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I Do Know This, Though: I’m Done Pretending That The Handful Of Racist Gay White Men Out There—and They’re Out There, And I Think They’re Scum—are A Bigger Problem For African Americans, Gay And Straight, Than The Huge Numbers Of Homophobic African Americans Are For Gay Americans, Whatever Their Color…i’ll Eat My Shorts If Gay And Lesbian Voters Went For Mccain At Anything Approaching The Rate That Black Voters Went For Prop 8.

-Dan Savage

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I Do Know This,

Dan Savage

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I Do Know This, Though: I’m Done Pretending That The Handful Of Racist Gay White Men Out There—and They’re Out There, And I Think They’re Scum—are A Bigger Problem For African Americans, Gay And Straight, Than The Huge Numbers Of Homophobic African Americans Are For Gay Americans, Whatever Their Color…i’ll Eat My Shorts If Gay And Lesbian Voters Went For Mccain At Anything Approaching The Rate That Black Voters Went For Prop 8.

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For Me, My Discomfort With Gay Weddings Was Articulated By A Close Friend, Who Observed That Gay People Getting Married Is Like Retarded People Getting Together To Give Each Other Phds. It Doesn't Make Them Smarter, And It Doesn't Make Us Married.

I Think The Best Thing For You To Do Is Just Live Your Life. Live A Life That's Worth Living, One Where You Do What You Want To Do, Pursue Your Passions. That Way, If You Meet Someone, They'll Be Joining A Life That's Already Really Good.

There's Always Something New With Sex. We Lived In A World Without Viagra, Now We Live In A World With Viagra. We Lived In A World Without Blowjobs And Anilingus In The Oval Office, And Then It Happens And You Get To Write About It. We Live In A World Where Now The Government Is Screwing With Contraception And Holding Back Vaccines That Could Save 4,000 Women's Lives A Year, And You Get To Write About That. It's Not As Much Fun As Anilingus In The Oval Office, But What Are You Going To Do? If You Pay Attention, There's Always Something New, And It's Always Really Invigorating.

Is It Adultery If I’m Committing It At One End Of A Guy And He’s Committing It At The Other End Of That Same Guy?

Parenting Is About Being Competent And Responsible. It's Not About Gender, Necessarily.

The Bible Is A Radically Pro-slavery Document. Slave Owners Waved Bibles Over Their Heads During The Civil War And Justified It.

You Know, My Problem Is I Cant Say No To People, Especially People Who Want To Write Me Checks To Do Things.

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Preaching To The Choir Actually Arms The Choir With Arguments And Elevates The Choir's Discourse. There's A Reason The Right Does It And Does It Well And Triumphs.

I Treat People Who Write Me The Way My Friends And I All Treat Each Other When We Go To Each Other For Advice, Which Is Sometimes With Supreme Cruelty. I Think That's What Helps The Advice Sink In. If Somebody Comes At You With Both Barrels, The First Shot Opens Your Head, And The Second Shot Allows The Advice To Get Lodged Inside.

And That Really Captures The Difference For The Bullied Straight Kid Versus The Bullied Gay Kid, Is That The Bullied Straight Kid Goes Home To A Shoulder To Cry On And Support And Can Talk Freely About His Experience At School And Why He's Being Bullied. [...] And I Couldn't Go Home And Open Up To My Parents.

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Every Question Is A Hypothetical Question For Everyone But The Person Who Asks It.

A Lot Of People Are Living Their Lives Online In Much More Public Ways With Facebook And Twitter.

Really, When It Comes To Gay Rights, There's Two Wars Going On. The First War Is Political. But The Culture War Is Over.

Every Relationship You Are In Will Fail, Until One Doesn't

School Is Very Conformist, And One Of The Very First Conforming That Goes On In Preschool And Kindergarten Is Gender.

We All Have Our Scars. That's What Falling Is Love Is All About: Revealing Your Scars To Somebody Who Then Loves You Anyway.

