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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.

-Dan Savage

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I Started Doing Drag

Dan Savage

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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.

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I'm Always Telling People Who Say Two Men Can't Make A Baby: 'anything Is Possible For God. I'm Going To Keep Inseminating My Husband And Keep My Fingers Crossed.'

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.

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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.

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

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

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

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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.

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.

The Cultural Expectation Should Be If There's Infidelity, The Marriage Is More Important Than Fidelity.

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

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.

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?"

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

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.

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

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?

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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.

So While Gun Owners Are Always Saying That Owning Guns Is About Defending Freedom, The Only Freedom Gun Owners Seem Interested In Defending With Their Guns Is The Freedom To Defend Their Freedom To Own Guns.

You Could Fly Under The Radar A Little Bit. You Could Be A Weird Kid Without Defaulting To Gay, Without Everyone Assuming You Must Be Gay - That Was Literally The Last Place Many People Went.

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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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.

Outing Is Brutal And It Should Be Reserved For Brutes

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

I Think Abortion Should Be Mandatory For About 30 Years.

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The Truth Is Often A Mixed Message

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Unimportant Things

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

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

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

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.

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.

Owning A Gun In America Is One Way For Conservative White Males To Demonstrate Their Anger At Crime, Liberalism, Feminism, And Modernity.

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

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

Books Are Magic: You Never Know Where They're Going To End Up.

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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I'm 52, Which Means I Don't Really... I Was Never A Person Who Celebrated Birthdays To Begin With. At This Stage, It's Certainly Something That Someone Who Made A Big Deal Out Of Their Birthdays In Their 20s And 30s Kind Of Hangs That Up. Not Because You're Sad To Be Getting Older. I'm Thrilled To Be Getting Older. I Have So Many Friends Who Died When They Were 25 And Would Be Ecstatic To Be Here With Me Turning 50. It's A Thrill And A Privilege To Still Be Alive.

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

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'm Not A Pollyanna Sort Of Kumbaya Type.

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.

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.

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.

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

A Certain Tiny Percentage Of Everyone Is Gay.

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.

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

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.”

My Dad And Mom Were More Like World War Ii-era Parents, Even Though It Was The 1960s, Because They Were Both Born In The '40s. They Were Young Adults Before The '60s Even Happened, And Married, And Already Having Kids. But By The Time We Were Adolescents In The '70s, The Whole Culture Was Screaming At Parents, "you're A Good Parent If You're Open With Your Kids About Sex." They Attempted To Be Open With Us About Sex, And It Made Them Want To Die, And Consequently, It Made Us Want To Die.

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.

I Don't Think That Sin And Pursuing Happiness Are Not Necessarily The Same Thing.

One Person Simply Can’t Be All Things To Another Person – Sexually Or Otherwise—and Unmet Needs, Unfulfilled Desire, And Unexplored Possibilities Are Prices We Pay To Be In Ltrs (long –term Relationships). Monogamous, Polyamorous, Femdom, Or Whatever: All Couples People Walk Around Feeling A Little Unfulfilled. (single People, Too). Because No One Gets Everything They Want.

Valentine's Day Is Much More Of A Holy Day Of Obligation For A Guy In A Relationship With A Woman, Because A Woman Has Certain Emotional Expectations. Even If She Doesn't Value Valentine's Day, Or Views It As A Corporate Exercise, She Still Often Wants Her Boyfriend Or Husband To Go Through The Motions, Just In Case She Values It.

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.

My Dad Was A Homicide Cop In The Gay Neighborhood In The City When Gay Neighborhoods Were Desperate, Depressing, Sad Places Run By The Mob. The Only Gay People He'd Met When I Came Out To Him Were Corpses.

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

Don't Move To Seattle And Write A Stupid Sex Advice Column. That's A Waste Of Time And You Need To Grow Up And Get Serious.

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.

The Only Way To Get Gay Issues Off The Front Pages Of Canadian Newspapers Is To Grant Gay And Lesbian People Our Full Civil Equality And Leave It Alone.

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.

Today's Unspeakable Perversion Is Tomorrow's Kink, Is Next Week's Good Clean Fun

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.

I Didn't Want Kids To Think That To Be Happy, They Had To Be Famous Or Rich Or Live In The Big City.

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'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.

You Can't Have Rosie On The View And Elton John Packing Mom And Pop In At Caesars Palace And Gay People All Over Television, And Then Have These Politicians Run Out There With A Straight Face And Say That Gay And Lesbian Relationships Are A Threat To The Family. We Are Winning In The Culture - Which Is Why We'll Ultimately Win The Political War.

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.

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

No One Has Ever Gone Broke Underestimating The Insecurities Of The Gay And Lesbian Consumer.

I Got Picked On A Lot, Even By Teachers Too. I Liked To Listen To Musicals And Bake, And My Homeroom Teacher Found Out And Mocked Me In Front Of The Whole Class For Baking.

I Think The 'south Park' Guys Are Brilliant.

I Waver Between A Cop-out Agnostic And Principled Atheism

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

Shouldn't Homophobic Politicians And Anti-gay Bullies Be Presumed To Be Gay Until They Get Caught Up In A Straight Sex Scandal?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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