Speaker 1: Hi Katie, Hi there, Brian. We should warn listeners that
Speaker 1: our podcast today should probably get an R rating. If
Speaker 1: you have young children in the room, you may want
Speaker 1: to have them listen to something else. Our guest today
Speaker 1: is an expert on relationships and sex. In fact, it's
Speaker 1: something of a living legend on those topics. For over
Speaker 1: twenty five years, Dan Savage has dished out sex advice,
Speaker 1: love advice in his syndicated Savage Love column. He's also
Speaker 1: written several books about his own family and relationships, dance writing,
Speaker 1: and well. Dan himself actually is, by turns withering, empathetic, hilarious,
Speaker 1: brutally honest, a little dirty, and always always fearless. And
Speaker 1: for Dan, the personal is definitely political. He often writes
Speaker 1: about abortion laws, contraception, gay rights, HIV and AIDS, and
Speaker 1: he's no stranger to taking on politicians as well, most
Speaker 1: notably Rick Santorum. And you're gonna have to google that
Speaker 1: one because I really am not going to describe it.
Speaker 1: We covered a lot of ground in this conversation, from
Speaker 1: Dan's childhood to how he became a columnist, his love
Speaker 1: affair with Ann Landers, which is fascinating, his It Gets
Speaker 1: Better campaign, how he feels about Donald Trump and by
Speaker 1: the way, not very kindly, all sorts of things in between.
Speaker 1: So here's our conversation with Dan Savage. With all due
Speaker 1: respect to the Dosac case. Man, I think you're the
Speaker 1: most interesting man in the world. You have done so
Speaker 1: many things. Just reading about you, I think, what hasn't
Speaker 1: Dan Savage done. You've written books, you've hosted podcasts, you've
Speaker 1: led advocacy campaigns. We're going to get into all that
Speaker 1: in a moment, but first we want to talk about
Speaker 1: your long running advice column called Savage Love. You've been
Speaker 1: doing it for twenty five years. When your column first
Speaker 1: came out, it was a very new phenomenon, wasn't it
Speaker 1: a gay man giving frank sexual and relationship advice to
Speaker 1: mostly straight people. Yeah. At first, the idea, you know,
Speaker 1: the concept originally was it just gonna be a joke,
Speaker 1: and I was gonna do it for six months or
Speaker 1: a year, and I was going to treat the straight people,
Speaker 1: uh and straight sex with the same contempt and revulsion
Speaker 1: that hetersexual straight lady advice comments had always treated gay
Speaker 1: people and gay sex with, you know, an landers who
Speaker 1: I loved back in the day, the Playboy advisor. These
Speaker 1: people would occasionally take a gay question and you know,
Speaker 1: hold it with tongs and wrinkled their noses, but then
Speaker 1: give a little advice. Uh. And I thought I should
Speaker 1: do that to straight people and see how they liked it.
Speaker 1: And it turned out that they really liked it. Why
Speaker 1: they liked like, how gross is straight sex kind? It
Speaker 1: was the first year of it was I can't believe
Speaker 1: you would do such a disgusting and your poor mother
Speaker 1: must be heartbroken. Here's some advice that's so funny. And
Speaker 1: it took off. And I think it was because, you know,
Speaker 1: straight people have never been treated this way before. And
Speaker 1: it was, you know, humorous if you were straight, to
Speaker 1: be treated as if you were powerless, which you weren't.
Speaker 1: Um and the advice was I guess good because the
Speaker 1: letters started just pouring in and this kind of joke
Speaker 1: advice column under my feet within the first twelve months
Speaker 1: became an actual advice column. I'm sure the only person
Speaker 1: who could turn you away from being gay was a
Speaker 1: lanterns Now, what up with that? Dan? How did you
Speaker 1: become obsessed with of all people and landers? Instead of
Speaker 1: by the way her sister Abby, I grew up in
Speaker 1: a newspaper house. My grandfather worked for the Chicago Daily
Speaker 1: News in Chicago Star, both now closed unfortunately, And so
Speaker 1: we got all the papers when I was a kid
Speaker 1: living in my grandparents house of my family, um MultiGen household,
Speaker 1: and so really the comics and the advice columns were
Speaker 1: the entry point for young you know, for the kids
Speaker 1: who looked at the newspapers were spread out all over
Speaker 1: the dining room table. Uh. And so I just started
Speaker 1: reading and Landers, and we were liberals and Dems, So
Speaker 1: we got the Suntimes after a while stopped gtting the Tribune,
Speaker 1: which is where Abby was. So I grew up reading
Speaker 1: and who you know, grew and learned over the years
Speaker 1: and you know, changed her position on gay people and
Speaker 1: a right to exist and why we exist. But what
Speaker 1: I was reading in Anne when I was, you know,
Speaker 1: eight eleven twelve wasn't very positive. But that's you know,
Speaker 1: she was over generation and we can't judge her through
Speaker 1: the light of it right this minute. We have to
Speaker 1: look at her in the context of them. And she
Speaker 1: was compassionate in ways that other uh folks in the
Speaker 1: culture at that point weren't. In fact, you bought her
Speaker 1: desk at an auction. Is that right? I did? Uh?
Speaker 1: I got her daughter, Margot Howard's her daughter, one of
Speaker 1: the original dear Prudences. It's late. Uh. So she wrote
Speaker 1: an advice came for many years. And I called her
Speaker 1: when I heard about the auction of a Landers effects
Speaker 1: and got her permission because I didn't want it to
Speaker 1: be spun in the media as if I was being
Speaker 1: somehow disrespectful to the memory of a Landers doing something
Speaker 1: that might upset her daughter. Uh. And got Margot's permission.
Speaker 1: And Margot and I are now friends and we chat
Speaker 1: all the time. And so I write my very dirty,
Speaker 1: very different sex advice column at the same desk. Grand
Speaker 1: Landers wrote her column for forty five years. We want
Speaker 1: to give our listeners a feel for your column and
Speaker 1: your podcast. So let's go over some of the signature
Speaker 1: savage love acronyms and catchphrases. Rapid fire, You ready, I'm ready?
