HuffPost Blogger Says Savage Didn't Bully Students

John Shore, a blogger for the Huffington Post who became a Christian when he heard a cartoon voice in a supply closet, (really, I’m not making this up) has defended Dan Savage from the charge of bullying high school kids.

Shore, who assumes the role of expert in his vast knowledge of the American lexicon, defines bullying this way:

P.S. What immediately become a meme amongst Dan’s critics is that those who walked out of his talk felt bullied by him. But that’s impossible. People get bullied because of who they are: how they look and act, what they say and do. Perceived as being in some critical way weak or lacking, victims of bullies are selected for persecution; they are pulled from the pack before being pointedly and repeatedly victimized. The people who walked out during Dan’s talk were not separated from their peers by anyone. They were content to do that themselves. They were not frightened or cowed. They were offended. They felt that by disparaging what amounts to their God, Dan had transgressed beyond their capacity for toleration. And they were pleased to show their intolerance of Dan’s words by protesting against them in the manner they did. Theirs was not an act born of suffering. It was a proud show of disdain.

So Shore, who has his own share of hypocrisy, (he wrote in his Ten Ways Christians Tend to Fail at Being Christian that Christians have “Too much money. ‘Wealthy Christian’ should be an oxymoron”, yet admitted on his About Me page to making “crazy money” off a co-authored book and spending it all on a house) has decided he is to the moral arbiter of what constitutes bullying?

Yet the gay community’s fight against bullying defines bullying as being called nasty names by horrible naysayers. Apparently for Mr. Shore, the homosexuality of homosexuals is a central core part of their identity that must never be insulted – that would be bullying — while the Christianity that is the core of every believing Christian is simply one aspect of a person that is not so delicate and vital. Thus, bullying Christians becomes definitionally impossible for Shore.

Here’s some news for Mr. Shore, in his casual dismissal of the feelings of the students: they walked out because they are true Christians and knew that name-calling, as the gay community has asserted, is bullying. Rather than whining, they walked away. They acted with class and dignity despite being bullied.

And those who embolden bullies, like Shore, only make bullying more common.