I Started Doing Drag In Seattle Because I Started Doing My Column Before I Moved Here, And Then Moved Here And Wanted To Be Able To Go Out And Do Things As Dan Savage Without Being Recognized The Next Day, Because The Column Was Just In Seattle And It Was Kind Of A Sensation And I Was Beating People Up. I Was Really Worried And I Didn't Want To Beat Somebody Up In A Column And Have That Person Know What I Look Like When I Didn't Know What They Looked Like.

I Really Enjoy Doing Theater, But Doing Theater In Seattle Is Like Dropping A Brick In A Bottomless Well. It's Gratifying, But It's Almost Like Doing Radio. It's Ephemeral.

You Want To Help Gay Kids, You Have To Reach Them In Middle School And High School, When They're Being Bullied.

I'm Allergic To Dogs, So I Couldn't Even Adopt What Gay Men Typically Adopt When They Have That Maternal Gene.

I'm One Of Those Gay People Who's Constantly Reminded Of How Fortunate I Am To Live Now And Not To Be Ennis And Jack [from Brokeback Mountain] Or Whatever - Not That I'd Mind Being Ennis For Half An Hour. But It's Been So Much Worse Recently. It Still Is Terrible. In Iran, They're Hanging Gay Teenagers. I'm Grateful For How Far The United States, Even With Its Crazy Christians, Has Come On A Lot Of Issues. And The Fact That I Get Called A Faggot Occasionally By A Crack Addict, While Annoying, Certainly Isn't A Lobotomy And Prison.

Christmas Can Have A Real Melancholy Aspect, 'cause It Packages Itself As This Idea Of Perfect Family Cohesion And Love, And You're Always Going To Come Up Short When You Measure Your Personal Life Against The Idealized Personal Lives That Are Constantly Thrust In Our Faces, Primarily By Tv Commercials.

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Every American May Have Equal Access To Ice Cream, But There's No Guarantee That The Outcome Of Eating Ice Cream Will Be Equal.

Guarantees That

I Think Abortion Should Be Mandatory For About 30 Years.

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Don't Mistake Being An Asshole For Being A Man.

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Outing Is Brutal And It Should Be Reserved For Brutes

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I'm Not A Pollyanna Sort Of Kumbaya Type.

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To Be Gay Is Nothing To Be Proud Of. It's In How You Are Gay That You Have Something To Be Proud Of, Considering The Obstacles Placed In Your Path If You Are Gay.

If Sex Isn't An Important Part Of Your Marriage, You Can't Beef If Your Wife Or Husband Does This Unimportant Thing With Somebody Else Every Once In A While, If You Have No Interest In It.

Unimportant Things

I’m Searching For Some Exit Poll Data From California. I’ll Eat My Shorts If Gay And Lesbian Voters Went For Mccain At Anything Approaching The Rate That Black Voters Went For Prop 8.

I Get Letters Every Year From Women Who Think Valentine's Day Is An Empty Exercise, But Are Ironically Pretty Exercised When Their Boyfriends Neglect Or Forget It.

The Mistake That Straight People Made Was Imposing The Monogamous Expectation On Men. Men Were Never Expected To Be Monogamous.

I Wouldn't Say That Holidays Are Manufactured By Corporations, But They're Certainly Exploited And Mined By Them.

Pride Became This Dogma Which Meant You Couldn't Criticize Anything Gay - If You Were The Least Bit Critical Of Gay Culture Or People Or Any Gay Person Doing Any Gay Thing, That Was An Insufficient Display Of Pride. You Were Suffering From Internalized Homophobia. As Opposed To External Homophobia.

First Off, Lardass, You Neglected To Include A Sign-off, Forcing Me To Create One For You. I Tried To Create One That Captured The Spirit And Tone Of Your Letter, And I Think I Did Pretty Well. [] I Am Thoroughly Annoyed At Having My Tame Statements Of Fact-being Heavy Is A Health Risk; Rolls Of Exposed Flesh Are Unsightly-characterized As “hate Speech.”