Speaker 1: Are your listeners ready? I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I hope. So what's the Campsite rule? The Campsite rule
Speaker 1: is that if there's a large age difference or experience
Speaker 1: gap between two people who are hooking up or or
Speaker 1: friends with benefits, or even dating that it is on
Speaker 1: the onus is on the older or more experienced partner
Speaker 1: to leave the younger or less experienced partner in better
Speaker 1: shape than you found them, which is the rule for
Speaker 1: when you camp. You should always leave your campsite in
Speaker 1: better shape than you found it, and we should all
Speaker 1: and it should apply generally like you should always leave
Speaker 1: people that you've dated or been with, hopefully in better
Speaker 1: shape than you found them. But in this context, you
Speaker 1: know the older younger. It means uh, you know, no
Speaker 1: sexually transmitted infections, no one planned pregnancies, no needless pain,
Speaker 1: no promises that you know you can't fulfill uh and
Speaker 1: that you help this person learn and grow while they're
Speaker 1: with you, and you don't leave them in worse shape
Speaker 1: than you found them. The camp say rule, what about
Speaker 1: g G good giving in game? That's what we should
Speaker 1: all be for our sex partners, UM good in bed.
Speaker 1: You know you want to acquire some skills. A human
Speaker 1: means a lot more complicated than a violin, and no
Speaker 1: one can play the violin the first time they pick
Speaker 1: it up. You gotta practice UH giving, which is sometimes
Speaker 1: you give pleasure UH in your indulgent without an expectation
Speaker 1: of an immediate return. That everything doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: instantly and equally reciprocity in the moment that sometimes you give.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be good for everybody. Well hopefully
Speaker 1: it's not. You want it to be traumatic for anybody
Speaker 1: or or unpleasant for anybody. But sometimes you are giving
Speaker 1: UM and not getting at that moment and that's okay.
Speaker 1: And game means sort of up for anything within reason.
Speaker 1: That sex should be an adventure that you two are
Speaker 1: on together. UM, and you know it's like good improv.
Speaker 1: You never say no in improv, and you want to,
Speaker 1: you know, be the person for your partner, particularly if
Speaker 1: it's a sexually exclusive relationship, Be the person who makes
Speaker 1: things happen for your partner. Be the person they come to, UH,
Speaker 1: who's going to welcome their fantasies or interests or kinson
Speaker 1: and celebrate them and make that stuff happen dot dot
Speaker 1: dot within reason. You know, being G G G good.
Speaker 1: Giving a game doesn't mean you do anything that your
Speaker 1: partner asks or wants and no, but he gets everything
Speaker 1: they want out of a relationship. UM. And sometimes you pay.
Speaker 1: It's another thing that to call them the price of
Speaker 1: admission is kind of grows out of G G G.
Speaker 1: And the price of admission is, you know, the price
Speaker 1: you pay to be with somebody. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: desperately into sex act X and that's not something that
Speaker 1: your partner will ever do, then the price of admission
Speaker 1: that you pay to be with that person as you
Speaker 1: never get to do that. And what about c posts
Speaker 1: that stands for cheating piece of shit? Uh? And do
Speaker 1: you have a lot of people call you dan or
Speaker 1: write to you and and they are writing about their
Speaker 1: c pos mostly I get letters. When people use the
Speaker 1: acronym in a letter to me, they're using it to
Speaker 1: describe themselves. Really they you know, they say that I
Speaker 1: feel terrible, I'm a CPO s I'm a cheating piece
Speaker 1: of ship. Uh. And talking about non monogamy is not
Speaker 1: to tear down people who value monogamy, who want monogamy,
Speaker 1: who want a monogamous commitment, creating a universe where people
Speaker 1: who don't want monogamy and can't honor a monogamous commitment
Speaker 1: can go make commitments to people who also don't want
Speaker 1: monogamy and don't want a monogamous commitments. That makes people
Speaker 1: who end up in monogamous relationships that makes those monogamous
Speaker 1: relationships safer and stronger, just like not having gay men
Speaker 1: mary straight women makes marriage stronger. Not having people who
Speaker 1: can't do monogamy making commitments to people who demand monogamy
Speaker 1: makes those monogamous commitments that are ultimately made stronger if
Speaker 1: the non monogamous and monogamous sort themselves. You're an early
Speaker 1: podcast adopter, and I'm curious, what is the podcast offer
Speaker 1: you that the column doesn't. Uh, you can really get
Speaker 1: into the nuance in a podcast, the columns um and
Speaker 1: you really have to boil everything down to the nut.
Speaker 1: And on a podcast you can. You can digress, and
Speaker 1: I can get people on the phone and instead of
Speaker 1: it just being here's the letter, here's my response, we
Speaker 1: can have a conversation. I can bring in guest experts
Speaker 1: and and interview them at great length about an issue
Speaker 1: or a problem. Um. It just allows for more. Although now,
Speaker 1: because my podcast has been around for so long, when
Speaker 1: I was podcasting so early, people like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you were an early adopter of this new format. You
Speaker 1: must be a you know, a genius and you had
Speaker 1: such foresight. And it's like no, no, no, no, there
Speaker 1: were I call them the tech savvy at risk youth.
Speaker 1: There were people that I worked with who are young
Speaker 1: and tech savvy, who are like you were going to
Speaker 1: start doing this podcast whether you like it or not,
Speaker 1: and they kind of forced me to do it. I
Speaker 1: was very resistant. What are most of the calls about?
Speaker 1: Said situational ethics. You know, twenty six years ago when
Speaker 1: I started writing Savage Love, half the questions were, you know,
Speaker 1: what's about plug? Or where's the swingers club in my area?
Speaker 1: Two words I never thought i'd hear on this bad
Speaker 1: gast and now and this may be helpful to you, Katie. Now,
Speaker 1: butt Plug has a wiki page, so you don't have
Speaker 1: to write into me to ask what it is after
Speaker 1: you overheard someone talking about one of the bus and
Speaker 1: swingers clubs all have their own website, so you don't
Speaker 1: need sort of specialized magazines with you know, referrals to
Speaker 1: p O boxes to find a swing club and Dallas,
Speaker 1: just google Dallas and swingers clubs and they pop right up.
