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.
Dan SavageReally, when it comes to gay rights, there's two wars going on. The first war is political. But the culture war is over.
Dan SavageI 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.
Dan SavageLike 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.
Dan SavageTake 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.
Dan SavageIf 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.
Dan SavageI'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.
Dan SavageWe'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.
Dan SavageThere'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.
Dan SavageI 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.
Dan SavageSo 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.
Dan SavageIโm searching for some exit poll data from California. Iโll eat my shorts if gay and lesbian voters went for McCain at anything approaching the rate that black voters went for Prop 8.
Dan SavageShouldn't homophobic politicians and anti-gay bullies be presumed to be gay until they get caught up in a straight sex scandal?
Dan SavageMy 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.
Dan SavagePreaching 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.
Dan SavageYou 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.
Dan Savage