One Man's Blasphemy Doesn't Override Other People's Free-speech Rights, Their Freedom To Publish, Freedom Of Thought.

The Successes Of The Lgbt Civil Rights Movement And The More Prominent Role Openly Gay People Are Playing In The Public Eye Has Actually Turned Up The Temperature In Middle Schools And High Schools For Queer Kids.

I Believe It's In The Best Interests Of A Child To Be In A Stable Environment.

I Don't Write About My Life In My Column.

Natural Isn't Something I Get Called A Lot In Texas.

If Kids Got Raped At Denny's As Often As They Get Raped At Church It Would Be Illegal To Take Your Kids To Denny's.

I Feel Like I'm A Compassionate Guy, But I Also Feel If Somebody's Grip On Life Or Sanity Is So Tenuous That A Joke In An Advice Column That Usually Is Nothing But Jokes Pushes Them Over The Edge, Then If Not Me, It Would Have Been A Leaf Blowing Past Them That Did It, Or Something Else. You Almost Have To Feel That Way, Doing This.

You Can’t Pray Away The Gay, But You Can Torture A Conflicted Closet Case To Death.

Relationships Are Monuments Build On Lies

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I Think It's Going To Take Three Or Four Generations Of Gay People Being Able To Get Married Before It Starts Feeling Less Like We're Going Through These Motions, That We're Aping A Heterosexual Institution.

We Can Learn To Ignore The Bullshit In The Bible About Gay People. The Same Way We Have Learned To Ignore The Bullshit In The Bible About Shellfish, About Slavery, About Dinner, About Farming, About Menstruation, About Virginity, About Masturbation.

Mother's Day Is A Torment If Your Mother Is Dead. Valentine's Day Is A Torment If You Don't Got One. And At Some Point In Our Lives, We Will Be Tormented By Valentine's Day Even If We're Relatively Lucky In Love.

I Own A Lot Of My House, Because I'm Irish And From People Who Never Owned Anything.

The Bible Is Only As Good And Decent As The Person Reading It.

Straight Couples Don't Have To Be Monogamous To Be Married Or Married To Be Monogamous. Monogamy No More Defines Marriage Than The Presence Of Children Does. Monogamy Isn't Compulsory And Its Absence Doesn't Invalidate A Marriage.

I Think It's Better To Have Limits. My Limits Are Different From Other People's Limits. I'm All For Freedom, I'm All For People Doing What They Want. I'm Also All For People Shouldering The Consequences Of Their Behaviors, And Not Being Assholes, And Not Lying Unless They Need To, And Being Honest Except When You Shouldn't, And Being Faithful Except When It's Okay To Cheat. I Guess I'm Just A Mass Of Contradictions.

In An Open Adoption Agreement, You Agree To A Minimum Number Of Visits - A Floor, Not A Ceiling. It's Enforceable.

Like It Or Not Children Are Being Raised By Gay And Lesbian Parents All Over America - As Many As 10 Million Children. And It Does Nothing To Make Their Lives More Stable And Secure To Attack Their Families, To Attack Their Parents To Prevent Us From Marrying Each Other.

A Lot Of Kids Are Bullied Because Of Their Sexual Identity Or Expression. It's Often The Effeminate Boys And The Masculine Girls, The Ones Who Violate Gender Norms And Expectations, Who Get Bullied.

I'm An Agnosto-theist. I Cross Myself On Airplanes. I Pray When I'm Sick. When You're Sick I'll Keep You In My Thoughts; When I'm Sick, I'm Entreating A Higher Power.

My Husband Terry And I Are Mostly Monogamous. . . . There Are Times — Certain Set And Limited Circumstances — When It Is Permissible For Us To Have Sex With Others.