Speaker 1: So all the questions I get now with the podcast
Speaker 1: and the column are I did this, they did that,
Speaker 1: I'm mad about this, they're mad about that. Who's right,
Speaker 1: who's wrong? And you have to kind of way in
Speaker 1: on these situational ethics, that the situation of ethics of
Speaker 1: this problem in this conflict. And it's a lot harder
Speaker 1: now to write an advice column than it used to
Speaker 1: be because you don't get I used to call them
Speaker 1: definitions and referrals. I don't get defined this, what is this?
Speaker 1: And I don't get referral q is anymore because the
Speaker 1: Internet does that. All I get are this is what happened.
Speaker 1: We need a ruling from Solomon about how we're going
Speaker 1: to cut this baby in half or whether we should.
Speaker 1: When when did you realize you were good at giving
Speaker 1: people advice? I mean you were a little bit of
Speaker 1: a of an outcast in in high school. You were
Speaker 1: the only out gay person in your class. As I
Speaker 1: understand it, and so did you did you sort of
Speaker 1: always feel a little bit separated from the back. It's
Speaker 1: just the way. Women, I think think more about gender
Speaker 1: because it impacts them more severely, you know, gender based discrimination,
Speaker 1: and people of color think more about race. I think
Speaker 1: when you're gay, you think more about sex because it's
Speaker 1: what makes you different. It sets you apart and complicates
Speaker 1: your life, and you have to be a little bit
Speaker 1: more thoughtful about it, and I realized early in life,
Speaker 1: and I was rare for gay men of my generation.
Speaker 1: I'm fifty years old. It was rare for kids to
Speaker 1: be coming out in high school who are my age.
Speaker 1: But I did come out in high school and instantly
Speaker 1: became kind of the go to guy for my straight
Speaker 1: friends who had relationship problems or sex questions, UM, because
Speaker 1: I think they just intuitive that I was thinking more
Speaker 1: about these things than they were, because I had to
Speaker 1: think more about these things. Uh. And I think that's
Speaker 1: true for a lot of gay people. We talked a
Speaker 1: lot of gay men, lesbians, uh, even very young uh
Speaker 1: and recently out or out in college, and they'll tell
Speaker 1: you that they're the person that their friends confide in
Speaker 1: about their sex and relationship problems. I think because you know,
Speaker 1: they figure, you gave yourself permission not to be gay,
Speaker 1: but to be out, and maybe you'll give them permission
Speaker 1: to be whoever they actually are and help them let
Speaker 1: go of normal, which plagues a lot of people. You know.
Speaker 1: I was. I was struck that you came of age
Speaker 1: as a gay guy in a conservative Catholic household and
Speaker 1: during the height or the depths of the AIDS epidemics,
Speaker 1: I'm just curious how those two experiences shaped the sort
Speaker 1: of journalist and columnist you later became. Well, I got
Speaker 1: a Catholic education, educated by Jesuits, and you know, my
Speaker 1: parents were evangelical Catholics before that was a hip thing
Speaker 1: to be, which seems to be now. Um. And my
Speaker 1: mother would joke later, you know, after she came around
Speaker 1: on the gay thing, which she did pretty quickly after
Speaker 1: I came out, that the values that they had imparted
Speaker 1: to us, part of sort of their interpretation of the
Speaker 1: Catholic tradition was one of the reasons that I was
Speaker 1: out to them. And so it kind of blew back
Speaker 1: and bit them on the ass because they were very
Speaker 1: much about, you know, the importance of being honest and
Speaker 1: loving the people in your life and being truthful, uh,
Speaker 1: and not being deceitful. And yet I felt myself, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was young and Catholic and I thought about
Speaker 1: being a priest, I thought about, I could never come out.
Speaker 1: It would kill my parents. Um. I thought about, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll need to find a woman that I can lie
Speaker 1: to for fifty years and marry her. And then that
Speaker 1: was just so in conflict with what I had been
Speaker 1: taught about right and wrong uh, in Sunday School, at
Speaker 1: my Catholic grade school, at my Catholic high school, to
Speaker 1: to lie to someone all their life like that, to
Speaker 1: mislead someone, and it just forced me to to be out.
Speaker 1: It just felt like it grew out of my sort
Speaker 1: of education. Even though my faith didn't survive my coming out.
Speaker 1: And I actually came out before the AIDS epidemic. I
Speaker 1: came out in and then uh into that buzz saw
Speaker 1: uh and watched a lot of my friends die in
Speaker 1: their mid twenties and early thirties. And that was really rough.
Speaker 1: And there was you know, there were moments there at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the HIV AIDS epidemic where I watched
Speaker 1: people that I knew to be gay go back in
Speaker 1: the closet um or or renounced their homosexuality and who
Speaker 1: were already infected and then died anyway, Uh, and it it,
Speaker 1: you know, the AIDS epidemic forced us to start telling
Speaker 1: the truth. Um. People were outed because they you know,
Speaker 1: suddenly had Carposi sarcoma UM. And it also forced us
Speaker 1: to tell the truth about about how we were having sex.
