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Alan Chambers Comments on Ann Coulter

Jim Burroway

March 7th, 2007

It seems that everyone, liberal and conservative, has something to day about Ann Coulter’s anti-gay slur she uttered to an overflow crowd at a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC):

“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”

Andrew Sullivan had, I think, the best response to her comments. Pam Spaulding did a great job of showing why language like that is so damaging. And I’ve noticed a lot of conservatives also were calling Ann Coulter to task, although that response isn’t uniform. A few have rushed to her defense, and others are upset more because it’s such a bad tactical move than they are with the slur itself.

And so in the midst of all of this — and as I continue to talk about my observations from last month’s Love Won Out conference — I noticed that Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International, wrote this on his blog. He hasn’t been updating it much lately. In fact, I pretty much thought he was letting it go dormant. But today, he broke a nearly four-month hiatus to say this:

We do not need this kind of childish vitriol. We can disagree on politics, legislation, moral issues, whatever, but this is way out of line. Faggot is a word that school bullies and ignorant people use to inflict emotional pain on their victims. Ann Coulter should know better and her friends and those that pay her bills would do well to remind her of that fact.

He followed this with a press release on the Exodus web site:

“Used in any context, this hurtful word is used to demean an individual who is valuable to God. There is nothing to be gained by denigrating others with crude slurs. In doing so, we disgrace ourselves and discredit the truths we seek to publicly elevate.”

Simple. Direct. To the point. Thanks, Alan. You might want to consider speaking up more often. And when you run into PFOX’s Regina Griggs at the next Love Won Out conference in Omaha, maybe you can show her how it’s done.

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