Savage

I feel compelled to respond to a couple of canards from Dan Savage’s classless tirade that caused Christian students to walk out of a presentation that was supposed to decry bullying.  

Much has already been written about the inconsistency of a speaker on the topic of bullying calling those who had the courage to walk out on his ignorant and foul-mouthed nonsense en masse “wimps”.   One wonders why the organizers of a conference for high school students on journalism would invite a guy who used crass and slanderous intimidation to slander Rick Santorum and licked doorknobs while ill in hopes of infecting Gary Bauer to speak as an expert on preventing bullying, but that is another discussion. 

I’ll not delve into issues of tone, the ethics of his presentation, and speculation about what it is that drives this guy.  I’ll just respond to some specific ideas.

Savage, like many others, beats the dead horse that Christians are supposedly inconsistent in objecting to certain sexual practices because we eat shellfish or wear clothes made from two different kinds of cloth in violation of Old Testament law.  So, we pick and choose which laws we want to live by.  Said Savage "we can learn to ignore the bulls**t in the Bible about gay people the same way that we have learned to ignore the bulls**t in the bible about shellfish; about slavery; about dinner; about farming; about menstruation; about virginity; about masturbation...we ignore bulls**t in the Bible about all sorts of things".  His point is that since we no longer adhere to Old Testament laws about diet, cleanliness, purity and civil matters we should no longer pay attention to prohibitions of certain sexual behaviors.

The response to this is relatively straightforward, but admittedly is not entirely simple.


First of all, "we" is not defined.  Is he trying to say all Jews have decided being Kosher is passe?  I think that would be a surprise to many rabbi's worldwide.

As for Christians, we don’t keep many Old Testament regulations for a very simple reason:  We were told not to by the Apostles.

 In short, for Christians since about the middle of the first century, the covenant of Moses was superseded by a New Covenant and mosaic regulations were declared obsolete.  So the decision to abandon some Old Testament regulations was made not by 20^th century Christians, but by the authors of the New Testament.

The basis of the distinction is simple, the application of it is a bit more difficult, but not insurmountably so.  There were different kinds of laws and regulations in the Old Testament.  Some were requirements related to the theocratic government of the nation of Israel.  Some were regulations that surrounded temple worship.  Some were practices designed to set Jews apart as separate and distinct from the surrounding cultures.  And some were broad moral principles.

We do not live in Israel and do not live in a theocracy.  I'm not sure Christians could not keep certain civil laws if we wanted to.  We don’t have sanctuary cities for the accused for example, but do have other safeguards to protect the innocent from false accusations.  We don’t literally practice an “eye for an eye”, but we have gleaned the broad principle from it that the punishment should fit the crime.

Regarding the temple laws, we don’t sacrifice pigeons and goats because we are repeatedly and specifically told in the New Testament that Christ is the “Lamb of God” and his "once-for-all" sacrifice supersedes all that and need never be repeated.  So temple regulations go by the wayside.

As for other “holiness” laws like diet and dress, there may be room for debate over some specific instances, but Peter’s vision of clean and unclean animals in Acts chapter 10 and the specific command to no longer be bound by “clean” and “unclean” pretty much puts an end to rules that are primarily about cleanliness and separation from pagan culture, but are not specifically moral.  So yes, we eat pork and shellfish.

So, one might ask, why do Christians obey any laws in the Old Testament at all?   Again, because certain moral laws are reaffirmed in the New Testament as still binding in spite of others being declared obsolete.  We are told not only in the Old Testament, but in the New as well not to fornicate, not to commit adultery, murder, steal or falsely testify about others.  We are told to care for the poor and to provide for our families.   And we are told to teach moral truths to our children.  There are broad moral principles that remain unchanged - stated in part in the 10 commandments and repeatedly reaffirmed in the New Testament as part of the expectations of the New Covenant instituted by Christ.  We are no longer bound by the Old, but we are bound by the New.  And we believe that though dietary laws and temple regulations are not universal, moral principles are - they are of benefit not only to the religious, but to society at large.

Come to think of it, do the defenders of the gay agenda really want us to abandon all Old Testament laws?  Do they want us to disregard Old Testament laws about murder because we have given up the prohibition on eating pork or shellfish?  Do they want us to feel no compunction about stealing because laws about wearing garments made of two kinds of cloth seem silly?   If we disregard Old Testament prohibitions on same-sex activity because we no longer follow dietary, theocratic and temple regulations, then should we also disregard laws against perjury, adultery and greed?

Savage chides "“Most people that you wind up arguing with about religion and homosexuality have not ever read the Bible without their, you know, moron glasses on.”  In reality, Savage’s utter lack of understanding of the Christianity he trashes should be absolutely laughable were it not for the level of ignorance about Christianity in the media and the biblical illiteracy in the culture at large.   It is the rough equivalent of saying one should disregard the Constitution because some western monarchies once proposed the divine right of kings.  The connection Savage tries to draw was explicitly severed twenty centuries ago, so his argument fails miserably.

But to be clear.   The same New Testament authors who documented the New Covenant, who insisted Gentile Christians are not bound by Jewish dietary or ceremonial laws insisted that homosexual activity is still forbidden and is still a symptom of a larger disease – rebellion against the creator – which leads to foolish thinking about many things, including sex.

There are many reasons to oppose certain sexual practices – the emotional and financial stability of a healthy marriage, the well-being of children born as a result of sexual union, concerns over health and sexually transmitted disease, issues related to jealousy and rivalry, care of women as they age, and more.  Savage’s venomous, callous and bullying attempt to portray opposition to his particular lifestyle as nothing more than irrational adherence to outdated religious “bull***” is cheap, misleading and vacuous.   Perhaps that is why he feels the need to bully high school students with profane insults rather than actually deal with what Christianity really teaches.