Gay commentator, author, and sex and relationship advice columnist Dan Savage published a new book of essays earlier this year. It's entitled American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics. My guess is that most kossacks are already familiar with Savage and his commentary by now, but in case you've been living under a rock for the last decade or so, read the next paragraph.
Dan Savage started his writing career as a sex and relationship advice columnist ("Savage Love") at Seattle's free weekly newspaper The Stranger about 20 years ago. His incisive and sardonic wit, as well as his out-and-proud demeanor about his gayness, eventually led to a national following. (I remember reading his column in the LA Reader in the early 1990s.) He has become a commentator of some prominence on topics you might expect (sex and sexuality), but he's been branching out in recent years (LGBT rights and marriage equality, bullying of LGBT youth, religious hypocrisy, as well as other social issues). He is responsible for the promulgation of the redefinition of former Senator Rick Santorum's last name, even though he did not come up with the definition himself. With his husband Terry Miller, he founded the It Gets Better campaign in a effort to bring hope to bullied LGBT youth at risk for suicide.
Many of these themes are raised in Savage's new book. Savage takes great delight in skewering conservative hypocrites with his wry observations of how badly they fail to pay attention to reality. There is also a great deal of personal revelation about his own life in this book, as he has done in a number of his previous books. The overarching theme of this book, to the extent that it has one, is the denial and hypocrisy of society in general, or of certain elements of society, in how it considers sex, LGBT individuals, culture, and rights, and liberal policies in general. It is a very satisfying read.
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I have read two other books by Dan Savage: First, The Kid: What Happened after My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant, which tells the story of how he and his then-boyfriend (now-husband) adopted a new-born infant, sprinkled with commentary about adoption, parenting, gay and lesbian parents, and how they all fit into society; Then, The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family, an account of Savage's 2005 Canadian marriage to Terry (now repeated with a wedding in his home state of Washington on the first day it became legal), liberally leavened with commentary on love, sex and marriage from all sorts of perspectives. Both of these books are by turns hysterically funny and deeply poignant while providing insightful analysis of American social mores, and how and why they've changed in the past 50 years. As one would expect from memoirs such as these, Savage shares a great deal of personal information in them. Despite the fact that American Savage is more a collection of essays than a memoir, there is still a lot of personal disclosure, again, both funny and poignant.
The essays in the new book can be subdivided into overlapping categories: Accounts from his personal life; sex in modern American culture; homosexuality and the hypocrisy of political and religious figures; and general progressive politics and the unhinged conservative reaction to it. I will review these essays one category at a time.
With only a few exceptions, almost all of the essays could be placed in the category of personal accounts, as they usually take some event in Savage's life as a point of departure. However, some of these essays do not wander into the realm of sex or politics making them almost pure exposition of these events. Foremost in this category are the first essay, "At a Loss," and later "Extended Stay." Both of these essays had a their origin a pathos-filled reading he gave for a live simulcast of This American Life, on the topic of his mother's passing. "Extended Stay," gives a harrowing account of the sorrow and panic that ran through his family as Savage's mother, who suffered from the fatal condition of pulmonary fibrosis, is unexpectedly informed that she has reached the last day of her life, far from home, and with only some of her family present. "At a Loss" describes how the death of his mother caused Savage to become nostalgic for the Catholicism in which he was raised, and in which his mother worshipped. Savage is an atheist--his nostalgia has nothing to do with religious belief; however, he wishes his mother's conception of heaven is true, at least for her sake, and that there may be a time when they can meet again. Anyone parted from a loved one by death can understand why he feels this way. Further, as a non-celibate, openly gay man legally married to another man, he is not welcome into the Church, by the policies of the Vatican, at least.
In the essay "My Son Comes Out," well, the title says it all. His son tells his parents that he's straight, to the surprise of no one. This despite all the garbage thrown at LGBT parents that they are indoctrinating their children into the gay "lifestyle." Statistics prove otherwise. Savage also mentions the trumped-up Regnerus study, which was intended to influence the Supreme Court against marriage equality in it decision in the DOMA and Prop. 8 cases this last session. It didn't work.
