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.
Dan SavageSedaris, 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 SavageWe'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.
Dan SavageMost 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.
Dan SavageThe truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H.
Dan SavageI 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.
Dan SavageWhen 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.
Dan SavageMy 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.
Dan SavageIf 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.
Dan SavageA 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.
Dan SavageWe 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.
Dan SavageOftentimes, 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.
Dan SavageBisexuals need to recognize that their being closeted is a huge contributing factor to the hostility they face.
Dan SavageI 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.
Dan SavageHow can you tell somebody who is pursuing happiness that they're somehow not American when that was the very first promise that America made?
Dan SavageTo 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.
Dan Savage...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.
Dan SavageOh, 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.
Dan SavageI'm allergic to dogs, so I couldn't even adopt what gay men typically adopt when they have that maternal gene.
Dan SavageA 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.
Dan SavageYou know, my problem is I cant say no to people, especially people who want to write me checks to do things.
Dan SavageKids 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.
Dan SavageYou 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.
Dan SavageTV 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.
Dan SavageFirst 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.”
Dan SavageI'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.
Dan SavageI didn't want kids to think that to be happy, they had to be famous or rich or live in the big city.
Dan SavageOne 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.
Dan SavageA huge part of what animates homophobia among young people is paranoia and fear of their own capacity to be gay themselves.
Dan SavageWhen 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.
Dan SavageA lot of people think that telling people you're gay is something someone might say just to get attention.
Dan Savage