings of Christ. A Christian (or any other faith or non-faith) should say “does this policy meet the universal criteria of treating the people it applies to with fairness, decency, compassion, equality, and justice? If not, there’s a fundamental HUMAN issue here.” It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with how we treat other human beings.
It seems very simple to me. Call me crazy, but this doesn’t seem that hard to grasp.
kindness
@taylormattd:
Same issue I posted about w/ darkrose. My reply to him is the same to you.
Seriously? Seriously folks? Dan Savage should not be mentioned because you don’t like some of what he has said in the past, not withstanding that you probably agree with what this thread is all about Dan Savage saying? With these kinds of rules regarding who is quotable and who isn’t you couldn’t quote anybody in today’s world so what exactly is your point? Why are you creating ugly and evil energy on a topic that is positive and uplifting? How does that help you?
Jebediah
@AdamK:
Yes! From what I see and am told, being an out gay person in many, many parts of the US is definitely not for the faint-of-heart.
Pearl-clutching, however, is tailor-made for pansies.
Darkrose
@kindness:
He is part of “the problem”, if you believe that the problem includes marginalization and dismissal of transpeople, bisexuals, and lesbians, black folks, and basically anyone who’s not a cis gay white man. When someone’s kicking me in the face, I really don’t care that he’s wrapped in a giant rainbow flag.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Dave: I see Jesus Christ as a good moral philosopher. It’s really neat when you read the bible and restrict yourself to the red stuff.
I think that probably the actual guy didn’t really think he was any more divine than anyone else. He had a far more inclusive view of human beings than was extant then. Revolutionarily so.
I wonder if he ate any psychoactive cacti when he was out in that desert.
Mr Stagger Lee
@MosesZD: How about debts being forgiven every seven years, and also the year of jubilee. President Obama ought to declare 2013 the year of Jubilee and watch conservatives dump Jesus and embrace Ayn Rand.
Jennifer
Repeated from open thread:
I loved Savage’s speech. I loved especially that he addressed those poor tender souls who couldn’t take hearing an opposing opinion and walked out. I would have loved it even better if there had been someone standing at the exit checking the tags on their clothing and administering beatings with a baseball bat to those who were wearing blended fabrics, as commanded by Leviticus. I mean, since they are so certain of Biblical infalliability, and more specifically the infalliability of Leviticus, they should have been down for that, right?
Addition to previous comment: I don’t mind at all what Savage said, but I don’t think it was the most effective way to address those particular people. Rather than “it’s bullshit” he would have been better to simply point out that there is no “worst sin” as defined by the Bible; in fact there are several passages which say that all sins are equally bad in God’s eyes. (Another internal contradiction/bit of silliness: if all sins are equally bad, why the 10 commandments? And if God really believes that murder is no worse a sin than a white lie, then he’s a fucking sociopath.) But what’s in the Bible is both – 10 commandments, in which God makes clear that gayness isn’t SUCH a huge sin that it’s worth writing on a stone table, or God believes that all sin is equally bad and that gayness is no worse than lying (which, of course, IS on the stone tablet). And that’s not even getting to “love thy neighbor second only to God” and “do not point out the speck in another’s eye while ignoring the log in your own,” which when you throw those in, completely erases any Biblical “justification” for hating the homos. Jesus didn’t say, “love thy neighbor – unless he’s a FAG!” or “all the shit you’re doing is just fine, so feel free to rag on all the ways those guys fall short in their conduct.” And of course the final kicker, which is it’s made clear over and over and over again that judging and punishment for sin is God’s job, though we as humans have found that sin aside, some actions so infringe on others that we need to punish them while we’re here in this world, like murder, rape, robbery, etc. And it would seem that presuming to take God’s job upon oneself to carry out is not only a monumental diss to God, like he can’t take care of it without your assist, but it also calls into question your so-called “faith,” because if you REALLY believe there is this all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful figure, then you wouldn’t believe he needs your help in punishing someone else for something that isn’t hurting you in any provable way.
That’s how I always handle fundies on the topic of homosexuality – not by attacking the book they claim to follow and hold as infalliable, but by saying, “well, it says this and this and this,” and “you can’t both believe in an omnipotent God and at the same time believe that he’s deputized you to be his enforcer when he’s said the opposite several times in that infalliable book.”
It’s a much more polite way of calling someone a fucking hypocrite without saying “you’re a fucking hypocrite.” But beyond that, it shows up how indefensible using their religion is as an excuse for their bigotry, whether they admit it or not. I have “turned” at least one Christian through a discussion that started out with what I outlined above and then went quite a bit deeper, but she was a really smart, self-confident lady who was not a hard-core fundamentalist – but that conversation would have never happened if I had said “it’s bullshit.”
Sorry that was so long.
Rathskeller
@Southern Beale: No, the video showed many more than that. Couldn’t say how many, as I was paying attention to Savage.
Speaking as a former Christian, I never really read the bible until I did so as an atheist, in college classes. I’m sure many of them really were offended.
boctaoe
@PeakVT: I think Dan lost a golden opportunity to talk of bias in journalism, looking thru a religious lens about everything,etc. but he lost them all with “bullshit”
Friday Jones
@jl: Ready for a knitting story? Today, I was at my LYS (local yarn store) and a yarn rep was in there, pushing yarn. The rep produced a really neat looking ball of yarn that happened to be a linen/wool blend. (Discussion ensued about the unusual size and feel of the yarn.) At this point, the owner of the LYS, holding the skein, said, “But what would we use it for?” I piped up, “Prayer Shawl!” Yep, going to hell for that one.