Dan Savage speaks at the University of North Texas on Tuesday. (Patrick Hoffman)
DANIEL VILLARREAL | Contributing Writer
DENTON — “Every time LGBT bullying kills a kid, Tony Perkins gets up from his desk and dances a jig,” sex-advice-columnist-turned-LGBT youth advocate Dan Savage said of the anti-gay Family Research Council president during Savage’s keynote speech at the 12th Annual University of North Texas Equity and Diversity Conference on Tuesday.
“Every LGBT youth suicide for them is a victory, a rhetorical and moral victory,” Savage added.
When some LGBT teenagers come out to their parents, Savage said, the parents do “what the Christian right tells them to do”— cut them off financially and emotionally, disown them, turn them out into the streets or send them to camps meant to “turn them straight,” often repeating the lies spread by so-called Christian groups like the Family Research Council — which say that LGBT people are child-molesting sexual predators whose mere existence threatens families and the very survival of the planet (a line uttered by the Pope just this last month).
Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, hoped to counteract the lethal effect of such anti-LGBT attitudes when they started the It Gets Better (IGB) video campaign in September 2010. They thought that user-created videos encouraging LGBT youth to keep living might stem the epidemic of bullying-related LGBT suicides that killed 10 teenage boys that month alone.
As the number of user-uploaded videos for IGB quickly rose from 200 in the first week to the current count of more than 30,000 videos (viewed more than 40 million times internationally), Savage came to realize that IGB had effectively placed an LGBT youth support group in the pocket of every teenager with a cell phone — no matter their geographic location or their family’s prejudices.
But while applauding the program’s success in potentially saving lives and giving children hope that their parents might one day accept them as other parents in IGB videos have, Savage admitted to the crowd made up mostly of students that the It Gets Better project can’t end bullying.
“[However, that] does not excuse or preclude us from doing more …” Savage continued, “from confronting bullies, from holding schools and teachers and preachers and parents responsible for what they do or don’t do or fail to do for LGBT kids in pain.”
That’s why Savage’s project has supported Sen. Al Franken’s Student Non-Discrimination Act as well as the efforts of groups like the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, the Trevor Project and the American Civil Liberties Union.
“[The Trevor Project] is there to talk kids off the ledge,” Savage said, “GLSEN is there to make sure there are fewer kids in our schools climbing out onto that ledge and the ACLU is there sue the crap out of schools that push kids onto that ledge.”
Citing studies from the University of Illinois and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Savage said rates of teenage suicide (LGBT and straight) and sexual violence against girls is much higher in schools where anti-LGBT bullying is tolerated — in short, that anti-LGBT bullying makes schools unsafe for everyone. And yet the religious right continues to oppose campaigns against anti-LGBT bullying as “indoctrination.”
Quoting Johann Hari, a writer with UK-based The Independent, Savage said:
Being subjected to bullying and violence as children and teenagers makes gay people unusually vulnerable to depression and despair. The homophobes then use that depression and despair to claim that homosexuality is inherently a miserable state – and we shouldn’t do anything that might “encourage” it.
However, Savage asserts that he isn’t hostile to religion, citing his good relationship with his Catholic father and the fact that his last act of love for his mother as she lay dying in an Arizona hospital bed was to find a priest to initiate her last rites.
But instead of letting kids act out the violence of their adult role-models who bash gays at the pulpit and the ballot box, Savage called on school members to actively oppose anti-LGBT bullying and on liberal and more progressive Christians to stop “the complicit silence … aiding them and abetting [the religious right] in their crimes.”
and every time a bi, trans, or ethnic kid commits suicide, Dan Savage says “oh well.”
Savage nailed this one. When newspapers or news sites report on a gay person’s suicide the comments area soon fills with things like “He’s in hell. Ha ha ha” or “Good, another fag is dead”. And those are not the sickest I’ve seen when reading comments on the death of a gay person.
Its disgusting.
Savage is lying through his teeth, as usual. That man is so dishonest and so full of hate, I have no idea why any organization would consider him a good spokesman for anything. Come on, all you LGBT people, can’t you do better than this?
We are closing schools, laying people off. Families are being foreclosed on and being put out in the streets. And all Santorum, running for President can talk about is who is Gay. We need to start looking at what is best for the country. We are not in high school any more. Hello!!! Yes it is a good way to raise money. But I think the Republicans have a “gay agenda”, more than the gay community has. They have nothing to say, so they go for the gay! It will be a dark day for ALL of us if this man wins.
Dan Savage is a vile bomb thrower, who incites anger for unfounded reasons. It’s his opinion, not fact. Sorry he’s an GLBT spokeperson…bad representation.
Dan, I love you. Keep doing what you’re doing. How anyone could be flippant about this guy’s rage at kids being brutalized and eventually committing suicide, being turned, by him and his husband, into a hugely successful worldwide campaign of awareness and support for these kids when they need it, when they often have nowhere to turn … Seriously, people. This guy has acknowledged many times that kids other than LGBT kids are bullied – the difference is that, especially in religious households and communites, the non-LGBT kids have someone they can turn to who will support them. Because of the garbage spewed by the church, the LGBT kids often do not. And that is why their suicide rates are so much higher. There aren’t any “lies” here. Nor any “bomb throwing”.
Marguerite there are several lies here. Unfortunately you believe the same lie he does so you don’t get it. This reads as if the only bullying that goes on is from Christians. I assure you if you go into some of the schools it isn’t the Christians that are bullying. And if you went to many of the churches right here in the metroplex you would find that most pastorsnare’nt “spewing” hate either. Sure there are idiots from all walks of life that “spew hate” but it is unfair of you and Dan to act as if the only problem these kids have is there “Christian” family… Everyone should practice tolerance not just the people that disagree with your point of view.
Wrenegade, if there are “several lies here,” what are they? And where does Savage or the article suggest that the “only” bullying is from Christians? You’ve failed to back up your allegations. I read Dan Savage’s column regularly, and he has clarified several times that he isn’t saying only Christians are responsible for bullying.
Look at who this article leads off with: Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. Perkins’ actions can hardly be considered Christian, despite his claims to the contrary. He lies so much that his FRC has been identified as a hate group for misrepresenting and demonizing LGBT people. The article calls groups like the FRC “SO-CALLED Christian groups.”
Far from saying the “only” bullying is from Christians, this article seems to question whether people who incite bullying could be Christian in the first place. After all, they’re behaving in a very un-Christlike way.
Lies, Matt? Let’s start with “Every time LGBT bullying kills a kid, Tony Perkins gets up from his desk and dances a jig.” And this:
“Every LGBT youth suicide for them is a victory, a rhetorical and moral victory.”
You mention backing up allegations. Well, Savage engages in egregious character assassination, and fails to offer any evidence that what he’s saying is true. I know nothing about Perkins, but I spent a few minutes on the FRC website, and a few more searching for him on the web. Obviously, if he had ever said anything remotely like either of those horrendous statements, it would be splattered everywhere. But I found . . . nothing–except, of course, Savage’s unfounded allegations.
This is or should be a discussion of ideas, of worldviews, of philosophies. Instead, Savage is just slinging mud. An ad hominem attack is a logical fallacy even when it’s true. When it’s not even true, it’s a double failure.
PUD for your 411 its not GLBT its LGBT