Tag: Dan Savage

But does his father shower with him? From today’s Seattle Times.

-posted by Dan.

FROM THE INBOX:Readers weigh in…

The idea that Republicans in power have ever favored personal freedoms is a myth. (I say “in power” because libertarians favor personal freedoms, and some of them are Republicans, but none holds, or to my knowledge ever has held, power.) Republicans have always opposed gay rights, pornography, and civil liberties in general; they favor freedom only for big business. There’s an old joke that liberals want to regulate big business but not our sex lives, while conservatives want to regulate our sex lives but not big business. In other words, each wants to regulate the other.

RE: “I predict that soon we’re going to have-and need-a straight rights movement in this country.”
Funny, I think what we need is just a plain rights movement. I thought gay rights were straight rights and vice versa–how can they be separated? Must we be stuck between those on the insufferable left who think there are inalienable rights to an equality of result and to never ever ever be offended and those on the insufferable right who have no concept of the Ninth Amendment which last I checked says just because a right isn’t in the constitution doesn’t mean it isn’t a basic human right? I think the presumption of Liberty is in trouble, though it probably always has been and has always required active defenders. (And having said that, why are the organized Libertarians so insane?)

Remember when Reagan appointed Everett Koop as surgeon general? How it was going to be the end of science in medicine as we knew it? Well, Koop got in a lot of trouble with the Wingnuts by (among other things) refusing to endorse a “study” that “proved” that women who had abortions had a higher instance of breast cancer, and in fact he very publicly endorsed another, real study that showed no correlation could be observed.

RE: “The GOP’s commitment to personal freedom, fiscal sanity, well-managed wars, and family values,” When has the modern Republican Party ever actually tried to live up to those commitments? They have been very good at using them as talking points in an attack on liberalism, but whenever they actually gain power, these concepts are tossed out the window. Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II and a series of Republican-controlled Congresses…I don’t recall any of them being true champions of any of the “commitments” you list.

When I saw your post on beer, I thought it read “bears.” As in you had three bears last night. I got very confused when I read that your brother pours three over his breakfast cereal, but Woof!

-posted by Dan.

James Dobson cites some peculiar advice for parents who don’t want their little boys to grow up to be gay cowboys. The gem below, currently up on Dobson’s website, is from quack anti-gay Dr. Joseph Nicolosi:

Meanwhile, the boy’s father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son’s maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.

I don’t know whether to file this ridiculous/tragic or tragic/ridiculous.
And it’s wrong on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin. I have two older brothers, Bill and Ed. We had the same father, also Bill, and he played the same games with us. I don’t recall ever showering with my dad, but I’m pretty sure Dad didn’t drag my brothers into the shower and waggle his penis in their faces either. So it seems unlikely that my want of face-time with dad’s cock made me gay. And somehow-once again, we had the same Dad-my brothers managed to grow up straight.
I have a son, and I don’t shower with him, and I can’t imagine that the Docs Dobson and Nicolosi want me to. My boyfriend, however, does occasionally shower with our son; he takes him swimming at the Y, and you have to shower before you get into the pool. But I kind of doubt that seeing my boyfriend’s penis in the YMCA showers made our son straight. (I’ve been examining my boyfriend’s penis for more than 10 years now-in the shower and other locations-and it hasn’t made me straight.) And I’m convinced our son is straight.

Why? Because the first time he picked up a football he threw a perfect spiral.

-posted by Dan.

…is preferable to santorum on the bat.

Writing about Rick Santorum without mentioning my past association with Senator isn’t easy. But a promise is a promise, and I swore to Andrew that I would keep things relatively clean during my stint here on AndrewSullivan.com. But, like, you know, what’s to stop an enterprising reader who wanted to Google my name and Santorum? Nothing, of course, but it’s not a Google search for the faint of heart.

I can’t resist running this photo, though.

That’s Senator Rick Santorum. At the bat. A inch or two closer and the photographer would have gotten the-substance-that-shall-not-be-named-in-this-space all over his lens.

-posted by Dan.

Rick Santorum, perhaps my favorite Republican U.S. Senator, opened his fool mouth last Thursday on NPR. As Bush has moved his party away from its longtime commitment to fiscal sanity, balanced budgets, and black ink, Santorum (and the wing of the GOP he represents) has moved the GOP away from its historic position on personal freedom. Basically Santorum’s GOP is all for personal freedom-so long as you freely choose to refrain from smoking pot, pulling feeding tubes out of brain dead loves ones, and doing what you like in your own bedroom (or, in the case of Msrg. Clark, your own hotel room).

