Dan Savage caused some hurt feelings when he gave a speech saying some of what’s in the bible is “bullshit”, and Dan Brian Brown, head of the National Organization of Marriage, challenged him to a debate anytime anywhere. Savage said his house, after dinner. This video is the result. If you want to see someone dance around the bible’s position on slavery, this hour is for you, because Brown is one slippery dude. Here’s the backstory from the moderator.
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rlrr
Was pork and shellfish served for dinner?
Cermet
Debate the Bible? Please, anyone with an ounce of intelligence already knows its full of the dumbest shit ever written. It also has some very insightful knowledge but debate it? It is a book solely based on faith – so debate exactly what? That the Sun goes around the Earth, maybe?
Next, someone will point out that the Bible does not say a word about abortion even through it was practice during those times, too. That the only thing the Bible does cover related to this subject is that the fetus does not have a soul until after the first trimester … that could cause some issues for people who take that stuff seriously … .
Chris
Thanks but no thanks. I’ve got enough friends and family pushing Brian’s bullshit already. I give you mad props for sitting through all of it.
JR
Proving once again that just because a bigot doesn’t understand the concept of a tautology, it doesn’t make him any less of a bigot.
Cassidy
Damn work filter. I can’t watch it.
Schlemizel
Sorry, I’ll pass. The bible says exactly what I want it to and anything you want to point out that sounds stupid to us these days has an explanation that allows me to discount it while maintaining 100% fealty to the bits that support my own prejudices and beliefs.
Stupid things like facts and evidence mean nothing compared to the FACT that God believes exactly what I believe He believes. End of story
Culture of Truth
Savage said his GAY house, after a TOTALLY GAY dinner which turned Dan Brown GAY and also made him RENOUNCE the Da Vinci Code as crap writing and NOT GAY enough, even though that was a different Dan Brown.
Butch
Sorry, but there was no point to this “debate,” and if you read the moderator’s later account, both sides have realized it.
Culture of Truth
I APOLOGIZE for the ALL CAPS
I am reading A BOOK by John Hodgman and I am afraid he is infecting MY BRAIN
Chris
@Schlemizel:
This exactly.
the Conster
All religious zealots are the same everywhere. These people can’t be reasoned with, so they need to be crushed politically.
Maude
Dan Brown writes fiction. Why would anyone debate him about the bible?
He didn’t even understand why the Mona Lisa is famous.
LGRooney
I’ll make my appeal to authority.
My father is an ordained Presbyterian minister (of almost 60 years) who had problems in the Presby church and the Navy chaplaincy for his evangelistic ways. In his view, inter alia:
1) If you can get the faithful trying to argue on logical grounds, they have already lost. There is no logic in faith, by definition.
2) The Bible was written by fallible men with a very narrow view of the world. If you want to know what god thinks about something, ask him a/o use the brain he gave you.
3) Gay marriage is a question of the principles of freedom not religion. It has as much to do with the sanctity of marriage as a squirrel collecting an acorn. The only thing that messes up the ‘sanctity’ of marriage is when people break their own vows not what someone else does.
4) If god is going to send a staunch atheist like his son to hell, then his whole life has been offered up to the wrong thing.
BTW, anyone heard from JC lately? I fear his silence could mean something bad given his klutz-itude. As soon as he and ABL arranged their trip to the convention, I pictured his immediately going to buy exercise equipment to get himself into as good a shape a possible in 2-weeks’ time to impress the lady. And, that can’t be a good thing.
Cassidy
@Maude: They’re the same Dan Brown?
Culture of Truth
Sorry his name is Brian Brown who was in the THORN BIRDS about a priest and his sexytymes with Rachel Ward (who can blame him) although that was a different BRYAN BROWN
Culture of Truth
BTW, anyone heard from JC lately?
He’s returning any day now. Repent!
Felinious Wench
@Butch:
The only way to have any kind of Biblical debate is to start from the premise that it’s not a book of facts, it’s a work of literature and how people at that time saw themselves, their god(s), and their world. Then you can discuss different ideas from it, contradictions within it, the historical context, etc.
