Punching the Nose of a Bully Does Not Make You a Bully

A week ago Dan Savage gave a speech at Winona State University. In part, he said:

LGBT kids are four times greater risk of suicide. Tony Perkins advises the parents of LGBT kids to reject their children. LGBT kids who are rejected by their parents are at eight times greater risk of suicide. Perkins is aware of these studies and yet he actively encourages the parents of LGBT kids to do what Perkins knows will push those kids closer to suicide. The Family Research Council promotes anti-gay bullying in homes and opposes all efforts to combat anti-gay bullying in schools. (Here's Perkins on the "It Gets Better" Project: "According to Perkins, [the campaign] is "appalling," "disgusting," and an attempt to "recruit" kids into a perverted and "immoral" "lifestyle.")

Tony Perkins and the FRC point to the LGBT youth suicide rate as proof that the "gay lifestyle" is dangerous and unhealthy… while at the same time doing everything in their power to drive up that suicide rate.

Tony Perkins sits on a pile of dead gay kids

This of course, got all the usual right wing nut jobs panties in a bunch and the unquestionably heterosexual Tony Perkins responded:

Hate-filled leftist gay activist Dan Savage was at it again last Thursday. In a presentation at Winona State University in Minnesota, Savage went on another vulgarity-laden tirade in front of students this time saying that "every dead gay kid is a victory for the Family Research Council" and that "Tony Perkins sits on a pile of dead gay kids every day when he goes to work" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary, serious vulgarity warning).

Miss Perkins then went on fellow Christianist nut job Mike Huckabee's radio show and continued to beat this horse:

As my teenagers would say, he has some issues. He is a man with some real deep-seated issues … and Dan Savage is nowhere near, he's a hundred and eighty degrees from the positions that we have taken. It's wrong and I will tell you this, we are pursuing everything possible to deal with him because he is out of control…. This is the bottom line, Mike: is that if you don't embrace and celebrate homosexuality and everything associated with it, then you are intolerant. And the truth of the matter is, let's just be very, very truthful, and that's what we deal in is the truth, that even is society embraced homosexuality, there would never be that sense of self-fulfillment because it's outside the way God created man and woman. And that's the bottom line. They cannot erase that, even if they get every law on the books changed, it will never change that.

Naturally, in his indomitable style, Dan responded, basically telling Perkins to "bring it":

Yes, Tony, I have issues.

I have issues with people who would deny me and other LGBT people our full civil equality for no legitimate reason. I have particular issues with high-profile haters who encourage parents to reject their LGBT kids, doubling their already quadrupled risk for suicide. I have issues with people who say that LGBT people are "pawns of the devil." I have issues with people who compare LGBT people to terrorists. I have issues with people who falsely link homosexuality and pedophilia. I have issues with people who suggest that a law calling for the execution of gay people merely "upholds moral conduct."

But having issues with you, Tony, isn't quite the same thing as "having issues." Please make a note of it.

And during your chat today with Huckabee you didn't address the issue I raised. You and Mike called me names—because you were angry that I called you names?—but you didn't address my issue. So here it is again:

LGBT kids are four times greater risk of suicide. Tony Perkins advises the parents of LGBT kids to reject their children. LGBT kids who are rejected by their parents are at eight times greater risk of suicide. Perkins is aware of these studies and yet he actively encourages the parents of LGBT kids to do what Perkins knows will push those kids closer to suicide.

Sue me, Tony. I'd love to see you talk about my "issues" on a witness stand.

I realize that this isn't how you think the world is supposed to work, Tony. You believe—and you're old enough to remember a time when—people like you were free to say vile and disgusting things about people like me without anyone objecting. Certainly people like me weren't allowed to call people like you out. You still believe you should be free to lie about me and other LGBT people with absolutely impunity—we're all pedophiles and terrorists and Satanists—and that we should have to shut up and take it because… well, I'm not sure why you think we're not allowed to respond when you lie about us.

Maybe that's something we could get to the bottom of during the depositions.

I would love to see Tony's sagging ass handed to him in courtroom.