This whole idea of personal autonomy, well I don’t think most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want.

Listening to Santorum, I found myself wondering what part of “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated” he doesn’t understand. That’s Amendement IV in the Ye Olde Bill of Rights. Call me ka-razy, but the right to shut the door to your bedroom and not have to worry about a sanctimonious, hypocritical, creepily fey U.S. Senator sneaking in and lifting back your blankets seems implicit.

And make no mistake, hetero readers: Santorum doesn’t just seek to stamp out the kind of relationship I enjoy with my longtime personal secretary. The Santorum wing of the GOP is targeting your privacy, your rights, and your pleasures, too. From porn (just as popular in red states as it is in blue) to divorce (more popular in red states than in blue) to masturbation (equally popular in red and blue states), the Santorums and Scalias and Bauers and Dobsons want to tell you how to live, who to love, and how exactly you should love ’em. When Santorum made his famous “man on dog” comments he wasn’t just defending anti-gay sodomy laws, but anti-straight sodomy laws too. Santorum doesn’t just believe that the state should have the right to regulate gay sex out of existence, but two out of three most popular straight sex acts too. In his dissent in Lawrence, GOP and Bush/Santorum favorite Antonin Scalia didn’t just bemoan the fact that the majority decision could lead to same-sex marriage rights, but that it would prevent the government from passing and/or enforcing laws against masturbation and pre-marital sex. Oh, the horror.

Whatever happened to the party that backed rugged individualism? Of personal freedom? Of autonomy? Remember Newt Gingrich’s stirring speech at the 1996 GOP convention in San Diego, in which he praised the way in which American freedom lead to the creation of beach volleyball? If that’s too painful, remember Dick Cheny saying freedom means freedom for everyone?

Personal freedom is like free speech: Some people are going to exercise their personal freedom and/or freedom of speech in ways that make you uncomfortable. So long as they’re not imposing themselves on you, they should be left alone. And, I’m sorry, Rick, but the haunting fear-or certain knowledge-that someone, somewhere, is enjoying himself in ways that you think are sinful does not qualify as an imposition.

-posted by Dan.

REAGAN REPUBLICANS: You still hear the term “Reagan Democrats” being tossed around. They’re still out there, I guess. (The fact that their wages haven’t budged since Reagan conned them into voting for him hasn’t brought them, or their kids, around.) But where are the Reagan Republicans, I wonder?

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

I wasn’t a fan of Reagan when he was president-and that’s putting it mildly. I loathed Ronald Reagan. I voted for the very first time in 1984 for Walter Mondale, and I was stunned when Reagan not only won, but won by a freakin’ landslide. (Full disclosure: Mondale; Dukakis, Clinton, Clinton, Gore, Kerry.) But Reagan managed to outlive my hostility, and when he died I felt same sense of sadness as most other Americans.

These days I’m positively nostalgic for Ronald Reagan. Yeah, yeah: He shrugged off apartheid, he ignored the AIDS epidemic, he saddled us with voodoo economics and Star Wars and all that horrible red White House china and he attempted to trade arms for hostages (and broke the law doing it), but at least he wouldn’t have sent government workers into our bedrooms to announce that they were there to “help” us.

-posted by Dan.

BREAKING THE 11THE COMMANDMENT: Those crazy kids at InTheAgora.com have declared today “Breaking the 11th.” It’s a reference to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.” (Is the 11th Commandment still operative? Or is it permissible, as la Bush/Rove in South Carolina, to speak ill of a fellow Republican’s wife and child?) From InTheAgora.com:

With Republican control of the House, Senate, and Presidency, perhaps now more than ever in recent history, it is important for rank-and-file Republicans to loudly proclaim our dissatisfaction with the way our leadership have become heady with unchecked power. Too often these days, we are asked to support the Party as an end rather than a means. And also too often, the policies, positions, and rhetoric of our elected Republicans run contrary to the principles that lead us to identify with the Grand Old Party. And, unfortunately, too often Republicans are complacent or silent in the face of such betrayal.

Like the GOP’s commitment to personal freedom, fiscal sanity, well-managed wars, and family values, Breaking the 11th doesn’t quite live up to its hype. “Countless weblogs will be taking part in this event,” InTheAgora.com claimed, “and you’re encouraged to join in too.” Can you count to three? That’s how many other blogs appear to have signed up. The InTheAgora.com kids asked Andrew to sign up too, but with Andrew away and me guest blogging all week (once again: Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Clinton, Gore, Kerry), I’m afraid AndrewSullivan.com will have to sit out the “Breaking the 11th” festivities. I’ve never recognized the 11th commandment, you see, so I can’t really break it. Despite the fact that my dad and some of my best friends are Republicans, I speak ill of Rs all the time. Constantly. But I’m happy to watch the “Breaking the 11th” fireworks from the sidelines.

-posted by Dan.

COULDA BEEN A CONTENDER?:

I’m not that inspired by the writing “Breaking the 11th” has generated so far. Joe Carter at TheEvangelicalOutpost.com has this to say about Rick Santorum:

Rick could have been a contender. He probably would have made a decent President. But he’s made too many odd statements to be electable. He’s said stuff that even makes me uncomfortable-and I’m generally in agreement with him on most issues. We needed someone with his principles but he let his loose tongue sink him. Too bad.

Yeah, it’s Santorum’s tongue that’s the problem. He has a hab
it of saying out loud what his wing of the GOP believes: the government should insert itself into your personal life and regulate the sexual conduct of consenting adults.

-posted by Dan.

STRAIGHT RIGHTS: A good example of how the GOP’s war on personal freedom and sexual autonomy impacts straight people too, look at the GOP’s maneuvering on EC, or emergency contraception. Go read this, this, and, most appallingly, this. Remember: EC is not an abortifacient. It is birth control-a particularly effective form of birth control that Republicans like Mitt Romney would deny to rape victims.

I predict that soon we’re going to have-and need-a straight rights movement in this country.

-posted by Dan.

Andrew’s always bragging on the wisdom, reach, and resourcefulness of his readers, or “you people,” as he likes to calls you. I would like to tap your collective wisdom, if I might.

I took the picture above in Copenhagen last month. My boyf-er, wait. Let’s just call him my “longtime personal secretary.” I was walking down a path in Frederiksberg Park with my longtime personal secretary when we came upon a large tree. Hanging from its branches were hundreds, if not thousands, of pacifiers. There were also notes and pictures attached to some of the baby binkies. We were dumfounded. My longtime personal secretary theorized that it was some sort of memorial tree, each pacifier representing a Danish child who had been murdered.

After a moment’s consideration I rejected my longtime personal secretary’s theory. Thousands and thousands of murdered children? In tiny little Denmark? Unlikely.

I thought it might be some sort of tooth-fairy-esque affair, a way for parents to manipulate their children into giving up their pacifiers. You take a child to a public park, he hangs his binkie in the tree, and then the Binkie Fairy sneaks into his house in the middle of the night and leaves a gift under his pillow.

We asked the Danes working at our hotel, and they had no idea what we were talking about. So I’m turning to you people. Any Danes out there? Any ideas? Anyone know for sure? Murdered children? Ingenious way to manipulate children into giving up their binkies? WTF?

-posted by Dan.

A reader writes…

Dan: You cited to the Post’s quote from wounded soldier Terry Rogers. I have sympathy for Rogers, but I don’t agree with his reasoning. He says that the U.S. could pull out of Iraq if we really wanted to do so. That’s true. He also says that doing so would reduce the casualty rate of American soldiers. True again. But his conclusion — that our continued presence in Iraq therefore is somehow driven by President Bush’s “ego” and that U.S. soldiers are getting killed there “for no reason” — certainly does not follow. To the contrary. The very fact that President Bush could reduce U.S. casualties simply by cutting and running in Iraq — but has chosen not to — suggests that he views our presence there as important, so important that he’s willing to risk all of the criticism and political baggage that he now faces.-Chris W.

posted by Dan.

Oh yes she did…

Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter’s stunt double, on Cindy Sheehan: “I can’t imagine that Casey Sheehan would approve of such behavior.”

Casey is Cindy’s late son, a Marine who died in Iraq.

Now you might normally think that a dead man’s mother would know his mind better than some batshitcrazy columnist he never met. But you would be wrong. Everyone in our armed forces backs their Vacationer-in-Chief-except for that Paul Hackett dude, of course. Alive, wounded, or even dead, America’s heroic armed forces are 100% behind our Dear Leader! Just ask Michelle “I See Dead People” Malkin.

-posted by Dan

THIS JUST IN: Today’s Washington Post reports on a badly wounded soldier who refused to see George W. Bush during a recent presidential visit to Walter Reed:

“I don’t want anything to do with [Bush],” [Terry Rogers]] explains. “My belief is that his ego is getting people killed and mutilated for no reason — just his ego and his reputation. If we really wanted to, we could pull out of Iraq. Maybe not completely but enough that we wouldn’t be losing people — at least not at this rate. So I think he himself is responsible for quite a few American deaths…. Rodgers says he also declined to meet Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. This wounded soldier has lost faith in his leaders, and he no longer believes their repeated assurances of victory.”

I have some serious ‘splaining to do yet on the whole I-thought-it-might-be-a-good-idea-to-invade-Iraq thing-as you all keep reminding me-and I promise to do just that before the week is out. But I wanted to put this up now. Maybe Michelle Malkin could visit Rogers at Walter Reed and tell him whether the leg he lost in Iraq would approve of such behavior?

-posted by Dan

A reader writes…

Your thoughts on tolerance/intolerance are right on. No tolerant society should have to suffer intolerance to the extent that the latter is actively attempting to destroy that society, in the same way that a democracy should not have to put on the ballot a group that wants to extinguish democracy. Tolerance is not a euphemism for suicide.

By the way, I’m a straight, Republican, socially-liberal, pro-war, atheist, foreign-born Asian-American attorney in San Francisco. Oh yeah, and I’m married to a white, tree-hugging, flaming liberal, vegetarian, anti-war public interest attorney from Oklahoma. Just goes to show what a little tolerance can do.-Sung C.K.

-posted by Dan.

Is the insurgency losing stream? Is in its last throws? Or are there no more cars left in Iraq to blow up? Rumsfeld’s “dead enders”-they’re lingering longer at death’s door than Terri Schiavo did-are now rigging dogs with explosives.

-posted by Dan.

I warned you on Monday that my life runs on West Coast Time. It’s only 9:15-ish here, so as far as I’m concerned I’m at work bright and early. Unlike the Andrew of old, I can’t stay up until 2 AM writing for a whole host of reasons (kid, responsibilities, VH1). So I’m sorry about the noonishness of my first posts today… but, hey, you were warned.

-posted by Dan.

ONLINE COFFEE COMPANIES: I’m coming to you live this AM from Fuel Coffee, a great new independent coffee place in my neighborhood in Seattle. Despite being Starbucks hometown, there’s always a new coffee place opening in Seattle-places with character, individuality, and, as in the case of Fuel, real design sense. Like Victrola, where I was working yesterday, Fuel has a website. I find this kind of baffling. Websites for coffeeshops? Why? What’s the point? Dunno. But if you’re just dying to get a glimpse of the spot where I’m drinking tea RIGHT NOW (black, no sugar), check out Fuel’s website.

-posted by Dan.

HEADLINE OF THE DAY: Is our children learning? Not in Kansas:

“Kansas Board Backs Limits on Evolution” -NYT

So that’s what’s the matter with Kansas. I have a policy proposal: Anyone who doesn’t believe in evolution shouldn’t enjoy the benefits of evolution. No eyes, no walking upright, no opposable thumbs. It’s back to the primordial ooze for members of the Kansas Board of Education.

-posted by Dan.

MY SECRET SHAME: A confession: I had three beers last night. For most Irish Catholics this would not be a big deal. My brother Billy pours three beers over his cornflakes in the morning. But I am the freak of the family-not for THAT, that subject that I shall not touch on today. I’m the only lightweight in Savage family. Three beers on Tuesday night means a wicked hangover on Wednesday morning. Oh, and the bar I was drinking in? They have a website too.

-posted by Dan.

THE PERILS OF HETEROSEXUALITY: Whew! It looks like there’s at least one straight Catholic priest out there. From today’s NYT:

A Westchester county man claims… that the rector of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Midtown has been having an affair with his wife, the rector’s longtime personal secretary…. The man, Philip DeFilippo, says that his wife, Laura DeFilippo, and the rector, Msgr. Eugene V. Clark, have taken many vacations together, spent many weekends at Monsignor Clark’s house on the South Fork of Long Island and exposed the couple’s teenage daughter to their romantic relationship.

Mr. DeFilippo showed reporters a videotape of his wife and the Msgr. Clark “entering and leaving the White Sands Resort Hotel in Amagansett.” Mrs. DeFilippo, according to Mr. DeF, told him that she was sorting books that day at a storage facility 30 miles away.

Msgr. Clark-33 years older than Mrs. DeFilippo-denies everything. But Catholic priests no longer enjoy the benefit of the doubt when it comes to alleged sexual misconduct.

Amusingly enough, Msgr. Clark once gave a homily that pinned the blame for the Catholic sex-abuse scandals on “American immorality.”

If the past is any prologue, Msgr. Clark can expect to be transferred to another post any day now-most likely to a Catholic girls’ school.

-posted by Dan.

ASK FOR THE CELIBACY SUITTE: The White Sands Resort Hotel in Amagansett has a website too.

-posted by Dan.