A Response to, and Challenge to, Dan Savage

Dan Savage’s Attack on the Bible and Christian Sexual Ethics

Dan Savage appeared at a high school journalism conference recently to discuss bullying of homosexuals. In the process, Mr. Savage launched into about a three-minute diatribe against the Bible and the bull that the Bible contains.

I'm not using his actual terminology. In the course of his comments, a number of dozens of students got up and left his presentation as, of course, they had the right to do and was perfectly appropriate for them to do, even though Mr. Savage then savaged them for having done so.

Of course, if the tables had been turned and it was students protesting someone saying something about homosexuality, well, they would have been heroes. But the double standard that is now, well, quite fully accepted and, in fact, enforced in most of the mainstream media in our land is clear in Mr. Savage's thinking.

I would like to point out that at the very end of this clip, he said something that really demonstrates the thesis that he's operating on. Here's his words specifically. I have a right to defend myself, he said, and to point out the hypocrisy, there's the key term, the hypocrisy of people who justify anti-gay bigotry by pointing to the Bible and insisting that we must live by the code of Leviticus on this one issue and no other.

So please note, according to Mr. Savage, to disagree with him on a moral issue, on the morality of sexual behavior that is homosexual in nature, whether male homosexuality or lesbianism. To disagree with Mr. Savage on this is to be a bigot.

Where is the middle ground? Where is the place where you can have a principled, historic, even Christian understanding of sexuality, the fact that it's defined by God and therefore to go against what God defines is to go against the very source of life and hence to decrease life, to decrease happiness, to damage the human being.

That doesn't seem to be even a possibility anymore, you're not even allowed to say that. The very moral foundation upon which this nation, speaking of the United States right now, Western culture as a whole once stood, is not even allowed to be discussed any longer.

It's not even a part of the discussion. That's truly an amazing thing to consider. But notice no one is seeking to justify anti-gay bigotry if by bigotry we mean that which contains no thought, has no foundation.

The problem is most pro-homosexual activists today don't want to allow the term bigotry to have its historical meaning, as with so many other words they want to redefine these things so that the Christian position, an honest position, a moral position, is automatically identified as being bigotry.

Now of course from my perspective I would say that Dan Savage in his comments was grossly bigoted. I see tremendous bigotry in the mishandling of the information and the misrepresentation of things and the lack of serious interaction with Christian scholarship.

But again, in our society today, that doesn't matter. All one side has to do is say, I'm offended, I'm offended, well I was offended by what Dan Savage had to say. But I'm not calling for Dan Savage to be silenced, I'm not calling for Dan Savage to be censored, but he and people like him will call upon people like myself to be silenced and censored.

The hypocrisy therefore is very much on one side. But to the primary assertion here, by pointing to the Bible and insisting that we must live by the code of Leviticus on this one issue and no other, is that a true statement?

Is that what serious Christianity is about? If Mr. Savage wants to say, well I'm only talking about people who call themselves Christians but don't for a second seriously deal with the Bible, I suppose he could get away with saying that, but that would be the only people that his comments would be relevant to.

And I don't think that's what he communicated to his audience. Because you see, when you consider the code of Leviticus, there are some of us that actually study the code of Leviticus and the relationship between the law of the Old Testament and that of the New Testament, and types and shadows and fulfillment.

And we recognize ceremonial law, and we recognize law that specifically defined the people of Israel over against the other nations, and yet we also recognize the moral law. And we struggle with these things, and we study these things, and we see the law in fulfillment, and we really give deep consideration to these things, and if you listen to Mr. Savage, we don't exist.

We're not out here anywhere. Because you see, the code of Leviticus, I just went through just briefly and listed some of the elements of the code of Leviticus, and it sort of surprises me that Mr. Savage would make a statement like this when the code of Leviticus is very easily available to anybody, isn't it?

I mean, the Bible's pretty generally available. It's in every library I've ever seen, and most hotel rooms I've been at. And so, I just looked at the code of Leviticus, and I summarized just some of the things that we find therein, and so we ask ourselves the question, is anyone insisting we must live by the code of Leviticus in this one issue and no other?

What's in the code of Leviticus? Love of neighbor as oneself. In fact, Jesus quoted that over and over again. Prohibitions against all forms of incest and bestiality. Prohibition of child sacrifice, a common element of ancient pagan religious experience.

Exhortations to honor father and mother and the sanctity of the marriage relationship. Provision for the poor of the land on behalf of those who are blessed with material wealth. Prohibitions against theft, fraud, perjury, and the mistreatment of hired workers.

Prohibitions of the mistreatment of the handicapped, including the blind and the deaf. Prohibitions against injustice and exhortations to honesty and uprightness in the judiciary system. Prohibitions against slander and dishonesty, cursing of others in your society, taking vengeance and acting in an unloving way toward others.

Prohibitions against prostitution, sorcery, magic, exhortations to honor the elderly in the society. Commandments to treat the sojourner and the alien with equity, justice, and compassion. And finally, commandments to have just balances and hence honesty in business and commerce.

