Bullies

by Ben Shapiro

There was only one problem.

  Dan Savage is the world’s most egregious bully.

  You may not have heard of Savage; he’s not a household name, thank God. But you’ve certainly seen his work. If you Google Rick Santorum’s name, you’ll get a disgusting definition: “The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.” That’s because Savage coined the definition and Google-bombed it in order to slander Santorum for Santorum’s opposition to gay marriage. The campaign was so successful that Savage threatened to change the definition of “Rick” to something similarly disgusting. As if that weren’t enough, Savage also appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher stating that he wanted to “f— the shit out of [Santorum].”

  This would probably violate the It Gets Better pledge.

  But it doesn’t stop there.

  Back in 2000, Savage was hired by Salon.com to infiltrate the Gary Bauer presidential campaign. He became so frustrated with Bauer’s religiosity that after contracting the flu, he decided to go around the office licking doorknobs in order to infect the other staffers. He even handed Bauer a saliva-coated pen, hoping to infect him with the flu. He then proceeded to vote in the Iowa caucuses, although he wasn’t registered in the state. This isn’t bullying. It’s biological warfare. Beyond that, it’s gross—no doorknob deserves to be licked by Dan Savage.

  But wait, there’s more. When 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain stated that he thought that homosexual activity was a choice, Savage responded by telling Cain to “show us how a man can choose to be gay. Suck my dick, Herman.” This was not only bullying, it was bad logic—why would any sentient being want to put their mouth on Dan Savage’s genitals?

  The bullying goes on. Savage tried to coin the term “Saddlebacking” in order to target pro–Proposition 8 pastor Rick Warren and his Saddleback Church; he defined the term as “the phenomenon of Christian teens engaging in unprotected anal sex in order to preserve their virginities.” Savage also said, “F— you, Utah,” since Mormons largely backed Proposition 8. In 2006, Savage said that Green Party U.S. Senate candidate Carl Romanelli, who was running against Democrat Bob Casey (the eventual winner) in Pennsylvania, “should be dragged behind a pickup truck until there’s nothing left but the rope.” In 2011, Savage said on Bill Maher’s show, “I wish the Republicans were all f—ing dead.”

  This is the founder of the project Obama chose—and chooses—to honor with a leadership role on the bullying problem. The world’s sickest bully. The Vasco da Gama of bodily orifices and vulgar insult.

  Now, it’s not as though the White House was ignorant of the fact that the It Gets Better Project is run by Savage. On the contrary—search the White House website for Savage’s name, and two It Gets Better links come up. Not just that—in June 2011, Savage himself visited the White House and hung out with administration officials. There are pictures. Thankfully, they don’t include Dan Savage’s favorite sex practices.

  But the point is this: Gay bullies are allowed to run roughshod over every decent standard of behavior. And the White House will lend its blessing.

  THE GAY MARRIAGE BULLIES

  Actually, that’s not entirely true. The White House won’t just lend its blessing to the gay bullies. It’ll become a big gay bully itself.

  For years, President Barack Obama had maintained that he was for civil unions and against the notion of same-sex marriage. In 2008, while he was running for president and wanted to appear a moderate on social policy, Obama told Americans that marriage was “between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage.”50 Then, when Obama discovered that his fund-raising numbers were down in early 2012, he decided to tap into the gay community’s collective bank account. Glory, hallelujah, and pass the collections plate! “I’ve been going through an evolution on this issue,” said Obama, apparently ignoring that the notion of evolution generally includes a component of natural selection. “I have to tell you that over the course of several years, as I talk to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about it—members of my own staff who are incredibly committed, in monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet, feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is gone, because they’re not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”51

  Aside from setting the record for the single longest sentence ever recorded, President Obama had now stepped into brave new territory: he was leading the charge on behalf of gays and lesbians. Within hours of his announcement, Obama’s campaign was sending out missives to his supporters asking for cash. And it worked. He raked in the dough, especially when he headed out to Hollywood that same week to have a party at George Clooney’s house.