I Don't Think That Gay And Lesbian Relationships Are Identical To Heterosexual Relationships. I Do Think That Heterosexual Weddings, Or At Least Most Of Them, Are Sort Of Camp Pantomimes About Male And Female Sex Roles, Even If The Couple Is Marrying As Individuals And Equals.

But It Doesn't Matter What You're Doing, It Matters How You're Doing It.

A Lot Of Young People Regard A Threat Against One Person's Sexual Freedom As A Threat Against All Of Them, And That's Absolutely How They Should Regard It. But It's Heartening To Look At The Polls On Young People On Gay People, Gay Marriage, And Sexual-freedom Issues. They're Terrific, And That's Why The Religious Right Is So Desperately Trying To Lock In Their Current Bare Majority For Prejudice: Because Their Constituents Are Dying. They're Losing Votes Every Time The Ambulance Pulls Up To The Old Folks' Home. Let's Hope It Pulls Up A Little More Frequently.

It's Going To Take Generations Of Gay People Marrying Before These Things Start To Feel Natural. We Haven't Had It Long Enough To Remake It As Our Own, So It Does Feel Like You're Getting Dressed Up In Straight Drag To Do It.

Oftentimes, When People Write Me 4,000-word Letters, I Write Them Back And Tell Them If Their Problem's That Complicated, They Probably Need A Lawyer Or A Cop, And Not Me.

...even If Gay Marriage Were Legalized There Would Still Be Gay Men Who Didn't Want To Marry, Gay Men No Other Gay Men Would Want To Marry, And Gay Men Who Didn't Want To Leave The Priesthood In Order To Marry.

Yes, Yes: Taking Out Saddam Hussein Means War, And War Is Bad For Children And Other Living Things. I Went To Grade School In The 1970s, And I Recall The Poster. But There Are Times When War Is Not Only A Tragic And Unavoidable Necessity, But Also Good For Children And Other Living Things.

Take Me To The Driest County In The Most Conservative State, And In Two Hours This Determined Hedonist Will Find You All The Drugs, Whores, And Booze You'll Need To Pass An Eventful Weekend.

Only Someone Obsessed With Sexual Fidelity To An Unhealthy Degree Places A Higher Value On Preserving The Ideal Of Monogamous Marriage Over Preserving An Actual Marriage.

Sometimes I Talk To Religious People About My Column Or What I Do, And I Ask Them To, You Know, Read 20 Or 30 Of Them And Then Come Tell Me That The Message At The Heart Of Every Column Isn't, 'do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You.' In Every Possible Sense.

It Really Did Take Billy Lucas's Suicide To Wake Me Up To, Kind Of, The Damage Of The Success Of The Lgbt Civil-rights Movement - Higher-profile Lgbt People - Has Done To Lgbt Youth Who Are Trapped Out There In Those Shitholes. But I Don't Think We Need Pride. I Am Still Opposed, On Philosophical Grounds, To The Flap Of The Rainbow Windsock And The Damage That Does To Us Intellectually.

Children Have A Right To Some Stability And Constancy From The Adults In Their Lives.

We're Living Through An Age Of Irrationality And Religious "fervor" I Would Call It Religious Idiocy. It's Exhausting To Year After Year Be On The Receiving End Of This Demagoguery.

I Don’t Understand How Real Christians Let That Little F--ker Get Away With That.

Women Can Go On Marrying And Pretending That Their Boyfriends And Husbands Are Mr. Darcy Or Some Romcom Dream Man. But Where's That Going To Get 'em? Besides Divorce Court?

When I Was A Kid, And I Was Odd, The Default Assumption Was That I Was Odd, Not That I Was Gay. Now When A Kid Is Odd In A Greensburg, Gay Or Straight, The Default Assumption Is Gay.

I Think The 'south Park' Guys Are Brilliant.

A Huge Part Of What Animates Homophobia Among Young People Is Paranoia And Fear Of Their Own Capacity To Be Gay Themselves.

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