Mr. Savage tells us that these people, they only think we should believe and practice the code of Leviticus in one thing, it's condemnation of homosexuality. Well, there's 12 things that I don't think almost anybody would argue against as being moral, upright, and just, and yet that's part of the code of Leviticus.

And so, the very thesis that Mr. Savage offered is rather easily refuted. He likewise identified the Bible as a pro-slavery document and said that on the easiest moral issue the Bible failed. And once again, given that the audience, he could assume that when he used the term slavery with the audience that he was addressing, they would automatically think of American slavery, the slavery of the South prior to the Civil War, for example.

He certainly must be aware of the fact that the slavery that is spoken of in the Hebrew scriptures, specifically in the Old Testament, is very, very different than the slavery in the Old South. He would have to, if he was honest with the text, recognize that slavery was a last-ditch effort for survival, that the economy could not produce sufficient food for people on the very fringe.

And so, if a man and his family were to get to the point where they could no longer even find food, then that was the last-ditch effort. It was a, in essence, a safety net. And of course, given the year of Jubilee, it could not be a permanent situation unless provision was provided that if a person found his master, and again, don't interpret that in Old South, but in the Hebrew context, to be one that the person loved and wished to remain with, you could actually make it a permanent situation if that person so freely chose to make it.

That's not the same thing as either the Roman slavery of the New Testament period or the slavery found in America in the 19th century. And so, there are different situations that the Bible addresses. Doesn't Mr. Savage know this?

Doesn't Mr. Savage recognize that, for example, to criticize Paul's letter to Philemon, as he does, is to basically state that Christianity, if it would be something he'd respect, had to be a revolutionary religion right from the start, that it had to try to overthrow the Roman system, Roman economic and governmental system, for it to be something that Dan Savage is going to respect.

In other words, Christianity could not be something that was meant for every nation and every economic system and every governmental system. It wasn't supposed to be something that could transcend those barriers of language and society and government and be something that exists over time.

Basically, it sounds like Dan Savage was saying, Christianity needs to be, well, like Islam and bring an entire social order with it, one that, well, Dan Savage would like. Now, really, honestly, would Dan Savage like what Paul had to say if he had tried to overthrow slavery but still said what he said about homosexuality?

Probably not. But it does seem rather odd and strange that he would take that kind of a perspective and not tell the whole story about what the Bible really does teach on this and think about the necessity of the Bible dealing with all sorts of different contexts.

It's real easy to sit back in a modern context and take pot shots, but that's not how serious scholarship is done and that's not how serious argumentation should be done either. Now, another rather interesting element of Mr. Savage's presentation was maybe in the part that didn't get posted all over the place, he did talk about this.

Something tells me if he did, it would have made a lot of news. But there are passages in the Bible that specifically identify homosexuality as toevah, an abomination before God, and Paul then picks that up in Romans 1, 1 Corinthians, 1 Timothy, etc.

But, I am not aware of any homosexual ever having been stoned to death in the United States by Christians. I don't think that's ever happened. And yet, it happens every single day, I think, or at least every single week, maybe every single month in the Islamic world today, in the modern period, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, in Middle Eastern countries, in Saudi Arabia, and places like that, you have this going on all the time.

In fact, here in the Koran, we have these words. And Lot, remember when he said to his people, this is Surah 7, Ayah 80. And Lot, remember when he said to his people, will you commit foulness such as no creature ever did before you?

For you come with lust to men instead of women. You are indeed a transgressing people. And his people gave no response but this, drive them out of your city, they are people who keep themselves pure. And we rescued him and his household, except his wife, who was of those who were destroyed, and we rained a rain upon them.

See how was the end of the criminals. You can also see Surah 26 and a number of other texts in the Koran that is very, very clear and still being practiced. And yet, I don't hear nearly as much commentary from homosexual apologists about these texts from the Koran as I do from the Bible.

Now, they might say, well, it hasn't had as much influence here. Okay. But what about overseas? What about in those other places? What about in the modern period? I'd be interested in Mr. Savage's response in light of the fact that he was the one who in front of high school students accused Christians of hypocrisy for allegedly only wanting to follow one element of Leviticus code, and we found at least 12 elements of Leviticus code that are just part and parcel of basic moral behavior of any civilized country.

I'm not aware as to whether Mr. Savage does moderated public debates or not, but I wonder if he'd be willing to do so. I've debated John Shelby Spong and Barry Lynn on this subject of homosexuality, so we've demonstrated that we can do it in a scholarly and fair fashion.

I've debated a number of other well-known agnostics, atheists, liberals, such as John Dominic Cross and Marcus Borg, Bart Ehrman, done over 100 moderated public debates, and I wonder if Dan Savage would be willing to defend the things he has said about the Bible against someone who has taught Greek and Hebrew and church history and systematic theology.

I have a feeling we could probably find a venue, I have a feeling we could probably find some folks out there that would be willing to help make that happen. And so I wonder if Mr. Savage only limits his rhetoric to high school students and MSNBC, or whether he'd actually put himself in a position where you'd have a controlled environment, you'd have equal amounts of time, you'd have cross-examination, and you'd have scholarship being brought to bear.

Interesting question that I'd love to find an answer to. Thanks for watching.