  Obama was standing up for gays and lesbians.

  And bullying everybody else. Because think about that language for a second—he had “evolved.” The implication was obvious: the Americans who opposed same-sex marriage were unevolved. Neanderthals. You might even call them bitter clingers.

  Lest you miss that point, Obama released an ad the very next day ripping Mitt Romney’s position on same-sex marriage—a position Obama had held about five minutes prior to cutting the ad. “President Obama Is Moving Us Forward,” said the ad. “Mitt Romney Would Take Us Back.”52

  Or, perhaps, they just disagree about the proper policy.

  More accurately, they don’t even disagree about policy—both Romney and Obama have suggested that definitions of marriage ought to be a state matter.

  But where the gay bullies come from—and, as First Gay President according to Time, Obama falls into this category—there is no proper disagreement on this issue. There is only the right way (wave the rainbow flag!) and the wrong way (kids need a mom and a dad).

  This bullying position quickly bore poisonous fruit. When Chick-Fil-A president Dan Cathy did an interview in which he supported traditional marriage, the left quickly leaped into action against this egregious threat. They started by boycotting Chick-Fil-A, even though the restaurant had never discriminated against gays and lesbians. Savage immediately took to Twitter to redefine the term “Chick-Fil-A” to mean an especially bizarre form of anal sex. Gays and lesbians decided to hold a “Kiss In” at Chick-Fil-A—because having two dudes making out in front of customers and employees would show those crazy Christians a thing or two!

  Then things got really nasty.

  It wasn’t enough for the left to boycott Chick-Fil-A, which they have every right to do, even if they’re missing out on a dynamite sandwich. They had to shut down Chick-Fil-A.

  Two of Barack Obama’s closest political allies, Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston and Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, decided to ban Chick-Fil-A from their cities. “Chick-Fil-A’s values are not Chicago’s values,” Emanuel declared—even though “Chicago values” didn’t prevent him from inviting in absolute homophobe Louis Farrakhan to help stop gang crime. As for Menino, he wrote to Cathy, “I was angry to learn on the heels of your prejudiced statements about your search for a site to locate in Boston. There is no place for your discrimination on Boston’s Freedom Trail and no place for your company alongside it.”

  Neither Emanuel nor Menino had the right to ban Chick-Fil-A from their cities. But they tried to do so anyway—not because Chick-Fil-A actually discriminated against gays, but because they opposed gay marriage.

  But that wasn’t the end of the story. As the hubbub grew, a gay activist painted an anti-Chick-Fil-A mural on the side of a Chick-Fil-A restaurant; the left had nothing to say about it. Then, on August 16, 2012, an LGBT activist named Floyd Corkins stormed into the headquarters of the pro–traditional marriage Family Research Council. He was carrying a Chick-Fil-A bag filled with sandwiches. He was also carrying a handgun and
fifty rounds of ammo. When confronted by a security guard, he shouted, “I don’t like your politics!,” then shot the guard in the arm. The guard heroically subdued him.

  And the media ignored it. For hours, they didn’t report the story. When they finally did, they tried to downplay Corkins’s political views. They had been only too happy to blame Sarah Palin for Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting of Gabby Giffords, but now they were intent on protecting the gay rights movement from any association with Corkins. When Tony Perkins, head of the FRC, blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center, an extreme liberal nonprofit that had labeled FRC a “hate group,” for creating the environment for shooters like Corkins, the press went ballistic. How dare Perkins mirror what the left had said about Sarah Palin and the Tea Party?! Gays couldn’t be bullies, and pro-gay forces couldn’t create an environment of hate!

  Same-sex marriage advocates and LGBT groups weren’t responsible for Corkins. But the media’s double standard on bullying was breathtaking. Had a Christian shot up an LGBT center while wielding copies of a Jerry Falwell book, the left would have called it Christian terrorism. When a gay man shot up a Christian group, the left called him a lone nut.