It’s a facinating book(s), but it’s a book, not a weapon, and definitely not factual. As anyone who really studies it can tell you.
Donald G
Mix, the NOM guy’s name is Brian Brown, not Dan Brown.
mistermix
@Culture of Truth:
@Donald G:
Thanks, I fixed it.
Felinious Wench
@LGRooney:
I agree completely with everything your father believes. If those beliefs aren’t welcome in my part of the church (Episcopalian), then I’m perfectly fine leaving it. A man-made religion does not define my faith as a Christian, as strange as that may sound.
Good on your dad. :)
maya
There’s also Buster Brown. He lived in a shoe. His dog Tige lived in there too. As if shoe odors weren’t bad enough.
LGRooney
@Culture of Truth: Give me some ashes first.
LGRooney
@maya: And Encyclopedia Brown.
joes527
@Cermet:
The whole “wash your hands before you eat” thing has really been working for me, so, call me irrational, but I’m sticking with it.
EDT: Oh, and: TL;DW
Waldo
Don’t forget Charlie Brown, who was totally not getting it until Linus won over the masses with a kick-ass bible story.
Origuy
Don’t forget Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, the baddest man in the whole damn town.
Eric U.
I think God made them put the stuff in there about slavery so there is always an element of doubt about the whole book. Reading something like the Bible as an source of truth and guidance is something a caring God would not wish upon his people.
Cassidy
@Felinious Wench: It’s interesting that you mention the Episcopalian Church. I grew up as one. I have slowly moved through life towards agnostic/ atheism, but if I were to consider going back to church it would only be Episcopalian and it’s precisely because they get it: You and God is a personal matter, but hey, we get together every Sunday to talk about him and have fellowship. One of the things that has made me proud of my old Diocese is that the fundies are being driven out. The Church refuses to change anything about the tenets of the religion and the church’s are splitting, but the Diocese is not budging and has refused to let them have church property. They are welcome to leave and start their own gathering, but if they want to be a part of the Episcopalian Church this is what they teach and this is where they teach it at.
joes527
@Butch:
Quoth the moderator:
Doesn’t sound pointless to me.
Culture of Truth
Jim Brown – footballer, actor activist
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Eric U.: The old Testament book is how you talk to children; the New Testament is how you talk to young adults.
kindness
I’ll give the NOM guy credit for actually attending the dinner. His points suck. His interpretation of the Bible is not the one I was taught as a kid but kudos for showing up.
Dan Savage rocks. It’s why I have The Stranger bookmarked so I can read him every Wednesday.
Omnes Omnibus
@LGRooney: Don’t forget Tom Brown from Rugby.
TheF79
@Schlemizel: Indeed, see: Horses, Book of Mormon.
YellowJournalism
Downtown Julie Brown
Felinious Wench
@Cassidy:
We’re seeing quite a few leave and go to the Catholic church; they’ve been recruiting Episcopalians and Anglicans. The Vatican has even said that married Episcopal priests who convert do not have to take the celibacy vow. Yep, there can be married priests in the Catholic church, as long as they’re male.
JPL
Brown’s not bigoted, he just believes in natural law. UGH
I’m only thirty minutes into the “debate” and already want to start drinking.
Librarian
Don’t forget Michael “Heckuva job, Brownie” Brown.
Librarian
@Culture of Truth: Bryan Brown was great in “Breaker Morant”.
JPL
Brown lost me when he opened his mouth with out wiping it first. icky…
Waldo
Primus: The Brown Album
Some Loser
@JPL:
He pulled the “Natural Law” card? Typical. Seriously, what is with Right-Wingers and natural laws? Anyone who cracked open a seventh grade
biologylife science book could debunk that shit quick, fast, and in a hurry.Uncle Ebeneezer
John Brown. He had a jalopy with a puncture in it’s tire, and/or led a raid on Harper’s Ferry.
