Sex and love columnist Dan Savage is not usually one to mince words, particularly when speaking out for gay rights — and during a recent Winona University talk, Savage laid into a few notable people who have spoken out against gay rights and, as Savage explained, created an environment in which gay children are far more prone to suicide.
While Dan Savage’s words are (as always) quite blunt, the advice writer always manages to convey his point emphatically and with a level of illustration shier speakers lack when driving the message home — and drive it home he does.
The clip of Savage speaking and eviscerating people like the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins as well as politician Michele Bachmann was posted by conservative activist group CampusReform.org , but the response has been largely supportive of Savage.
In the profanity laden clip, Savage begins:
“Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council — First of all, they tell, Tony Perkins tells parents whose kids come out to reject them. Tony Perkins tells the parents of queer kids to do what Tony Perkins damn well knows drives those kids to suicide — doubles their already quadruple rate of suicide.”
Savage continues:
“Why would someone who calls themselves a Christian do that? Because every dead gay kid is a victory for the Family Research Council. They argue that the gay lifestyle is sick and sinful and dangerous and they point to the suicide rate, and then they turn around and do everything in their power to make sure that suicide rate does not come down and to drive it up. Tony Perkins sits on a pile of dead gay kids every day when he goes to work — and he calls himself a Christian.”
He concludes:
“I don’t understand how real Christians let that little f***er get away with that.”
It wasn’t just the Family Research Council, designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, who Savage took issue with — the writer also laid into Bachmann and her husband, saying:
“We will always have ignorant d***s like Michele Bachmann and her f** husband.”
You can watch Dan Savage’s talk at Winona University below — do you agree with his remarks?