Speaker 1: You know, it used to be you know before HIV AIDS,
Speaker 1: there was the sex that everybody agreed that everybody ought
Speaker 1: to be having, even though everybody kind of knew that
Speaker 1: everybody wasn't having necessarily that kind of sex. And what
Speaker 1: AIDS force was a conversation about the sex people were
Speaker 1: actually having, not the sex that we all agreed people
Speaker 1: ought to have, which was the kind of sex that
Speaker 1: most advice columnists specialized in, like what you ought to
Speaker 1: be doing? And what was different about savage love. When
Speaker 1: I started, it really did grow out of my experience
Speaker 1: in the HIV AIDS epidemic um the crisis, the worst
Speaker 1: years of it was let's talk about what we're actually doing,
Speaker 1: because that's where the risk comes in. As as I'm
Speaker 1: listening to Dan, I'm thinking how ironic it is that
Speaker 1: in some ways the AIDS epidemic accelerated the acceptance and
Speaker 1: tolerance in it, certainly in some quarters of gay people
Speaker 1: in general. Absolutely, you know, before the AIDS epidemic, we
Speaker 1: were just you know, gay people started coming out on
Speaker 1: mass after the Stonewall riots in Mine and there was
Speaker 1: this kind of you know, bakan knowledge, youthful, exuberant adolescence
Speaker 1: of the movement where people were just so thrilled to
Speaker 1: be out and open and able to live openly, love openly,
Speaker 1: and it was just kind of a party. And that
Speaker 1: was the you know, the hedonism that people like Jerry
Speaker 1: Fallwell pointed to um and condemned. And then the AIDS
Speaker 1: epidemics slammed into the community and you suddenly saw that,
Speaker 1: you know, we suffered and died, and we suffered and
Speaker 1: died and loved and took care of each other at
Speaker 1: a time when even our own families refused to take
Speaker 1: care of us. Plus the activism, I think that that
Speaker 1: grew out of the AIDS epidemic. I think made a
Speaker 1: lot more people aware and exposed to the fact that
Speaker 1: there were a lot of gay people in the world, right,
Speaker 1: and it put put them front and center in some ways,
Speaker 1: obviously under terrible circumstances, but gave them much greater attention.
Speaker 1: And if people don't have awareness, obviously it's hard for
Speaker 1: them to go from awareness to acceptance. Right. It was
Speaker 1: a terrible circumstance in some ways. To borrow a phrase,
Speaker 1: also our finest hour, because we didn't collapse. You know,
Speaker 1: people forget what was being said that I remember it
Speaker 1: all very distinctly, you know, William F. Buckley saying that
Speaker 1: gay men should be tattooed on the arm and the buttocks.
Speaker 1: You had people talking about mass quarantining of openly gay
Speaker 1: people on islands. Um Pat Buchanan floated that in columns
Speaker 1: that ran in the Washington Post. It was a perilous moment,
Speaker 1: and we did feel like everything, that what little visibility
Speaker 1: and little security that we enjoyed, was going to be
Speaker 1: ripped away from us. And instead of, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I mentioned, you know, a few people I knew who
Speaker 1: went back into the closet, that's not the reaction that uh,
Speaker 1: the overwhelming majority of gay people had. People who were
Speaker 1: not out yet came out and came out fighting, and
Speaker 1: people who are already out refused to see an inch
Speaker 1: of the ground that we had secured for ourselves. And
Speaker 1: it really was a war, and it was a war
Speaker 1: that we won. It's interesting Jerry Folwell, whom you mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier and other key figures on the religious right, basically
Speaker 1: said this was punishment for the sin of being gay.
Speaker 1: Why do you think you were able to win that
Speaker 1: battle in the public consciousness against all of these figures
Speaker 1: who you know, had a lot more history and maybe
Speaker 1: credibility among millions of Americans than sort of unknown gay activists,
Speaker 1: maybe because it was such a disgusting, despicable comment and observation,
Speaker 1: Maybe that they had that going for Yeah, we did
Speaker 1: have that going for us. We also had our secret weapon,
Speaker 1: which is that gay people are randomly distributed through the population,
Speaker 1: that we are born into straight families, and that was
Speaker 1: we were embedded in the heart of straight America. Even
Speaker 1: though many of us have been rejected by our families
Speaker 1: when we came out and we're exiled from them, we
Speaker 1: were still a part of them. And when people got sick,
Speaker 1: when people were dying, Uh, when lives are online, it
Speaker 1: really like pulled people up short. And some families failed
Speaker 1: their queer kids who are suffering their gay relatives or something.
Speaker 1: But some families came around, and eventually more and more
Speaker 1: of our families came around. I'm old enough to remember
Speaker 1: when p flag parents and friends of lesbians and gays
Speaker 1: would come up the street at the Pride parade. Everybody
Speaker 1: lost their minds. You know, I'm gonna cry talking about
Speaker 1: it even now. Uh, people standing a gay amount of
Speaker 1: lesbians standing on the side of the street watching the
Speaker 1: parade go by. Would see these people, other gays and
Speaker 1: lesbians Marsham Street with their parents, their parents who loved
Speaker 1: them and were willing to love them publicly in March
Speaker 1: and the Pride Parade, and everybody would cry when p
Speaker 1: flag came down the street because almost no one had
Speaker 1: that kind of support from their parents, from their families.
Speaker 1: It was so rare. I bet that was incredibly moving.
Speaker 1: And you know, I just spent the weekend I was
Speaker 1: in the pines in Fire Islands, so as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: I was for this show. So my my husband's brother
Speaker 1: Tom is gay and he's been with his partner Andy
Speaker 1: for funny plus years, so we always go to see
Speaker 1: them for a weekend in the summer at their beautiful
Speaker 1: home and Fire Island. And I was just thinking, as
Speaker 1: I was watching all these gay couples, how much things
Speaker 1: have changed? Dan, And I'm just I think in terms
Speaker 1: of social transformations, if you will, or progress, societal progress,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it doesn't feel that way for a lot
Speaker 1: of gay people. I remember my dad talking who I
Speaker 1: think was slightly homophobic, uh, you know, talking about some
Speaker 1: gay person who worked in his office, and kind of
Speaker 1: in hushed tones, And you know, I think and not
Speaker 1: flattering and not a flattering way. And my father was
Speaker 1: the most fair minded person I know, but this was
Speaker 1: a blind spot for him. But I think culturally it
Speaker 1: was so people were so closeted, and then you go
Speaker 1: to Fire Island and you see everyone just out and
Speaker 1: about and it's just it's just amazing to me how
Speaker 1: much things have changed. Amazing. Yeah, oh absolutely. And you
Speaker 1: know the P flag point P flag with marcht down
Speaker 1: the street. Thirty four years ago everyone would sob Now
Speaker 1: P flag marches down streets, priparate. We're all happy to
Speaker 1: see P flag, But most of us at the parade,
Speaker 1: most of the people there have families that love and
Speaker 1: support them now, so it's not as impact. It's not
Speaker 1: as emotionally devastating to see people with parents who love them,
Speaker 1: because you probably have parents who love you, uh now,
Speaker 1: and there's there has been such a change, you know.