What a colossal waste of time that debate was. Mr. Savage (if you happen to read this), if you ever want better conversation, me and my fiancee would love to visit Seattle. We might even be able to find some things to disagree about politically (though certainly not gay rights.)
WereBear
You can discuss with a Unitarian, an Episcopalian, even a Lutheran. Someone who understands that Jesus was a great teacher, taught by the mystic Essenes and possibly Buddhist influence from his travels. Jesus helpfully summed up the whole thing with the “Cliff notes” in Matthew:
That’s really all there is to it, by their own standards!
However, a fundamentalist is barely past toilet training, and needs to have every single freakin’ thing spelled out, deepest black and starkest white, and they also seem to looooooooove the idea that everyone else is going to suffer suffer suffer. I think because they suffer too, and will not stop.
Those, there is no talking, at all.
JPL
Everyone should watch the last fifteen minutes. Brown’s position is that he is being discriminated against.
Felinious Wench
@WereBear:
It’s exhausting. And when I tell them that kind of God/Jesus isn’t one I’d follow, because they’d be a petty asshole and not worthy of my respect, oh boy, that’s good for a “you’re going to hell, you know.” well, if God can’t handle me saying that, down the hatch.
It’s projection of human failings onto a diety at its finest.
Cacti
@Cermet:
Or that if you caused a pregnant woman to miscarry, the penalty was financial compensation to the father. If it resulted in the death of the mother, the penalty was execution.
So apparently Yahweh did not believe Fetus > Woman who carried it.
Culture of Truth
@Librarian: Fun Fact:
The movie’s tag line was “GROW A BRIAN MORANTS”
WereBear
Well, when fear of hell is all there is to it…
Cassidy
@WereBear: Have you read Lamb: The Gospel Accoridng to Biff?
JasperL
There’s a song called “Me and God and Jesus” by Crooked Roads. It’s a great summary of the typical right wing position on the Bible. Sample lyrics:
“There’s a book you really ought to read sometime. God wrote it, and I quote it, any time that its purposes suit mine.”
And:
“In the Old Testament, God must have meant, only some of the things that he wrote down. But if you want to know, what’ll get you sent below, just check with me I’ve got it figured out.”
Nellie in NZ
Big request – could commenters alert us when they are linking to NYTimes before we click the link? Some of us husband our clicks on NYTimes very very carefully. Thanks.
Jennifer
Brown kept coming back to the point that “it’s all about the CHILDREN, not about adult desires.” If that’s the case, then the church shouldn’t be sanctioning marriages of people beyond child-bearing age, because in those cases, it’s only about “adult desires” to have a companion.
But otherwise, it went pretty much as expected; Brown failing to “get” the concept that there is a difference between religious sanction of marriage and civil law; Brown failing to articulate how, in any way, allowing same-sex marriage legal sanction would “damage” anyone else’s marriage (he seems to think that being seen as a bigot for failing to support same-sex marriage constitutes “damage” to traditional marriage); and so forth.
I was surprised that the whole concept of the “new covenant” was not more thoroughly debated; Brown asserted that the “new covenant” did not free anyone from the strictures of the Old Testament but that certainly has never been MY understanding – I saw that as a rather hollow dodge to the whole “cafeteria Christian” thing which allows the picking and choosing of what things they’ll accept and what things they won’t. As Savage pointed out quite effectively, they don’t seem to feel bound by even the commandment against lying, so it’s glaringly hypocritical that they focus in on one little passage in Leviticus as if it spells out the sin that exceeds all others.