  But disproportionate rage against those who believe in traditional marriage has become a hallmark of the left. The leaders in this respect are the elites of Hollywood, who have been pushing same-sex marriage for decades.

  And nobody bullies like Hollywood.

  If only President Obama had listened to the wisdom of noted thinker Perez Hilton, he might have evolved to the Correct Moral Decision sooner. Between posting pictures of celebrities with semen painted on their face, this moral sophisticate Hilton had time to judge the Miss USA contest in 2009. He asked Miss California, Carrie Prejean, if she believed that gay marriage ought to be made the law of the land. She answered respectfully: “Well, I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And, you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that, I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman.”

  Hilton went insane on Prejean, to put it mildly. He called her a “dumb bitch.” Repeatedly. He scored her low in the contest, throwing the win to Miss North Carolina. And he said he would have ripped the tiara off her head had she won the contest.53

  This was rude. But it wasn’t rare.

  Just prior to Perez Hilton’s hissy fit, California had passed by popular vote Proposition 8, which enshrined in the state constitution the notion that marriage is between a man and a woman. This certainly ticked off the Hollywood crowd, which promptly cut a video starring Jack Black, Neil Patrick Harris, John C. Reilly, Andy Richter, Maya Rudolph, and Rashida Jones, among others. Marc Shaiman, Tony Award–winning gay composer of Hairspray, penned the piece.

  The point of the video: Opponents of Proposition 8 were stupid and evil. And, of course, Obama is awesome. The video opens with a bunch of liberals singing, “It’s a brand-new bright Obama day!” (Never mind that at this point, Obama was unevolved just like the rest of us. In Hollywood, that never mattered.) Then we get John C. Reilly popping up to proclaim that he’s here to “spread some hate” via “Proposition 8.” Reilly and his gaggle of religious friends then get into an argument with the gay population . . . until Jesus, played by Jack Black, shows up to teach Americans that they’ve just been misinterpreting scripture for the last couple of thousand years. He then goes into the typical liberal litany of biblical misinterpretations: “Well, you can sell your wife, or stone your daughter!”54

  Dumbasses.

  How did the video come about? From another case of gay bullying. As a general matter, the most radical gay bullies have decided to financially ruin their enemies. More careers have been destroyed by members of the radical gay community than by any other political or lifestyle community in America. Ask Scott Eckern, artistic director of the California Musical Theater. Eckern quietly contributed a thousand dollars to the Proposition 8 effort—he’s a Mormon, and the Church of Latter-day Saints heavily supported Proposition 8. Gay bullies online revealed his donation. That’s when Shaiman—the Prop 8: The Musical composer—called him up. He told him he wouldn’t let Hairspray be performed in the California Musical Theater so long as Eckern worked there.

  “I was uncomfortable with money made off my work being used to put discrimination in the Constitution,” Shaiman told the New York Times. He said that he was afraid, however, that by pressuring Eckern, he’d be lending credence to the support of . . . well . . . people like yours truly, who would point out that he’s a massive bully. “It will not help our cause because we will be branded exactly as what we were trying to fight,” said Shaiman. But, of course, that didn’t stop him from wrecking Eckern’s career and forcing his resignation.

  Shaiman was joined in his outrage against Eckern by Jeffrey Seller, a producer of the Tony-winning musical Avenue Q. “That a man who makes his living exclusively through the musical theater could do something so hurtful to the community that forms his livelihood is a punch in the stomach,” said Seller.55 As a musical theater lover myself, I can guarantee that the vast majority of folks who attend the musical theater are not gay. They’re little old ladies who love cats, which is why Andrew Lloyd Webber’s abysmal Cats ran for years. But even if most patrons were gay, why should that equate to support for gay marriage? If most of the patrons were Jewish, would Seller have to quit Mormonism because it tries to convert Jews?

