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I'm Not Good Looking. I'm Very Strange - A Very Bony Face On An Enormous Skull, And I Don't Like To Be Naked Because I Don't Like How I Look Naked. And - No, No. I Own A Lot Of My House, Because I'm Irish And From People Who Never Owned Anything. So I Could Have A Lot More Trappings Of Wealth If Every Time I Had 20 Extra Dollars I Didn't Pay Off More Of The Mortgage.

-Dan Savage

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I'm Not Good Looking.

Dan Savage

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I'm Not Good Looking. I'm Very Strange - A Very Bony Face On An Enormous Skull, And I Don't Like To Be Naked Because I Don't Like How I Look Naked. And - No, No. I Own A Lot Of My House, Because I'm Irish And From People Who Never Owned Anything. So I Could Have A Lot More Trappings Of Wealth If Every Time I Had 20 Extra Dollars I Didn't Pay Off More Of The Mortgage.

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Guarantees That

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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.

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Sedaris, In His Essay In The It Gets Better Book, Writes That When He Was Growing Up Nobody Called Him Gay Because You Might As Well Have Called Him A Warlock. Nobody Knew What Gay Was.

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I'm Not Good Looking. I'm Very Strange - A Very Bony Face On An Enormous Skull, And I Don't Like To Be Naked Because I Don't Like How I Look Naked. And - No, No. I Own A Lot Of My House, Because I'm Irish And From People Who Never Owned Anything. So I Could Have A Lot More Trappings Of Wealth If Every Time I Had 20 Extra Dollars I Didn't Pay Off More Of The Mortgage.

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

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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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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.

I Waver Between A Cop-out Agnostic And Principled Atheism

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

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.

Tv Commercials Make Parenting Look Like There Are Going To Be Good Days And Bad Days - Like, It'll Be This Gentle Wave, Like You'll Have A Blissed-out, Really Wonderful Day Or Two, And Then, You Know, Then You'll Have An Issue. And What Parenting Is, Is Kind Of Earthquake.

Actual Gay People Can Make Many Others Feel Uncomfortable And Paranoid Because They Don't Know And Can't Articulate What Makes A Person Gay, And They Worry That Maybe They Themselves Are Gay.

One Man's Piss-soaked Sadomasochistic Orgy Is Another Man's Poetic Ecstasy.

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

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?

How Can You Tell Somebody Who Is Pursuing Happiness That They're Somehow Not American When That Was The Very First Promise That America Made?

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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.

There's Going To Be Some Places Where You're Treated With Respect And Dignity And Some Places Where You'd Have To Be A Fool To Live, .. So, There Will Be Places Where People Can Get Their Hair Done Well And Places Where They Can't.

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

I Think Astrology Is Annoying Bullshit-which Is So Libra Of Me

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.

The Truth Is Often A Mixed Message

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.

...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.

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.

When You're A Writer, You Want To Try To Avoid Cliches. Unfortunately, When You're Writing About Marriage Or Family, All Cliches Seem To Apply.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Truly Revolutionary Promise Of Our Nation's Founding Document Is The Freedom To Pursue Happiness-with-a-capital-h.

A Lot Of People Think That Telling People You're Gay Is Something Someone Might Say Just To Get Attention.

The Right To Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Happiness Means That Each Of Us Is Free To Go Our Own Way, Even If The Ways Some Of Us May Choose To Go Seem Sinful Or Shocking To Our Fellow Citizens.

Pursuit Of Happiness

We've Had A Culture War Roaring Away, And The Kinds Of People Who Want To Abuse And Discriminate Against Gay People Who Are Adults Can't Really Lay Their Hands On Us Unless They Want To Be Gay-bashers And Go To Jail. They Abuse Us From Afar And In The Abstract, They Abuse Us With Checkbooks And Ballots, But Their Kids Go To School On Monday Morning. And There's A Gay Kid. And They Feel They Have License To Beat That Gay Kid Up In A Way That I Don't Think They Did When I Was In School. I Think It's Gotten Worse.

I Have A Thick Skin, But I Have A Heart.

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.

There's A Big Mistake The Left Has Made With Talking To Religious People, Which Is Attempting To Talk Them Out Of Their Interpretations Of The Bible, Attempting To Have Theological Debate With Them. When I'm On Right-wing Whackjob Radio, When People Call Up To Inform Me That I'm Going To Hell, I Concede The Point. "i'm Going To Hell. Yes. Can You Leave Me Alone Now?"

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.

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.

Bisexuals Need To Recognize That Their Being Closeted Is A Huge Contributing Factor To The Hostility They Face.

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