Saturday, October 02, 2010

Speak the truth in justice

Because "speaking the truth in love" is usually neither truth nor love.

Dan Savage responds to a christianist who concluded, in a letter to Dan, "Please consider your viewpoint and please be more careful with your words in the future."

I'm sorry your feelings were hurt by my comments.

No, wait. I'm not. Gay kids are dying. So let's try to keep things in perspective: fuck your feelings.

Preach it, Dan! When people shame and condemn others for who they are, should I give a shit about their feelings? We really need to stop playing nice.

Go read Dan's comments.


--the BB

1 comment:

MadPriest said...

It is possible to speak the truth in love but such statements have to based on sure fact subject to the scientific paradigm. For example, you could say to an alcoholic friend that if he doesn't stop drinking he will most probably die young of liver disease. That would be scientifically true and I have certainly said that to people because of my love for them. You could also say that people who sleep around (gay or straight) are more likely to catch a sexually transmitted disease as that is statistically beyond doubt and downright obvious.

However, most religious claims of truth are just opinions and neither the Bible or Church tradition are acceptable sources of scientific fact. That's not to say that they are not a source of knowledge. They are, but the knowledge they contain must be continually tested against contemporary scientific knowledge, and only if they comply to reality, as in the case of promiscuity, can religious claims be upgraded from knowledge (that can be erroneous) to fact and, therefore, the truth.