Speaker 1: I talk frequently about the right wing myth and the
Speaker 1: left wing myth when it comes to progress, and the
Speaker 1: right wing myth is we can risk no progress if
Speaker 1: we give women the vote. Society will collapse, family will
Speaker 1: fall apart if we uh you know, pass the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act. Everything's gonna end.
Speaker 1: If we'd let gay people serve opening in the military,
Speaker 1: the military is going to collapse. If we let get
Speaker 1: people get married, the family is going to collapse. It's always,
Speaker 1: you know, do this, there will be a catastrohe And
Speaker 1: that's the right wing myth, and they're proven wrong again
Speaker 1: and again and again and again. There their dire predictions
Speaker 1: never come to pass. The left wing myth is there's
Speaker 1: been no progress, that we're as racist, as homophobic, as
Speaker 1: anti semitic, as transphobic a culture as we have ever been,
Speaker 1: and that's demonstrably false. We are not free from racism
Speaker 1: or sexism, or homophobia, or transphobia or anti semitism, but
Speaker 1: we've made tremendous progress. And on the left we shouldn't.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't propagate a myth. It's in some ways as
Speaker 1: damaging as that right wing myth that we can risk
Speaker 1: no progress because we want to be able to point
Speaker 1: to the progress we've made and be able to say, look,
Speaker 1: we've done this, We've taken all of these steps, and
Speaker 1: it hasn't just you know, the sky hasn't fallen and
Speaker 1: the country hasn't fallen, and anything we've gotten better and stronger, uh,
Speaker 1: and more just as a society for having taken these steps.
Speaker 1: The left should always be pointing to the progress that
Speaker 1: we've made to argue for more progress, to refute the
Speaker 1: right wing myth that we can risk no progress. And
Speaker 1: what about the nature versus nurture argument? You know, it's
Speaker 1: funny because I thought it was pretty established that it
Speaker 1: was nature that people are born gay. But then other
Speaker 1: p bull seem to come out and say, well, it
Speaker 1: is a choice. I think Cynthia Nixon not that long ago,
Speaker 1: didn't she create some controversy about that and it was
Speaker 1: a choice. Yeah, And I'm just curious about your take
Speaker 1: on that. Well, it shouldn't matter. The people who say
Speaker 1: it's a choice are arguing that gay people, queer people
Speaker 1: shouldn't have any civil rights, be allowed to marry, be
Speaker 1: allowed to adopt, because they don't have to exist. Um, well,
Speaker 1: Mormons don't have to exist. Faith is a choice. That's
Speaker 1: why there are street preachers and proselytizers and Jehovah's witnesses
Speaker 1: knocking on my door this morning. Religion is a choice.
Speaker 1: It's also a protected class, as it should be. Um,
Speaker 1: and you're not allowed to discriminate against someone based on
Speaker 1: their chosen faith. So there's just this dishonesty at the
Speaker 1: heart of the way. So many people of faith, it's
Speaker 1: usually religious people who make this choice argument about sexual orientation.
Speaker 1: They're saying that because this thing is a choice, you
Speaker 1: deserve no protections. Um. I experienced my homosexuality as not
Speaker 1: a choice at all. Uh. It shouldn't matter whether it
Speaker 1: was a voice or not. But certainly for me felt born.
Speaker 1: And there is a body of sort of evidence. No,
Speaker 1: there's no one gay gene out there, but there are
Speaker 1: genetic factors at play. You know. The most famous thing
Speaker 1: is the twins studies that show that if an identical
Speaker 1: twin is gay, Uh, the other twin is likelier to
Speaker 1: be gay, but not automatically gay. So that there are
Speaker 1: it seemed to be a multicausal thing. But the way,
Speaker 1: you know, most gay people don't, you know, we dread
Speaker 1: being gay. When I was thirteen years old and realizing
Speaker 1: that I was gay, it was a catastrophe. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a choice I made to destroy my life to you know,
Speaker 1: up end my relationship with my parents, to estrange myself
Speaker 1: from my siblings and the faith that I had been
Speaker 1: raised in to live every day in terror of being
Speaker 1: caught or found out or scrutinized in such a way
Speaker 1: that I might be outed, and then to police my
Speaker 1: behavior and try to act straight even had sex with
Speaker 1: girls like I desperately wanted to be straight. I desperately
Speaker 1: wanted to be anything other than gay. That was not
Speaker 1: a choice I made to piss off my dad, which
Speaker 1: is the argument that a lot of people who don't
Speaker 1: know what they're talking about when they talk about homosexuality
Speaker 1: like to make. Can I say something about Jerry Fallwell,
Speaker 1: who came up a couple of times, Um my dad,
Speaker 1: Uh was for Anita Bryant was for Jerry Follows, kind
Speaker 1: of a conservative guy. He said things that were anti
Speaker 1: gay in front of me when I was ten and
Speaker 1: eight that I remembered that just pierced me, like kind
Speaker 1: of knew then. And the argument that the Fallwells and
Speaker 1: Bryan's used to make was that, Uh, gay people were
Speaker 1: a threat to the family because we didn't get married,
Speaker 1: because we didn't have children, because we didn't settle down.
Speaker 1: We lived for the moment and for pleasure and the
Speaker 1: next do orgasm, and that was why we were terrible.
Speaker 1: Well that's the only way that we were allowed to live.
Speaker 1: We couldn't get married, we couldn't have children. Then once
Speaker 1: gay people were freer, there were gay people who wanted
Speaker 1: to get married. There were gay people who wanted to
Speaker 1: have children and and did marry and did have children
Speaker 1: and do and continue to just as there are straight
Speaker 1: people who don't want to get married, don't want to
Speaker 1: have kids, and don't that. There was nothing gay about
Speaker 1: the gay lifestyle that fall well condemned, and nothing straight
Speaker 1: about the straight lifestyle. Uh. In the end, there was
Speaker 1: anything straight about it. And what we see now is
Speaker 1: kind of this great cross pollnization where you know, gay
Speaker 1: people live as you know, the quote unquote gay lifestyle
Speaker 1: until they settled down and then live the straight lifestyle,
Speaker 1: and straight people kind of do the same. Like straight
Speaker 1: people borrowed a lot from gay culture and just renamed it. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, we used to can I use a swear word? Yeah,
Speaker 1: We used to talk about funck buddies, and now straight
Speaker 1: people talk about friends with benefits. We used to talk
Speaker 1: about tricking, and then straight people called that hooking up.
