WARNING: Not for younger readers

My article on Dan Savage’s upcoming speaking engagement at Elmhurst College was posted and sent out late Monday afternoon. By early Tuesday morning, we discovered that several of Savage’s YouTube videos had been “removed by the user,” including two of the videos for which I had provided links in my article. One of those is the video in which Savage savages Christians in general and Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins in particular, using hateful, vulgar language.

Subsequently, I discovered that a Savage video I had referenced in an earlier article has been removed also. That one was titled “How to Come Out to Your Evangelical Family.”

Since multiple videos in which Savage discusses perverse sexual practices in obscene language remain on YouTube, it appears that the videos that have been removed are those in which Savage expresses virulent anti-Christian bigotry using language so hateful, he makes Reverend Fred Phelps look like a choir boy.

Elmhurst College administrators must be happy about the removal of these videos, since they’ve been busy doing damage control in the past few days over their foolish decision to invite Savage to speak at Hammerschmidt Chapel this Sunday.

Elmhurst College’s Managing Director of Public Affairs, Desiree Chen, is sending out this letter to critics of Dan Savage’s invitation:

Many of our speakers are controversial to one segment of society or another, and Mr. Savage is no exception. While we understand that Mr. Savage writes a newspaper column that deals with provocative topics and sometimes addresses them in debatable ways, the column is not why he was invited to speak here, and is not the topic of his presentation.

Mr. Savage will talk about the It Gets Better Project, which he created in 2010 in response to a number of heartbreaking incidents in which young students took their own lives after being bullied in schools across the country. Mr. Savage’s project invites mature people to create online videos that support and reassure young people facing harassment. The videos are specifically aimed at struggling lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth. Their message is one of hope for a life of dignity in a society that needs their service and perspective. The Project has led to the creation of more than 40,000 videos, which have been viewed more than 40 million times.

It is important to note that an invitation to speak at Elmhurst College does not represent an unqualified institutional endorsement of everything the speaker says or does, here or elsewhere. We ask a speaker to come here because we believe that he or she has something significant to say that is worthy of the consideration of our campus and the larger community. Not everyone will agree with all of our selections; but we do try to achieve a balance of thought-provoking speakers and topics.

What remarkably euphemistic, reductive language and compartmentalization Ms. Chen employs in the service of defending the indefensible. Savage’s advocacy for extramarital sexual dalliances and  his lighthearted approval of using excretory functions as sexual practices are merely “provocative topics” and calling Christians “bat sh*t, a**h*le, dou**ebags” is merely a “debatable way” of talking about theological differences.

Does Ms. Chen believe that Reverend Fred Phelps’ similarly hateful beliefs about homosexuals constitute merely a “provocative topic” and that the rhetoric Phelps uses to describe them is merely a “debatable way” to talk about that topic?

Chen, speaking for the Elmhurst College administration, goes on to defend Savage’s invitation based on the fact that he was not invited to talk about his sexual ideology. Rather, Elmhurst invited him to speak about his much-viewed “It Gets Better” online video project, which she asserts promises “hope for a life of dignity.”

Chen is asserting as fact the disputable notion that telling hurting kids that embracing a homosexual life offers them hope for a life of dignity. Many, however, would argue that the embrace of a homosexual life effaces human dignity and compromises human flourishing. 

Moreover, neither the number of video submissions, nor the number of viewings mean that the project is a good one or  justify hiring a speaker who uses the very same kind of ugly, hateful, bigoted language that he claims hurts teens. What utter hypocrisy to invite a man to speak against bullying who calls people “bat sh*t, a**h*le, dou**ebags” and who recently called teens “pansies” who walked out during one of his anti-Christian rants.

Even those who believe that the “It Gets Better” project has value should be able to see that Savage’s other public work is so corrosive , so puerile, so hateful, and so obscene as to render him a lousy advocate for a life of dignity and a woefully unsuitable guest speaker.

I wonder if in the service of exploring provocative topics and trying to “achieve balance,” Elmhurst College will invite a speaker to explore ideas that oppose Savage’s, preferably in less “debatable ways.” 

I wonder too how much Elmhurst College paid Savage.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact Elmhurst College President Dr. S. Alan Ray in protest of this event.

WARNING: Not for younger readers

Let’s hope that audience members at the Dan Savage speaking engagement this coming Sunday, April 29, 2012 at Elmhurst College demonstrate the good sense and courage that several high school students recently demonstrated.

Dan Savage, the vulgar, vitriol-spewing, homosexual sex columnist was for some bizarre reason invited to be the Friday keynote speaker at a national convention for high school journalism students held in Seattle, Washington last week.

Savage, being Savage, employed his usual anti-religious, obscene rhetoric, and when some offended high school students walked out, the middle-aged Savage called them “pansies.”

In the convention’s program, Savage is described as a “popular, sex advice columnist” who offers “frank, funny advice on sex and relationships” and “creates a safe space for all audiences to discuss ‘taboo’ topics.” Two things to note: 1. The event planners knew exactly what they were getting in hiring Savage for an event for high school students. 2. In academia, a “safe space” means a place where volitional homosexuality must be affirmed as moral. The presence of any dissenting ideas renders a space “unsafe.”