This leads naturally to another essay in the book, "On Being Different," the title of which Savage stole from an essay written by Merle Miller in 1971. Miller's piece was originally published in The New York Times Magazine under the title "What It Means to be a Homosexual_. He was one of the first prominent writers of the time to come out, and he did so as a response to a truly hate-filled article directed principally at gay men written by Joseph Epstein and published in Harper's in 1970. Savage concentrates on the portion of Miller's essay where Miller describes how a friend who was a father made it clear that the friend did not fully trust Miller around his children. Savage makes this observation while on a vacation to Hawai'i with his husband Terry, two other gay couples, Terry and Dan's son D. J., and two of D. J.'s friends who are the children of straight parents. The contrast between the environment described by Miller in 1971, and the one described by Savage in 2011 could not be much starker. Could it be that the zombie lie that gay men are child molesters and seducers of youth may finally be dying?
The essay "Crazy, Mad, Salacious" gives an account of how, from the time he first knew he was gay, he vowed never to be like the stereotypical gay characters he saw on TV and in movies: the limp-wristed swish in lavender trousers walking a toy poodle. But it appears that fate will bite you in the butt no matter what you do.
In the first of the essays to focus mainly on sex and relationships, Savage explains why he does something no other advice columnist does, for which he is harshly criticized by those other columnists: Savage gives some of his correspondents permission to cheat. The essay, entitled "It's Never Okay to Cheat (Except when It Is)," asserts that humans are predisposed to being very bad at sexual monogamy. Humans have way more sex per pregnancy than other primates, and we are pre-programmed to be excited by novelty. Savage criticizes his fellow advice columnists for reflexively telling their correspondents to get a divorce at the slightest sign of their partners straying from the straight-and-narrow, and he introduces new ways to evaluate fidelity between partners in long-term relationships. For example, one or two incidents of adultery in an otherwise solid long-term relationship ought not be grounds for divorce, and one might consider such an average pretty good on an absolute scale. He also proposes that under certain circumstances, adultery can actually save a marriage. In marriages where one partner's libido shuts down completely, and both partners are satisfied with all other aspects of their relationship, allowing the partner who still wants sex to seek it discreetly outside the marriage will prevent potentially divorce-inducing resentment from fomenting. Savage coined the term "monogamish" to describe a relationship where it's understood that there will be (rare and limited) "cheating," sometimes under very specific conditions. However, he does not give carte blanche to cheat when there isn't an agreement between the two partners involved. Further, he distinguishes between monogamish and open or polyamorous relationships because in a monogamish relationship, any sort of sex outside the relationship is understood to be a rare occurrence.
In the essay "The GGG Spot," he describes another concept he pretty much introduced: GGG, which stand for "good, giving, and game." The idea is that both partners in a relationship should be concerned about giving the other pleasure, and each should be open to expanding the ground of sex-play, within reason. The idea here is to find accommodation in a relationship between a partner who has a kink that the other lacks (e. g. foot fetish, rubber, mild S&M, particular fantasies). Often, the non-kinky partner finds that he or she can have fun satisfying his or her partner's kinks, if he or she is GGG. Again, the alternative could be a long-term relationship overwhelmed by resentment.
In "The Straight Pride Parade," Savage observes how Halloween, after decades of being the prime holiday celebrated by LGBT people, has been co-opted by straight people, a result that he welcomes. Halloween has given straight people the opportunity to loosen up and be a little salacious, a chance to break out of their everyday lives and live a fantasy for an evening. For LGBT people, celebrations have shifted away from Halloween to yearly pride events. Says Savage: "Gay people don't resent straight people for taking Halloween from us. In all honesty, we were hardly using it anymore."
In the essay "Mistakes Were Made," Savage makes a conditional apology for denying the existence of male bisexuals, but he defends himself because, as he proves in the course of the essay, many men who claim to be bisexual (as he himself did in his youth) are really gay men who do so on their way out of the closet. Nonetheless, truly bisexual men do exist, but as they (as well as most bisexual women) end up in straight marriages, they end up being invisible for the most part. This is ironic because surveys show that the B cohort in LGBT is larger than L G or T, and yet the B is not apparent because bisexuals are least likely to be open about their sexual orientation.