But there are occasionally bright spots…I had on an episode of Lisa Ling’s America playing in the background as I was doing some work the other night, and it was all about “reparative therapy;” not only did the guy who started the first group reject it and apologize for it within a few years of its founding, even the current leader has come around to the notion that a homosexual orientation is not necessarily a one-way ticket to Hell. As he put it, what’s important is the individual’s relationship to Christ, which is parallel to what I have been telling bigots for years: “For the sake of argument, let’s say you’re correct and God hates homosexuality. In that case, according to YOUR religion, a person could be a practicing homosexual his entire life – not just someone who was attracted to the same sex, but someone who is having sex with members of the same sex – and if, on his deathbed, he repents and asks Christ for forgiveness, then he’s going to heaven. That’s YOUR religion and what it says, not my personal belief. In that case, you would then be guilty of passing judgement upon, and persecuting, someone who God himself didn’t see fit to punish. I can’t see how that helps you out with God or with your goal of salvation; to the contrary, I would think that usurping God’s unique role as judge – and getting it wrong – would be more likely to send you rocketing to Hell.”
Bottom line is, even if you DO accept the Biblical mumbo-jumbo as literal truth, you’re still going to create problems for yourself with the man upstairs if you take it upon yourself to pass and enforce judgement against others for things that don’t concern you and are none of your business.
It’s a sad state of affairs when a non-Christian such as myself is more versed in the religion than many of its so-called faithful.
Ash Can
@Cermet:
No, it’s not, and that’s just the thing. Most of it is based on plain old historical record. The trouble arises when fundie types latch onto what is basically news reporting by ancient semitic people — albeit told from the perspective of the believers of that time — and insist that it’s God, and only God, speaking to them, word for word, rather than an informative account of the roots of their religion left to them by their ancestors in faith. The entire idea of the Bible is fundamentally corrupted for them from the very beginning, and it just all goes even further downhill from there as they proceed to misinterpret all this information that they didn’t understand in the first place. (Not surprisingly, these geniuses tend to do the same thing with the Constitution.)
WereBear
@Cassidy: No, but it looks like a hoot.
Jennifer
@Cassidy: I read it…it was quite a good read. It’s been several years so I don’t remember a lot of it.
Cassidy
@WereBear: Not only is it amazinglingly hilarious, but Moore tells the story of JC with more love and compassion than any of those fundie hacks. I’ve read it a few times and once you realize you’re reading a love story, it really opens the book up.
Villago Delenda Est
Brown is a shitstain. The problem with people like him is not their beliefs, it’s their demand that others share them, and they want to use the power of the state to see that their demands are met.
Steeplejack
@Nellie in NZ:
When you hover your cursor over a hyperlink, the destination is shown in the status bar at the bottom of your browser. It’s possible you have this turned off, although that’s a little hard to do.
Also, you don’t need to husband your clicks to the Times Web site. I believe that if you go to a story there from a direct link here (and other sites), it doesn’t count against your “10 links a month” total.
In any case, if you get to a Times story that is “blocked,” all you have to do is go up to the address at the top of your browser and erase the shmutz after
html
, then refresh the page.Rob in Buffalo
Like many of his ilk, Brown clearly thinks that if you just keep repeating YOU’RE SIMPLY WRONG or THAT’S SIMPLY WRONG, that proves something or wins the argument.
Citizen Alan
@Cermet:
Can I have a cite for that? I’m not doubting you — in fact, I have made arguments to others before that you get your soul when you draw your first breath as Genesis (to me, anyway) implies — but if the Bible actually states something about it fairly definitively, I’d like to have that quiver in my arsenal.
Villago Delenda Est
@Felinious Wench:
That leaves the fundies out. They don’t really study it. It’s fed to them via sermon, in TV episodic format, and they read and reread the same passages to reinforce what is fed to them.
Butch
@joes527: Yeah, there’s that. I overlooked that part.
Felinious Wench
@Jennifer: I was surprised that the whole concept of the “new covenant” was not more thoroughly debated; Brown asserted that the “new covenant” did not free anyone from the strictures of the Old Testament but that certainly has never been MY understanding
Felinious Wench
@Villago Delenda Est:
They study the book’s words, not the context and the history of when it was written. To me, that’s not study, that’s just reading.
gocart mozart
There’s also UPS.: “What has Brown done for you lately?”
danah gaz (fka gaz)
I finally watched this all the way through.