Speaker 1: And there's so much in like young straight life and
Speaker 1: culture and young people, young adults straight people's second life.
Speaker 1: That's just gay stuff renamed and reappropriated. So we still
Speaker 1: marriage from you, You still fun buddies from us, and
Speaker 1: I think we're even Yeah, me too, I think we're
Speaker 1: definitely even. That. That said, Dan, you know you are
Speaker 1: a major proponent of this concept called monogamish, which is
Speaker 1: a sort of a modified open marriage concept where you
Speaker 1: you don't believe that for a lot of people, lifelong
Speaker 1: monogamy is realistic, and so if both partners can consent,
Speaker 1: you believe that there there can be extramarital relationships. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about that both in concept and also in
Speaker 1: practice in your own life? Well, I actually coined the
Speaker 1: term monogamist to describe my own, uh life with my husband. Um,
Speaker 1: we're not monogamous. When you're a gay couple, particularly gay
Speaker 1: couple who are parents, and you say you're not monogamous,
Speaker 1: people picture uh, you know a degree of promiscuity or
Speaker 1: recklessness that just isn't us. Um, And so you know,
Speaker 1: we were more monogamous than not you. We're mostly overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: having sex with each other and occasionally a very special
Speaker 1: guest star. So I started saying, like the three of
Speaker 1: you are just like you go out off on your own.
Speaker 1: I'm getting a little nervous here. Both. The question I
Speaker 1: put to Stephen Colbert once that made him have to
Speaker 1: stop his show was, you know, he said, I asked
Speaker 1: me if I cheated on my husband, And I asked
Speaker 1: him if it was cheating if I'm cheating at one
Speaker 1: end of a guy while my husband cheats at the
Speaker 1: other end of the same guy at the same time.
Speaker 1: Are picturing that everybody out there in podcast and we'll
Speaker 1: see if that makes Yes, Yeah, we got that. You're
Speaker 1: painting quite a picture. But do you also do you
Speaker 1: also when you say you're monoga mish, Dan, would you
Speaker 1: also have a sexual encounter with a with a guy
Speaker 1: and that your husband doesn't know and he's okay with that?
Speaker 1: Because I would not be jiggy with that, Dan, if
Speaker 1: my husband wanted to do that. What we do, and
Speaker 1: what I think all people who are engaged in ethical
Speaker 1: nonmonogamy is we do what we both agree is okay.
Speaker 1: You know, when I talk about monogamysh though in the
Speaker 1: context of the column or the concept that I that
Speaker 1: are promligated like it's been embraced by a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are monogamous. But what they you use monogamous
Speaker 1: to mean is, of course we're still attracted to other people.
Speaker 1: You know, we're told a lie about monogamy and about
Speaker 1: long term relationships and love and commitment when we're kids,
Speaker 1: which is you know, one day you'll fall in love
Speaker 1: and you won't want to have sex with anybody else,
Speaker 1: and you will be monogamous. And the truth is, you
Speaker 1: grow up, you'll make a monogamous commitment. You'll still want
Speaker 1: to have sex with other people, but you're not going
Speaker 1: to because you've made a monogamous commitment and you should
Speaker 1: honor that commitment. Um. If two people are policing each
Speaker 1: other in a monogamous relationship for evidence of what both
Speaker 1: should just assume to be true, that's exhausting and it
Speaker 1: generates a lot of conflict, like, oh, you looked at
Speaker 1: that person. You're attracted your personal trainer. Um, you checked
Speaker 1: out the baristas, But well, of course your wife's attracted
Speaker 1: to a personal trainer. No one in the whole long
Speaker 1: history of personal trainers has ever hired a personal trainer
Speaker 1: they didn't want to fuck. It's the question with monogamy
Speaker 1: is whether or not I don't want to do that
Speaker 1: with my personal trainer names Larissa and I. You're the
Speaker 1: exception that proves Earle um By and large broadly speaking generally,
Speaker 1: um So, of course you're both attracted to other people,
Speaker 1: and if you're making a monogamous commitment, then you don't
Speaker 1: sleep with other people. But if why bust each other
Speaker 1: and give each other grief for the fact that you
Speaker 1: will sometimes perceive your partner to be attracted to someone else.
Speaker 1: Of course they're gonna be attracted to someone else. If
Speaker 1: you can diffuse that in a in a monogamous relationship
Speaker 1: that source of conflict, you're gonna have a more stable
Speaker 1: monogamous relationship. I deal with it by just giving my
Speaker 1: husband a lot of free passes, knowing that he's not
Speaker 1: going to use the free passes, but acknowledging that if
Speaker 1: I gave free passes out, those people would be a
Speaker 1: part of the free pass system. Yeah, but your free
Speaker 1: processor a little bit unrealistic. It's like, oh, yeah, john
Speaker 1: if you could convince Gwyneth paltr to sleep with you,
Speaker 1: go right ahead. Hey, I'm not going to tell Johnny
Speaker 1: you said that, Brian, But here's I was just gonna
Speaker 1: ask Dan. You know, you and your husband adopted a son.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people say that it's important
Speaker 1: to be monogamous for the sake of the kid and
Speaker 1: a stable family unit. Is your son aware of the
Speaker 1: fact that you're monogamish, not monogamous, And what effect, if any,
Speaker 1: do you think that would have on him? Well, he
Speaker 1: doesn't like to hear about his parents sex life anymore
Speaker 1: than anyone else wants to hear about their parents sex lives. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, he's read some of the stuff that I've written.
Speaker 1: He knows, and we have generally acknowledged it without how
Speaker 1: old into details. He's nineteen years old, he's an adult.
Speaker 1: Uh So I often say to people, ask the questions,
Speaker 1: if your parents were swingers, would you want them to
Speaker 1: tell you? Probably not, Because there's two different kinds of monogamy.