The essay "Sex Dread" lambasts the poor state of sex education in the U. S.--and he does not exclude himself from that criticism because he feels he did a poor job when talking to his own son about sex. Of course there is the travesty of "abstinence-only" sex ed., for which there is ample evidence that it's a total failure, but at a fundamental level, all sex ed. in the U. S. seems to forget to mention the fact that sex is pleasurable. The tone of standard sex ed. has all the allure of a textbook on mechanical engineering, and the human aspect seems to get lost.
There are a number of essays where the topics of sex and hypocrisy of political and religious figures overlap (who would have thought?). I'll save the best for last, as did Savage, but let's first consider "Folsom Prism Blues," where he gives some details on the sort of activities one can witness at Chicago's International Mr. Leather (IML), and at San Francisco's Folsom Street Fair, both of which feature quite a bit of openly kinky behavior. While IML is nearly exclusively gay, about half the Folsom participants are kinky straight people. He also introduces us to Peter LaBarbera, aka "Porno Pete," the founder of a group called Americans for Truth about Homosexuality. He acquired the name "Porno Pete" because he attends events such as IML and Folsom in order to photograph the kinky goings-on and then post these photos on his website in the service of drawing attention to the depravities occurring there. But the fact is, if he wants to post such photos on his website, there's no need for him to attend; dozens of photographers at these events post thousands of photos openly on the net, more than Porno Pete would even need to make his point. Perhaps he finds it necessary to attend for other reasons...?
"The Choicer Challenge" is a very short essay, where Savage calls out conservative politicians who believe sexual orientation is a conscious choice (specifically Herman Cain, former candidate vying for the Republican nomination for President in 2012, and John Cummins, the leader of the Conservative Party in British Columbia, Canada). He gives a challenge to these two men, one I doubt either will actually take up, since it would require them to revoke their presumed choice in sexual orientation. Read the essay if you want to know what the challenge entails, but it boils down to three little words.
In "Four Closet Cases," Savage presents short histories of four public homophobes who were outed as gay, and to whom he affords no sympathy. These are names that are pretty well known. First, there is Jim West, former Republican mayor of Spokane, WA, and former member of Washington's state legislature, where he championed bills to restrict the rights of LGBT people, and killed bills that would have guaranteed such rights. He was caught soliciting young men online. Then there is Ted Haggard, the former anti-gay megachurch pastor from Colorado who made regular visits to a male prostitute in Denver. Then there's former U. S. Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, who was nailed when he solicited a cop in a men's room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Finally, there is George Rekers, a psychologist who hawked "conversion therapy" for gay men. At least one of his patients committed suicide. He was found to have hired a gay escort to accompany him on a trip to Europe; he said the role of the escort was solely to assist him in "lifting his luggage," which led to the creation of a whole new metaphor. And it would be funny if nobody had died. Savage pointed out that all four of these men were young enough to have been aware of Stonewall and the gay rights movement during the '70s, but that they opted not to participate in helping others like themselves, but instead hid, and sought to do damage to others like themselves in the process. There is no reason to feel sorry for them.
You knew he'd get to it eventually: the essay "Rick and Me" provides a detailed account of the redefinition of Rick Santorum's last name. The new definition was the winning entry in a contest Savage sponsored in 2003. It's important to remember that date, because many media bloviators who mention the redefinition (a) accuse Savage of having made up the definition, and (b) say the posting of the redefinition was retribution for Santorum's opposition to marriage equality. The definition was submitted by a straight male reader of Savage's column, and back in 2003, there was no marriage equality anywhere in the U. S., and virtually all politicians were opposed to it. The reason for posting the redefinition was what Santorum said in an interview after the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws in its decision in Lawrence v. Texas. (Remember "Man-on-dog"?) That redefinition was a time-bomb that exploded during Santorum's run for the Presidency last year, and as he now seems to be making noises about doing it all over again in 2016, he clearly has not learned his lesson. The fact is, Rick Santorum does not want anybody having any sort of sex he does not approve of, gay or straight. Voters need to be made aware of this troubling busybody aspect to Santorum's personality before they make a potential mistake. To the extent that santorum helped to keep Santorum out of the White House, it was a brilliant success, and what has to be one of the first successful guerilla internet campaigns against a politician.