I have to say that Brian Brown’s arguments were completely weak. He wasn’t “slippery”. Slippery implies some sort of silver-tongued skill at deflection. He was just wrong. Weak and wrong. He avoided the points. He demanded that Dan Savage defend polygamy, denied that he was making a slippery slope argument, and then went ahead and made a slippery slope argument!. He didn’t even address the numerous instances of polygamous marriage in the Bible. As I saw it, the burden of arguing why polygamous marriage shouldn’t be allowed is on him not on Dan Savage. Christians are the ones that limited the definition of marriage to exclude polygamy, despite their faith saying otherwise. The burden is on them! Why is it okay that they can change the definition of marriage in this way, and yet Dan’s request for equal rights under the law is somehow wrong because it would “change” marriage?
The man can’t debate for shit. He made a challenge he wasn’t up to meeting.
Maude
@Cassidy:
Had he wrong Brown, in other words, never mind.
Brown v Board of Education.
How now brown cow.
AnonPhenom
Two guys arguing about two different things that happen to share the same name. As a ‘reformed’ catholic, why Savage didn’t call out Brown for constantly conflating a call for equal civil rights (marriage) with an attempt to change Brown’s religious practices (marriage) is beyond me.
We should just expunge the word ‘marriage’ from the civil code, give all adult couples living together the right to register legally and leave all the different people of the cloth to yell at each other about how wrong the other guy is and how great their god is.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
@danah gaz (fka gaz): +11, Everything you said.
dave
I agree with everything Dan Savage said, but that doesn’t change the fact that his dining room is really creepy and weird.
I demand we pass a law prohibiting creepy-looking dining rooms! The harm in allowing them is that people like me who find them creepy will be called bigots!
kerFuFFler
@JPL: I’ll try to get that far;I’m in the first half and my blood pressure is rising…..
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a Christian, and a staunch proponent of same-sex marriage.
Brian Brown is wrong on same-sex marriage, wrong on many aspects of the Bible, wrong on his treatment of his neighbors (via NOM) and wrong in conflating his personal beliefs with public policy.
It’s one thing to inform your policy positions with your faith, and quite another to directly derive policy prescriptions from the pages of your “holy” book. That nearly always leads to the law of unintended consequences.
The good ideas in scripture can be argued on their own merits, without needing scriptural backing.
Furthermore, we are not a Christian nation. Regardless of ones views on the Treaty of Tripoli, as one of the wealthiest nations on this planet, as long as children go hungry in this country we are not on God’s side. Full stop.
kerFuFFler
Jeebus, Brown reminds me of Newt! He seems to think that if he says “fundamental” enough times his arguments will appear cogent.
Rathskeller
God, I love Dan Oppenheimer so much for using “gemütlichkeit” in an article. One of my favorite words.
He also summed up the debate this way:
I would call it differently. Brown thinks that the definition of marriage is man+woman, and he will not accept anything else as the definition. It’s unsurprising that someone who would agree to be head of NOM would be so inflexible, and it makes discussion with him instructive to others, but pointless in terms of conversion or reaching common ground. There is no common ground.
trollhattan
@Nellie in NZ:
I’m guessing Mr. Brown would not approve of such “husbanding” were you named Neil.
I think this NYT paywall article may still be relevant, and it looks like you’ve also gotten some suggestions on how to get around click counts.
http://mashable.com/2011/03/28/how-to-bypass-new-york-times-paywall/
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Ash Can: Agree with your overall sentiment, but I think “myth in the form of historical fiction” is a better descriptor. As a historical text it is pretty lacking. Too many of it’s biggest claims are obviously ludicrous, contradicted by other accounts in the same book, and/or lacking in any archealogical evidence. There may be some tidbits of historical truth here and there, but I wouldn’t mark historical accuracy as one of it’s stronger selling points.
Haydnseek
@WereBear: A christian telling you that you’re going to hell is like a child telling an adult that they’re not getting any presents from Santa.
hitchhiker
I think the Christian guy might be deeply closeted. I think it was painfully obvious which of them — Brown or Savage — was comfortable in their own skin, able to articulate their hearts, secure in their beliefs.