Speaker 1: There's social monogamy and sexual monogamy. And there are people
Speaker 1: who are socially monogamous, perceived to be monogamous, who are
Speaker 1: not actually monogamous. And I think Terry and I would
Speaker 1: be socially monogamous if I hadn't written what I had written,
Speaker 1: even I hadn't told these truths that I felt like
Speaker 1: we should tell to de stigmatize and demystify, Uh, non
Speaker 1: monogamous relationships. Um, So we don't go into it with
Speaker 1: great detail with our kid, nor does he wish to
Speaker 1: discuss it with us in any great detail. Uh. Nor
Speaker 1: would I want to talk with my parents about their
Speaker 1: sex life in any great detail. And if they were not,
Speaker 1: all would want to hear about that from them either.
Speaker 1: I remember when my parents used to lock their door,
Speaker 1: and I would be like gross, because I you know,
Speaker 1: every once in a while, my dad would lock the
Speaker 1: door and I'd be like that going on in there. Anyway,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, Dan, we want to hear
Speaker 1: more about your podcast and some of the weird questions
Speaker 1: or interesting questions you get about Donald Trump and his
Speaker 1: so called commitment to l g B t Q issues
Speaker 1: that he talked about on the campaign trail, and your
Speaker 1: campaign with your husband, the It Gets Better campaign. So
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about all those things right after this,
Speaker 1: and now back to our conversation with Dan Savage. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about what Donald Trump has done visa v. Gay rights,
Speaker 1: and of course the recent transgender band which caught so
Speaker 1: many people in the Pentagon by surprise. Um, were you
Speaker 1: hopeful that he would be more supportive and what has
Speaker 1: your reaction been to some of the moves that he
Speaker 1: has made. I wasn't hopeful. Um uh. Donald Trump crawled
Speaker 1: into bed with Mike Pence. That was his first big
Speaker 1: act as the nominee, was picking Mike Pence, who is
Speaker 1: one of the most rapidly anti gay Republican politicians in
Speaker 1: the country. Mike penncey redirected funds from HIV prevention education
Speaker 1: to X gay therapies, including shock treatments. Rather than educating
Speaker 1: you so you don't contract HIV, We're going to electrocute
Speaker 1: the gay out of you. That's Mike Pence's platform on
Speaker 1: gay rights. And Trump picked Pence to be his running mate. Uh.
Speaker 1: Trump allowed um, Tony what's his face from Family Research
Speaker 1: Council Perkins from the SPLC certified anti gay hate group
Speaker 1: Family Research Council to basically right the Republican platform again. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. Trump touched a Pride flag at a rally,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of right wing gay people, a handful
Speaker 1: that exists out there, pointed to that as evidence that
Speaker 1: he would be the most pro gay president ever and
Speaker 1: then appoints Neil Gorsus to the Supreme Court, who's already
Speaker 1: uh issued anti gay rulings when he was involved in
Speaker 1: lower courts. And now the transpan which is looks like
Speaker 1: it's going to go into force. And when you have
Speaker 1: the Justice Department reversing an Obama air interpretation of an
Speaker 1: anti gender discrimination statute to as covering sexual orientation, and
Speaker 1: the DJ now weighing in and say, oh, no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: no it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't, and inserting itself
Speaker 1: into a lawsuit that it did not need to insert
Speaker 1: itself into into a litigation it wasn't involved in, like
Speaker 1: aggressively going after gay rights. So yeah, I didn't look
Speaker 1: at Trump and think, oh, this is going to be
Speaker 1: a sunny new era of Republican pro gay anything. It
Speaker 1: was more of the same. Having said that, though he
Speaker 1: did tweet out in two thousand and sixteen, thank you
Speaker 1: to the LGBT community. I will fight for you while
Speaker 1: Hillary brings in more people who that will he should
Speaker 1: have said, who will threaten your freedoms and beliefs. And
Speaker 1: even at the r n C he said, as your president,
Speaker 1: I will do everything in my power to protect our
Speaker 1: LGBT citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful
Speaker 1: foreign ideology. Yeah, the keyword there is foreign ideology. We're
Speaker 1: not going to get thrown off towers by ISIS in
Speaker 1: the United States while Donald Trump is president, but he
Speaker 1: is not going to protect us from a domestic hateful ideology.
Speaker 1: He's going to empower domestic haters of LGBT people as
Speaker 1: he has. Yeah, he was trying to make the political
Speaker 1: argument that he's tougher on ISIS, or he was tougher
Speaker 1: on ISIS than Hillary, and therefore gay people should vote
Speaker 1: for him. And you know, I don't think that was
Speaker 1: a very successful political pitch, but it came across his
Speaker 1: hypocrisy as he made this decision to ban trans people
Speaker 1: from the mill military without even consulting the generals who
Speaker 1: would have to oversee and implement that policy. The scariest
Speaker 1: thing about that announcement he made on Twitter about banning
Speaker 1: trans people from military without consulting his generals was that
Speaker 1: that was three tweets, and the first tweet ended without
Speaker 1: the announcement about what the hell he was talking about,
Speaker 1: And there were nine minutes between that first tweet and
Speaker 1: the second tweet where the Pentagon thought that the Trump
Speaker 1: might be announcing an attack on North Korea. And you know,
Speaker 1: the North Koreans are monitoring Trump's Twitter feed, so they
Speaker 1: might have thought the same thing. We have a dangerous
Speaker 1: lunatic in the office of the President right now and
Speaker 1: peralleling us all not just square people. How many trans
Speaker 1: people are actually in the military. I've seen the numbers
Speaker 1: really very wildly. They do not all people who are
Speaker 1: trans or out, so we're going to have perhaps witch
Speaker 1: hunts like they used to do for closeted people in
Speaker 1: the military, for closet gays and lesbians and bifox in
Speaker 1: the military. But there are reportedly thousands although like you
Speaker 1: of the numbers I've seen very widely, but reportedly thousands
Speaker 1: of trans people already serving in the military without incident,
Speaker 1: without it being a problem. The Pentagon supports allowing trans
Speaker 1: people to serve openly and continuing to serve openly in
Speaker 1: the military. So you you started a project called I
Speaker 1: T M f A. Do you want to say what
Speaker 1: that stands for? It stands for, well, first we have
Speaker 1: to know that. Uh. In my advice column, I frequently
Speaker 1: use the acronym d T m f A because so
Speaker 1: many people right in and the advice they need is
Speaker 1: to dump the motherfucker already. They're like in a terrible
Speaker 1: relationship and they're asking for help, and the only help
Speaker 1: they need is the push to dump. And so sometimes
Speaker 1: I use that shorthand to save space in my column.