After Savage’s presentation, faculty adviser for students from Overland Park, Kansas, Jim Mccrossen, told his students that “‘it is important to be challenged in what you believe because you never become stronger in anything if you are not challenged.'” When I worked at Deerfield High School, English teacher Jeff Berger-White made this same claim in our local press when defending his decision to teach the obscene, homosexuality-affirming play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes by homosexual playwright Tony Kushner:

‘There are going to be times during their years in high school, if we (teachers) are doing are (sic) jobs well, when most students should feel intellectually, emotionally, and even morally challenged.’ 

Some questions emerge from these teachers’ claims: First, is it really the job of public high school teachers to challenge students emotionally and morally? Second, if it is, how often do teachers in public schools provide resources or activities that challenge “progressive” views of homosexuality? How often do they have students read essays by scholars who dissent from the views of Dan Savage or Tony Kushner? How many students have read an essay by Princeton law professor Robert George or Providence College English professor Anthony Esolen or Amherst professor Hadley Arkes? How many students have read any essays at all by a conservative scholar on topics related to homosexuality?

Dan Savage’s signature project, the effort for which he is most well-known, is the “It Gets Better” Campaign in which actors, politicians, and ordinary people affirm homosexuality while telling hurting kids who experience same-sex attraction that life will get better. This has the superficial gloss of a positive message but is based on foundational assumptions that are ultimately socially irresponsible, intellectually bankrupt, and an affront to human dignity — the very opposite of the values Elmhurst College claims to hold.

Here are some of the values and visions that Elmhurst College affirms:

Mission

Elmhurst College inspires its students…to prepare for …ethical work in a multicultural, global society. … [W]e foster learning, broaden knowledge, and enrich culture through…scholarship.

Vision for the Future

Elmhurst College …asks our students to become… academically grounded, intellectually engaged, and socially responsible citizens, who understand and respect the diversity of the world’s cultures and peoples.

Core Values

Intellectual Excellence
We value intellectual freedom, curiosity, and engagement; [and] rigorous debate.

Community
We are committed to… mutual respect among all persons…and fairness and integrity in all that we do.

Stewardship
We are committed stewards of the human, fiscal, and physical resources entrusted to us.

Faith, Meaning, and Values
We value the development of the human spirit in its many forms and the exploration of life’s ultimate questions through dialogue and service. We value religious freedom and its expressions on campus. Grounded in our own commitments and traditions as well as those of the United Church of Christ, we cherish values that create lives of intellectual excellence, strong community, social responsibility, and committed stewardship.

Let’s see if Dan Savage reflects the mission of Elmhurst College to prepare students for “ethical work”; or its vision to have students become “academically grounded” and socially responsible citizens who “respect the diversity of the world’s peoples”; or the college’s core values regarding “mutual respect,” “integrity,” “intellectual excellence,” and “social responsibility.”

Here are some quotes from Savage (with links to videos, lest anyone think I’m cherry-picking quotes or pulling them out of context):

He describes conservative Christians like “Tony Perkins” as “right-wing, fundamentalist, bat sh*t, a**h*le, dou**ebag Christians,” and as the “Evangelical Taliban Christian Family Association.” He also tells “progressive” Christians to start “screaming in Tony Perkins’ face.”  I wonder if such rhetoric creates a “safe space” for people who hold orthodox, historical theological beliefs?

Even with asterisks, I can’t repeat what Savage says at his speaking engagements. If you choose to watch the ones we’ve provided links to, bear in mind that Savage has an adopted son who was between 10-12 years old when Savage was saying things publicly that no father should say even privately (WARNING—GRAPHIC,  OBSCENE LANGUAGE):  HERE, HERE,  HERE, HERE and HERE.  (UPDATE:  We discovered last night that a number of Savage’s YouTube videos were removed after this article was published.)

What is ironic is that after Rush Limbaugh used offensive language to describe a feminist activist, the Obama Administration took him to task, but even Dan Savage’s well-documented history of referring to conservative Christians as “bat sh*t, a**h*le, d**chebags” and advocating the most perverse sexual practices in the most foul language doesn’t stop President Obama from inviting him to the White House.

Elmhurst College claims to value “rigorous debate,” the “exploration of life’s ultimate questions through dialogue,” intellectual engagement, and diversity. If so, will the college be inviting speakers who espouse different views of the nature and morality of homosexuality than Savage and who do so in a different manner, that is to say, without obscene language that degrades rather than develops the human spirit.

Savage’s invitation seems to be part of a larger effort on the part of Elmhurst College to promote arguable assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexuality. Some months ago, Elmhurst College made the national news for being the first college in the nation to ask on its college application whether applicants identify as homosexual, bisexual, or transgender. The administration defended this question by asserting an offensive and absurd comparison of race to conditions constituted by subjective desire and volitional sexual acts.

In so doing, Elmhurst College administrators reveal their own ignorance. And by promoting contemporary ideas about “LGBT identity,” they reveal their theological heresy — not that theological orthodoxy is important to Elmhurst College, which bears virtually no imprint of its theological heritage. But boy oh boy does it proudly show the mark of sexual unorthodoxy to which even pedagogical soundness must bow in obeisance.

Elmhurst College’s Hammerschmidt Memorial Chapel, which once echoed with the thoughtful, civil voices of Elie Weisel and Martin Luther King Jr., will now be polluted by the odious rhetoric of Dan Savage.