Dan Savage Calls High School Students 'Pansy-A**ed'

Dan Savage who is best known for his "It Gets Better" campaign, which aims to prevent suicide and bullying among LGBT youth, called some high school students "pansy-a**ed" for walking out of his lecture last month, the Washington Post reported.

The media pundit gave a lecture at the National High School Journalist Conference in Seattle, Wash., and argued that Christians ignore certain things in the Bible that they don't agree with. He said people should "learn how to ignore the bulls**t in the Bible about gay people."

When students walked out on his speech, Savage called them "pansy-a**ed."

"It's funny, as someone who's on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the bible, how pansy-a**ed some people react when you push back," the journalist said.

The National Scholastic Press Association, the organization that held the event, said Savage's remarks were "inappropriate," ABC News reported. But the Post notes that the organization said that it appreciated the "level of thoughtfulness" that went into Savage's speech and that it is important for journalists to "listen to speech that offends you."

Last weekend, however, Savage apologized in a blog post.

"I would like to apologize for describing that walk out as a pansy-a** move. I wasn't calling the handful of students who left pansies (2800+ students, most of them Christian, stayed and listened), just the walk-out itself," he wrote. "But that's a distinction without a difference --kinda like when religious conservatives tell their gay friends that they 'love the sinner, hate the sin.' They're often shocked when their gay friends get upset because, hey, they were making a distinction between the person (lovable!) and the person's actions (not so much!)."

But gay people feel insulted by 'love the sinner, hate the sin' because it is insulting," he continued. "Likewise, my use of 'pansy-a----' was insulting, it was name-calling, and it was wrong. And I apologize for saying it."

Savage added that he "did not attack Christianity. I attacked hypocrisy."

Watch a clip of the speech below: