Tag: Dan Savage

A reader-at least as gay as I am-gets the last word…

Dan: Too bad you missed “Once Upon a Mattress” in San Francisco last year. They took your casting suggestion and then some. Lea de Laria played the princess. As you know, she is huge, loud, funny, gay, and in my book a far better musical comedy performer than Rosie O’Donnell. With this formidable comic presence at its center, the show-which is pretty slight-turned into something really memorable. If you print this, please give credit to 42nd Street Moon, a mostly-amateur local company that does a great job reviving obscure musicals. —

I always enjoy reading your column locally in the SF Weekly, even though I’m almost completely uninterested in the subject matter. You’re a great writer and a principled person, and I’m enjoying your blog very much.-

Barbara B.
–
P.S. I just noticed that Microsoft Word spell check does not recognize “blog,” and suggests “bog,” “blob,” and “blow” instead.

-posted by Dan.

Andrew gets it, I get it.

If you’re gay and you write for and edit a newspaper that’s not gay (like I do), or a blog that’s not necessarily devoted to gay issues, anytime you mention gay stuff you get grief. Folks scream that gay stuff is all you (or your paper) ever write/writes about. Folks say this even when the evidence that it’s not true is literally staring them in the face. They’re reading the blog, they have the paper in their hands-how can they say it’s 100% gay?

I’ll admit, however, that my posts during my stint as guest blogger have been, up to now, gayer than Richard Simmons sitting on Tucker Carlson’s lap. But you know what? Our culture is pretty heavy on the gay stuff. (And, I’m sorry, but Rosie O’Donnell going into Fiddler? How could I refrain from commenting on that?) There are really two wars going on right now: The War on Terror (or the “Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism” or “Not So Many Car Bombs as the MSM Would Have You Believe” or “The Mission Accomplished Any Day Now” or whatever it is we’re calling it today) and the War on Gay Stuff. Or maybe I should say the War Over Gay Stuff.

Straight writers have a hard enough time avoiding gay issues, let alone gay writers. And it’s hard to sit on the sidelines, or let some insult or injustice pass, when you feel like you’re being attacked. And trust me… I would adore having the luxury to avoid gay issues for, oh, ten or twenty years. But if straight writers can’t, how can I?

-posted by Dan

JUDGE NOT: Take for instance the latest news about SCOTUS-bound John Roberts. Guess what? A conservative group is yanking its support for Roberts and calling on Bush to withdraw his name. Why? Because Roberts, as everyone by now knows, did a little pro-bono work (sounds dirty) for gay groups in the mid-90s. Pull down the websites, alert Lou Sheldon, off with Robert’s so-recently-lionized head.

I don’t know Jesse J. Holland, the reporter who wrote the story up for the AP, but I’m guessing he’s straight. Most men are. And yet there he is, writing about gay stuff. Why? Because he has no choice, and neither do I. Neither does Andrew. But I’ll bet you no one screams “Enough, Jesse!” when he files his gay stories. Gay issues are big news in America just now and they can’t be avoided. Not by me, not by the AP, not by Judge Roberts, not Lou Sheldon. (Check out Lou’s website-there’s more gay stuff there than Andrew could ever hope to pack on to his website.)

A lot of people who don’t like gay people-those who don’t approve, or think Jesus hates us more than he hates, say, adulterers or people who support the death penalty (I expect Jesus, if he exists, has a real issue with supporters of the death penalty)-say they’re just sick of hearing about it/us. They just wish we’d shut up and go away. Well, that’s not going to happen. We’re not going to go away, and it’s unlikely that we’ll ever shut up. But want to know how we could cut the number of headlines and AP stories and blog entries written about gays and lesbians by at least 90%? Let us have our rights. There will be a lot less debate after we’re fully enfranchised citizens, I promise you. Until that time comes-and it will come-there’s going to be a lot to say about gay stuff, unfortunately.

-posted by Dan

BUT NOT TOMORROW: But tell you what…

As an experiment I will attempt to blog away the day tomorrow without once mentioning gay stuff. Someone wrote in and asked me to write about my “other passions,” and that’s exactly what I intend to do. Can I do it? Can I rise above, as Ralph Nader once put it, gonadal politics? Tune in tomorrow to find out.

-posted by Dan

ONE PARTING GAY THOUGHT:…and it’s a doozie. Sensitive readers, or readers with a low threshold for red-hot gay action, may want to skip this item…

Rosie O’Donnell should have been cast in the 1997 Broadway revival of “Once Upon a Mattress,” not Sarah Jessica Parker. This has been eating me up for years. I mean, the lead role was originated by Carol Burnett-it’s a big, brassy, bawdy part. Half the joke is just how unprincess-like the princess is. (It’s a musical version of “The Princess and the Pea,” yo.) Parker is too slight! She’s too tiny! O’Donnell would have been perfect for the part.

Okay, enough with the gay stuff. Tune in tomorrow for so-straight-you’ll-be-begging-me-to-go-gay-again blog-a-thon.

-posted by Dan

A reader writes…

Hey being intolerant of intolerance sounds like call for a gay run government witch hunt on bad people. Hey man, think of it Baptist Preachers and Catholic bishops locked up for saying “hateful” things. Gee, wouldn’t that be a great. Pass a couple laws and jail everybody you don’t like.

Are you smoking something? Setting up a police state to control all thought and speech has been tried in various places and at various times and it never works. It is always a bloody mess.

Better you tell folks you don’t like to kiss your ass.

I do tell folks to kiss my ass-all the time. (Hey, Robertson! Kiss my gay ass!) But I did not, and would not, call for a gay-run government. I mean, please. The only people I know who have a harder time living within their means than gay people are, well, Republicans. Two years with a gay-run government and we’d have more red ink-and shoes-than we do now.

The funny thing about your letter, dear reader, is that you accuse me of something religious people are guilty of. It’s a common tactic. Who recruits? Not the gays. It’s always Witnesses and Mormons at my door. It’s never the gays. When I walk through downtown Seattle I’m accosted by Scientologists, not lesbians.

It’s the fundies, many of them, who want to lock up gay people, not the other way around. For the record: I don’t want to lock up anybody. (Well, not anybody who doesn’t want to be locked up-and even then only for a weekend, tops.) I’m happy to live in a world where Pat Robertson is free to think I’m going to hell, and free to preach as much. I reluctantly battle Robertson because he believes the federal government should deprive me, a tax-paying fellow citizen, of my civil rights and responsibilities, even jail me, because of who I am.

Look, I’m all for free speech, I’m all for persuasion. If Pat Robertson can talk me out of being gay then, by God, I’ll give it up tomorrow. If a “Choose Life” billboard convinces a woman not to have an abortion, that’s great. The problem with Pat is that he wants to compel me to give up being gay, or, failing that, he seeks to deprive me of my civil rights because I’m gay. The problem with the anti-choice movement is that they want the law to impose their beliefs about abortion.

Why, I often wonder, can’t the religious right extend gay and lesbian Americans the same courtesy they extend to, say, adulterers? Or shrimp lovers? Yes, the gays are going to hell-it says so right there in the bible somewhere. It says we should be put to death along with the adulterers and shrimp eaters. But the adulterers and shrimp eaters don’t come in for the same degree of persecution. No attempts to strip them of their civil rights or write them out of the U.S. Constitution. And what about the Jews? They’re going to hell, along with Tom Cruise and his Scientologist pals and Lutherans (if you ask the Catholics) and the Catholics (if you ask the Lutherans). So many hell-bound sinners-and everyone else gets a pass. Fundamentalist Christians seem content merely knowing that everyone else will suffer horribly when we’re all left behind after they’ve been-what is it again? Ruptured or something? They may attempt to persuade others to join them, prior to the rupture, but there’s no attempt to actively persecute. Anyone else. Just us.

Is it too much to ask for gays and lesbians to be extended the same courtesy fundamentalist Christians seem so capable of extending to others? It’s called tolerance-the theme for the day. I’ll tolerate Pat Robertson if he’ll tolerate me. We don’t have to like each other, but we do have to share a continent-at least until the rupture.

Blah blah blah-who put a nickel in me? Just getting the gay stuff out before the clock strikes 12.

-posted by Dan.

Does EVERY SINGLE one of your entries have to deal with homosexuality?

Gee, I didn’t know that Cindy Sheehan and Tony Blair were both gay. Does Mrs. Blair know? And, hey, maybe Bush should send Mary Cheney out to meet with Sheehan. And I suppose there’s something intrinsically gay about the Space Shuttle, cell phones, the war in Iraq, Wi-Fi, and coffeehouses, but I can’t quite figure it out for myself. But I’ll work on it.

Of course it goes without saying that The National Review is basically the Out Magazine of right-wing closet cases. But cell phones? I still don’t get it…

-posted by Dan.

There’s a brilliant op-ed by Irshad Manji in today’s NYT responding to Tony Blair’s moves to deport Islamo-fascist clerics. She confronts what so many people seem to view as a contradiction at the heart of Western liberalism: Our society, dependent as it is on tolerance (of different religions, political points of view, ethnicities, and, yes, sexualities), doesn’t know how to respond to people whose world views are fundamentally intolerant. The money quote, as Andrew would put it, is this:

[The] ultimate paradox may be that in order to defend our diversity, we’ll need to be less tolerant. Or, at the very least, more vigilant. And this vigilance demands more than new anti-terror laws. It requires asking: What guiding values can most of us live with? Given the panoply of ideologies and faiths out there, what filter will distill almost everybody’s right to free expression? Neither the watery word “tolerance” nor the slippery phrase “mutual respect” will cut it as a guiding value. Why tolerate violent bigotry?

Manji’s op-ed is being praised by the right, as well it should be. It deserves praise from everyone with a brain in her head. But Manji’s call for intolerance to be met with intolerance applies not only to Islamic preachers who preach hate and would compel others to live by the strictures of their faith. It also applies to American preachers who do the same.

When gays and lesbians express disgust or contempt for, say, the Pat Robertsons of this world, we’re accused of being intolerant-and isn’t that hypocritical of us? After all, isn’t tolerance what we’ve been asking for? How can we refuse to tolerate Pat Robertson?

But as Manji points out, being intolerant of intolerance is not the moral equivalent of being intolerant. Violence is always wrong, everyone agrees. But there are times when violence is justified. For instance, violence is justified in self-defense. Well, being intolerant of the intolerant is simply tolerance acting in its own self-defense. It is justifiable intolerance.

-posted by Dan

Manji, incidentally, is a lesbian and, perhaps more controversially, a Canadian. She’s also the author of a brilliant book: “The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith.” If you haven’t read it, go buy it . It’s interesting that so many homos-I’m thinking Bruce Bawer, Pym Fortyun, Manji, and, yes, Andrew Sullivan-clearly recognize the threat that the Islamo-fascists represent. (Or thought, in Fortyun’s case.) Too bad so many on the American right just can’t get over their homo hatin’ ways. The freedom gays and lesbians enjoy in our societies is a credit to the west, and the eloquence of people like Manji, Bawer, and Sullivan should be marshaled in defense of our shared values.

-posted by Dan

BRUCE FORCE: A forceful Bruce Bawer essay on the idiocy that is tolerating intolerance.

-posted by Dan

Well, it looks like Andrew didn’t come to his senses last night and change all of his passwords, so… I’m still here. (That’s a musical comedy reference, BTW. I [heart] Sondheim.) I’m blogging to you live from Victrola, a coffee shop on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. Victrola made the news a month or two ago when it yanked its wireless service on the weekends. My paper, The Stranger, covered the story; the, ahem, NYT followed up on it a few weeks later.

-posted by Dan.

YACK YACK YACK: Victrola yanked its free wireless service on the weekends because so many people were camping out all day in the cafe, taking up tables, that it prevented people from wandering in, having a cup of coffee and, say, actually making eye contact and chatting with other human beings. It was a smart move; although I’m a frequent Wi-Fi user, I avoided the place on the weekends. But here’s what Victrola-and other cafes-need to target next: Cell phone abusers. It’s one thing to be sitting in a crowded café, checking your email, and quickly take a call. But there are people with laptops and cell phones that treat this café, and all cafes, as extensions of their offices.

Take, for example, the jackass sitting behind me as I type these words. He’s shouting into his cell phone about some work issues, and has been for, oh, 20 minutes now. Then the inevitable came out of his mouth: “Yes, I’ll be on the Microsoft campus later today.” Of course you will, assferbrains. If someone is behaving badly in public in Seattle, it’s almost always one of two local types: The Microsofties who think they own this city (for the record: You people own REDMOND, not Seattle), or a public drunk. I prefer the drunks, frankly. They get tossed out of cafes.

-posted by Dan.

TERROR CELLS: The thought of people being able to use cell phones on airplanes during flight is almost too horrible to contemplate. But I understand why the airlines are considering it: They’ve run out of new ways to make flying unpleasant. Long lines, inexplicable delays, lost baggage, no food, filthy airplanes, unhappy workers (is anyone else worried about planes being flown by despondent pilots who’ve had their pensions stolen from them?)-allowing people to use their cells phones is the only way for the airlines to freshen up the hell they’ve created for us. Once they allow people to use cell phones on airplanes during flight I expect we’ll see a lot more incidents like this.

-posted by Dan.

I hope no one felt my comments about NASA and the Space Shuttle yesterday were in any way disrespectful. I certainly wasn’t hoping that the Space Shuttle would lose one of its ceramic pot holders, causing it to burn up on re-entry and broast alive everyone on board. I was actually worried about the astropawns on the Shuttle. Making dark comments about the likelihood of an unhappy outcome is the way we Irish Catholics deal with anxiety, dread, and uncertainty. It’s our special pact with God: If we expect the worst, obsess about it, worry about it, drink about it, indulge in black humor, and honestly convince ourselves that something awful is going to happen, then God will step in and prevent said awful thing from happening just to mess with our heads. But you have to sincerely expect the worst, not just go through the motions. It’s when you expect good things to happen or keep happening-when you presume upon God-that bad things happen. Remember what happened when the Irish presumed upon all those potatoes?

So by working myself up into a “they’re all going to die!” frenzy yesterday, I single-handedly saved the lives of everyone on board the Space Shuttle. You don’t have a thank me.

-posted by Dan.

A reader weighs in on Cindy Sheehan, the mother who lost a son in Iraq and is now camped outside Crawford, Texas, demanding to meet with George W. Bush…

In response to the quote from the reader about the mother asking for a meeting with Bush…I remember the State of the Union, when Bush paraded out parents who had just lost their son in Iraq and when he talked about the war, the cameras panning to them crying softly in their seats. Why was there no criticism of Bush using the death of soldiers for his own political purposes? I think that Sheehan has much more right to “use” her own son for this cause that he died for than Bush using the parents during an event like the state of the union. In fact, she is honoring his sacrifice by using it for a greater purpose than just being killed by a roadside bomb. Judy C.

-posted by Dan.

A researcher at Cornell University discovered that men made to feel insecure about their masculinity expressed more support for the war in Iraq, were more willing to purchase an SUV, and expressed more hate for homos. You can read the press release here. (Hat tip to Americablog.)

-posted by Dan.