Savage. All the way.
Dnl
A retort I can’t quite get out of my head is something along the line of “Bigotry has a definition that you are trying to change. You are labeled that because you and your organization are bigots. So if you want to play the ‘definition’ game lets start out there. You can keep your losing argument about ‘traditional’ marriage and we will continue to call you what you are.”
Also, air finger quotes should be used whenever ‘traditional’ is uttered in these arguments.
I also hate how willingly oblivious he is the copious evidence that today’s ‘traditional’ marriage is a blip in human history.
Ohio Mom
@dave: I dunno, I didn’t think the dining room was any different than lots of rooms on sites like Apartment Therapy or in shelter (decorating) magazines. Mounted animal heads and displaying religious items like crucifixes and madonnas in an ironic manner are decorating trends that are just about cliches at this point. Very overdone and IMO not very charming, but popular nonetheless.
On the other hand, I loved that brown they chose for the wall. Good color choice for an arts & crafts style bungalow.
Diana
OK this is a long post but I just want to point out that the Bible was written in a world very, very different from the one we live in now.
In Cicero’s “Dream of Scipio,” the noble Roman narrator – contemporary of Cicero, and therefore living in approximately the same age as the one that wrote the new testiment – meets the great Roman conqueror Scipio Africanus, destroyer of Carthage, but who admonishes the dreamer to believe in virtue and not in fame, by taking him among the stars and shows him [a classical Roman’s view of ] the earth:
“On which Africanus said, I perceive that you are still employed in contemplating the seat and residence of mankind. But if it appears to you so small, as in fact it really is, despise its vanities, and fix your attention for ever on these heavenly objects. Is it possible that you should attain any human applause or glory that is worth the contending for? The earth, you see, is peopled but in a very few places, and those too of small extent; and they appear like so many little spots of green scattered through vast uncultivated deserts. And those who inhabit the earth are not only so remote from each other as to be cut off from all mutual correspondence, but their situation being in oblique or contrary parts of the globe, or perhaps in those diametrically opposite to yours, all expectation of universal fame must fall to the ground.
“You may likewise observe that the same globe of the earth is girt and surrounded with certain zones, whereof those two that are most remote from each other, and lie under the opposite poles of heaven, are congealed with frost; but that one in the middle, which is far the largest, is scorched with the intense heat of the sun [referring to the Sahara]. The other two are habitable, one towards the south [referring to sub-Saharan Africa]—the inhabitants of which are your Antipodes, with whom you have no connection—the other, towards the north, is that which you inhabit, whereof a very small part, as you may see, falls to your share. For the whole extent of what you see, is as it were but a little island, narrow at both ends and wide in the middle, which is surrounded by the sea which on earth you call the great Atlantic ocean [the ancients knew that the sea beyond Iran and India was the same salt ocean as the Atlantic; remember the Pacific Ocean was not named by Westerners until Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish expedition of world circumnavigation in 1521 realized that there was actually another really big body of water out there], and which, notwithstanding this magnificent name, you see is very insignificant. And even in these cultivated and well-known countries, has yours, or any of our names, ever passed the heights of the Caucasus, or the currents of the Ganges?”
Anyhow, when Cicero wrote this, the total population of the world was probably less than 200 million.
World population is now north of 7 billion, and it has discovered (along with maps) a bunch of new continents, at least one new ocean, and electricity:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap001127.html
PanurgeATL
@Some Loser:
Seriously, what is with Right-Wingers and natural laws?
It’s pretty much the center of their outlook, when you think about it.
@kerFuFFler:
Brown…seems to think that if he says “fundamental” enough times his arguments will appear cogent.
The fundamental level of a discourse is the point where rationality is left behind. First principles are extra-rational. When you’re at that point, there’s nothing but YES IT IS! NO IT’S NOT! I WANT THIS! I DON’T WANT THAT!