Savage Causes Students to Walk Out of Anti-bullying Conference

According to the report, students from various high schools, including some Christian schools, were attending the National High School Journalism Conference, sponsored by the Journalism Education Association and the National Scholastic Press Association.  Dan Savage, writer of sex advice column “Savage Love” and founder of the anti-bulling campaign “It Gets Better,” was a speaker at the conference.  Having seen some of Savage’s rather explicit, if not raunchy, work before, I found this to be an odd choice to address high school students in the first place, but his “It Gets Better” campaign has been a big hit…so okay.

Savage was supposed to be discussing anti-bullying and his “It Gets Better” campaign, but quickly went from the discusser to the offender. As Savage ranted, cursed, name-called, and attacked the Bible and those that believe its’ contents, over 100 students mustered the courage to peacefully walk out of the conference. “Pansy asses,” he called the students that would hear no more.

One journalism advisor in the audience described the environment as hostile, especially for Christians, and remarked that the sexual innuendo and vulgarity wasn’t appropriate for the age group in the audience.
A 17-year-old high school student from the audience told CitizenLink that Savage opened with a comment about birth control and went on to say that Christians use certain books in the Bible to say that being gay is wrong, but ignore all the (BLEEP) going on in the Bible.

It’s hypocrisy and irony at their best that the defender of bully victims would use bullying as a defense mechanism. How’s anyone supposed to realize that bullying what/who you don’t agree with is the wrong way when bullying is the tactic used to teach the lesson? They won’t!

Even worse than the actual incident was the National Scholastic Press Association’s reaction to the event.  Instead of chastising Savage and making it crystal clear that Savage’s remarks were completely unacceptable, they opted for a whitewash of the incident. The association issued no apology. They only wished Savage would’ve stayed on point, but noted that it provided a teachable moment for the students. Really, a teachable moment? The only thing these students were taught is that Savage is a hypocrite and people in authority are perfectly willing to “overlook” or ignore bad behavior so long as the cause is good.