Background Image

...

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.

-Dan Savage

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Sedaris, In His Essay

Dan Savage

...

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.

Views: 8

Topic

More From Dan Savage

I'm Not A Pollyanna Sort Of Kumbaya Type.

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.

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.

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 Don't Write About My Life In My Column.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I Waver Between A Cop-out Agnostic And Principled Atheism

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

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.

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

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.

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.

...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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Truth Is Often A Mixed Message

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

A Certain Tiny Percentage Of Everyone Is Gay.

I Think The 'south Park' Guys Are Brilliant.

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

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

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.

Kids Are Like Heroin, A Little Heroin Addiction. When It’s Bad, You’ve Never Been So Miserable, But When It’s Good You’ve Never Been So High.

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 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.

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

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.

Ultimately Life Is Disease, Death And Oblivion. It's Still Better Than High School.

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

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

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

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

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.”

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

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

Relationships Are Monuments Build On Lies

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.'

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?"

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.

Outing Is Brutal And It Should Be Reserved For Brutes

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?

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.

I Think Abortion Should Be Mandatory For About 30 Years.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Oh, My God. I'd Be A Terrible Doctor. I Don't Like To Touch Other People. There's A Lot Of Gruesome Stuff In My Line Of Work To Feel Or To Admit. I'm Sure Everyone's Expecting Me To Say "proctologist," But Actually No, I Don't Want To Be A Proctologist. Probably Want To Be A Dentist, Because You Don't Have To Touch Much Of The Other Person's Body, Just Their Face Or Mouth.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Most Americans Don't Care About Gay Marriage. But It Matters Very Much To The Knuckle-draggers And Christianists And Whack Jobs In Bush's Ever Smaller Base.

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

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.

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.

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

I Always Kind Of Divided The Gay Guys I Met Up Into Two Groups When I First Started Coming Out. There Were The Guys Who Thought There Was Something Fundamentally Wrong With Them And Hated Themselves And Were So Burdened With Shame And Internalized Homophobia. It Just Really Paralyzed And Shredded Them. And Then There Were Guys Like Me Who Thought, "i'm Fine, Everybody Else Is Crazy. My Church Is Sick And The Family's Crazy, But Me? I'm Fine."

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.

Trending Author

Raymond Chandler

Christa McAuliffe

Nicolas Chamfort

Edward Everett Hale

Category