I will hold off describing the last essay, which belongs in this category, to instead describe two others, which call out conservatives on issues beside hypocrisy over LGBT people and their rights. First is "Still Evil. Less Evil. But Still Evil" which is a meditation on Obamacare, and how it is that conservative Christians could be opposed to providing healthcare to people who previously had no access to it. The title refers to the fact that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is far less than ideal as it will still miss covering millions of people and will result in the transfer of billions of dollars to insurance companies whose amorality knows no bounds. Anyone who has read any diaries on dkos on this topic have already heard all of these arguments and know the history, know the lies that have been promulgated, and the compromises that had to be struck just to get all the Democrats to cooperate. However, unless you read this book, you will not have read the brilliant two-character play authored by Savage entitled Jesus and the Huge Asshole; the two characters are Jesus (who'd have guessed?) and Peter LaBarbera (see above) who complains because Obamacare raises the cost of a Jimmy John's sandwich by 50 cents. Hilarity ensues. The second essay is entitled "It's Happened Again," on the topic of mass shootings and how gun control has been made impossible in this country by the NRA and it's wholly owned politicians in Congress. But again, we knew that already.
Finally, the final essay, "Bigot Christmas," is about the debate that occurred at Dan Savage's dining room table with National Organization for Marriage (NOM) President Brian Brown, moderated by The New York Times' Mark Oppenheimer. You would think that NOM, given its name, might sponsor programs to prevent divorce, or to help prepare young couples for aa satisfying, decades long relationship, but you would be wrong. The only thing that NOM does is to work to prevent same-sex couples from being able to marry. And they do it "for the children," of course. NOM's claim is that children have the best outcomes when they are raised by their birth parents who are in a happy, stable marriage. Now, how does preventing same-sex couple from marrying help to assure that all children are raised by their birth parents? Damned if I know.
The origin of this debate came about when Savage gave an address to a conference of high-school student journalists on the topic of bullying. Savage offended a few dozen of them, to the point where they walked out, by stating (correctly) that there is "bullshit in the Bible." The Christian right came down like a ton of bricks, accusing Savage of bullying Christians. Ultimately, Brown challenged Savage to a debate; Savage would only accept if the debate were to happen in his own dining room after dinner, in the presence of a neutral moderator. The debate would be recorded and posted to the web:
According to Savage, Brown's arguments mostly consisted of circular reasoning and inconsistent assumptions. Why was it called "Bigot Christmas"? Because they cleaned the house as though it was Christmas, but it wasn't Santa coming down the chimney. Savage's husband Terry, who was angry that this whole arrangement occurred without his consent, removed himself from the house as soon as he possibly could, and ultimately brought an end to the visit:
With no sign that the debate would ever stop--Mark [Oppenheimer] kept peppering Brown with questions--Terry finally marched into the dining room, walked around the table, faced Brian Brown, and said that he had one question for him.
"Do you think our son should be taken away from us?"
Brian made an effort to look pained. He almost pulled it off.
"You shouldn't ask me a question when you know you won't like the answer," Brown said.
Terry took a breath, shot a look at me that said "three weeks in Hawaii," then turned to Brown, raised his arm, and pointed a finger at the front door.
"Get the fuck out of my house," Terry said.
And thus, Terry won the debate. Savage presents his arguments regarding the parts of the Bible one can safely regard as "bullshit," i. e. support of slavery, stoning of women who are not virgins on their wedding nights, etc, and the defenses presented by his religious opponents. ("Oh, that's all Old Testament stuff! We don't pay attention to that!" Except, of course, they do.) However, this diary is already way too long, so if you want to see more of this quite entertaining history, I recommend you read it in the book.
I do have one negative comment to make about the book: the Introduction is very off-putting. In it, Savage informs us that his editor has told him he has to write an introduction. Essentially, he puts words on paper almost at random until he has reached the desired length, and then he stops. Surely it couldn't have been so hard to write something lucid about the themes uniting these essays? Compared to those essays, the introduction sticks out like a sore thumb. Admittedly, Savage recommends that we skip it, but the book deserves something better than an intentionally lousy introduction.
In conclusion, I highly recommend this book for its wit, its hilarious take-downs of powerful hypocrites, its contemplative and heartwarming moments, its consistent moral vision, as well as its sex advice. Where else can you find all that stuff in a single book?
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