  What did Shaiman feel about forcing Eckern out of his livelihood? “[I]t felt fantastic,” he told the Times.56 Somehow, one doubts Shaiman would feel the same about a school firing a gay teacher.

  After Eckern resigned his job, Shaiman decided he wanted to take the next step. So he sent around a mass email targeting Eckern; one of his friends suggested he make a viral video. Thus bullying leads to bullying.

  Even businesses that aren’t directly related to the entertainment industry have been targeted by the gay bullies. El Coyote Restaurant, a terrific place in Los Angeles, found itself under boycott and march by gay bullies after a manager gave a hundred dollars to the Proposition 8 campaign. The manager is a daughter of the owner, Margie Christoffersen, who is Mormon; the owner met with protesters and at one point broke down in tears. Crowds of hundreds of people showed up to the restaurant, chanting and screaming. “We’re just kind of dealing with it, and we’re hoping it will blow over,” said another manager. “We’re hoping this will ease things, but it seems like they want a personal apology or a donation made by Margie to kind of equal what she made . . . and she has refused because it’s her own personal belief.” Under pressure, other members of the restaurant staff then gave five hundred dollars to the group leveling a legal challenge against Proposition 8.57

  When you can’t even serve tacos without kowtowing to the gay agenda, you know the gay bullies have gone too far.

  The sad fact is this: you cannot expect to work in Hollywood if you are anti–gay marriage these days. And Hollywood uses its political power to forward the gay agenda regularly. Most major shows are screened before the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) to ensure that they don’t offend gay sensibilities. Hollywood’s been pushing gay marriage for years in its shows and movies—they actually see it as one of their great moral causes. The co-creator of Friends, Marta Kauffman, told me that during their Season 1 lesbian wedding, they purposefully cast Newt Gingrich’s half sister as the pastor as a “f— you . . . to the right wing directly.” And that’s the typical feeling in Hollywood—the rest of America deserves a big f— you.

  Unfortunately, it’s not just Hollywood. It’s large swaths of the gay left.

  And when they have power to change policy, they use it to slap Americans in the face. Just ask Judge Vaughn Walker, a gay man, who struck down Proposition 8 as violative of the California state constitution. Why? Becau
se, said Walker, only morons would vote for Proposition 8. There was, he said, no “rational basis” for upholding traditional marriage. As it turns out, this one gay judge had discovered the utter irrationality of thousands of years of human history, every major religious leader, the vast majority of Western philosophers, all the founders, and the majority of the people of California. Or, he was just using the power of his gavel to justify his sex life.

  GAY EDUCATIONAL BULLIES

  It’s one thing to bully adults, who at least have the capacity to fight back. It’s another to use the educational system to indoctrinate children. And while the idiotic actors of “Prop 8: The Musical” said that gay bullies would never—never!—try to ram the gay agenda down the throats of students, that’s precisely what they’ve done.

  In the state of California, liberals forced through a bill that would require all state schools to teach gay and lesbian history—whatever that means. “We are failing our students when we don’t teach them about the broad diversity of human experience,” said gay bully state senator Mark Leno, a Democrat. What was the excuse for forcing students to learn about the sexual lifestyles of historic figures? To make way for gay students so that they wouldn’t be bullied.58

  So 98 percent of students should be bullied into thinking one way so that the other 2 percent don’t face quite as much of a possibility of being called names. Even though it’s already punishable to call gay kids names. And bullying more generally is already punished in schools. Got it.

  But it’s more than that. Not only does gay history have to be taught in schools, it’s now forbidden to teach any material that reflects poorly on homosexuality, bisexuality, or transgenderism . . . and you cannot remove your child from the classroom over the material.59

  Normally, it’s not bullying to force through legislation—legislation is generally legitimized by the democratic process that put representatives in place. But in this case, there’s no way to call this statute anything other than bullying. Parents aren’t allowed to pull their kids out over the teaching of values inimical to their own values. This is thought control, pure and simple. When it comes to kids, politics should not be a factor in education.