Speaker 1: D T. M F A. And you're trying to give
Speaker 1: the nation similar advice exactly. It stands for impeach the
Speaker 1: motherfucker already. And we've sold thousands and thousands of T shirts, mugs,
Speaker 1: very tasteful of pel pins that you can wear on
Speaker 1: a tasteful suit if you're going on the cable news
Speaker 1: program to talk about the President UH and other merch
Speaker 1: and donated whole bunch of money to Plan Parenthood, the
Speaker 1: International Refuge Assistance Project, and the A C l U.
Speaker 1: All proceeds go to those three organizations. And you've raised
Speaker 1: over a hundred thousand dollars. Is that we sold a
Speaker 1: lot more than a hundred thousand dollars. That's what we
Speaker 1: were able to donate after buying the merch, shipping the merch,
Speaker 1: paying the taxes, a hundred thousand dollars to those organizations.
Speaker 1: We're getting ready to make another big donation to those
Speaker 1: organizations based on sales since that donation. Um And what's
Speaker 1: fun about I t m f A is, as you know,
Speaker 1: you wear the T shirt I t m f A
Speaker 1: and people look at you or the red hat that
Speaker 1: has I t m f A on it instead of
Speaker 1: make America Great Again, and people say what is I
Speaker 1: t m f A stand for? And then you get
Speaker 1: to tell them, And at that moment it's like it's
Speaker 1: like the sorting hat in Harry Powder. You're gonna know
Speaker 1: whether you're talking to a good person or a bad person,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, because they lie there, laugh and think
Speaker 1: that's hilarious and want the T shirt themselves, or they'll
Speaker 1: huff off and on. It's interesting you just said that
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of people, a few million
Speaker 1: in fact, who voted for Barack Obama in and then
Speaker 1: voted for Donald Trump in. Are you saying that they're
Speaker 1: all bad people, that the sixty two million people who
Speaker 1: voted for Donald Trump were all bad people? Or is
Speaker 1: there some shift that needs to happen in the society
Speaker 1: where the Democrats or commentators like you need to make
Speaker 1: a stronger case to those people about why and how
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is bad for them. Yes, I agree that
Speaker 1: they're not all in the basket of deplorables. I think
Speaker 1: there definitely are some who are in the basket of deplorables.
Speaker 1: That statement Hillary made that was just so problematic for her,
Speaker 1: in such a burden for her is really kind of true.
Speaker 1: You know, in politics, you can't win over everyone. You
Speaker 1: have to work at the margins. And there are people
Speaker 1: whose support for Trump was marginal and conditional. You've seen
Speaker 1: his poll numbers dropping. You've seen a lot of people
Speaker 1: even in the base, the GOP base and his base,
Speaker 1: regret their support for him, including one of his highest
Speaker 1: profile queer supporters, who's Peter Teal, the Silicon Valley investor
Speaker 1: billionaire uh now thinks that the Trump administration is incompetent
Speaker 1: in a disaster. Thinks now what we all could see
Speaker 1: coming plainly before he was elected. So, yeah, you want
Speaker 1: to work on reaching those folks. And you know the
Speaker 1: message I think the Democrats need to send us that
Speaker 1: the Republicans are lying to you about cause and effect.
Speaker 1: They're pointing to the fact that people of color it's
Speaker 1: not legal to discriminate against them anymore. That you know,
Speaker 1: women are empowered in the workforce and gender discrimination is
Speaker 1: wrong that like there's all these openly gay people around,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's more people causing more Mexicans, there's
Speaker 1: more immigrants, and they say, look at these things, this
Speaker 1: is why you don't have a living wage job, and
Speaker 1: actually those things, you know, there's correlation perhaps there, but
Speaker 1: there's not causation. You have a living wage job because
Speaker 1: we've destroyed the union movement, because we've shredded the social
Speaker 1: safety net, because we don't invest in schools and communities
Speaker 1: and transportation and housing the way we once did. That's
Speaker 1: that's why it's tougher for you. That's why college is
Speaker 1: primitively expensive for your kids now. It's not because gay
Speaker 1: people are open. That didn't cause that to happen. It's
Speaker 1: not because there are more Mexicans now than there were
Speaker 1: thirty forty years ago. What the problem now is that
Speaker 1: there's not a union. The problem now is that we've
Speaker 1: shredded that social safety net, that we've done away with
Speaker 1: living wage jobs, but that we don't that the rich
Speaker 1: don't pay their fair share, and then we invest that
Speaker 1: money into programs that benefit anyone. That's the cause of
Speaker 1: your misery, not these those people whether you're talking about
Speaker 1: people of color, or queer people or trans people or whoever,
Speaker 1: the scapegoat of the moment is that they're pointing to.
Speaker 1: You know, I have to point out, though, I thought
Speaker 1: it was interesting, Dan, that you launched this I T
Speaker 1: M F A campaign during George W. Bush's presidency and
Speaker 1: which and he, the President Bush must seem like Nelson
Speaker 1: Mandela at this point in time to you, you know,
Speaker 1: in retrospect, you know, Bush launched you know, a disastrous
Speaker 1: war and tank the economy. Uh. We got out of
Speaker 1: the Bush era alive. Uh, most of us, not all
Speaker 1: of us. And he also got reelected in part on
Speaker 1: an attack on gay people, in gay marriage and particulars.
Speaker 1: That's true. So now we can look back on the
Speaker 1: Bush air thinking, well, it didn't kill us. Right now
Speaker 1: in the middle of the you know, out the beginning
Speaker 1: of the Trump hopefully not era, hopefully the Trump twenty
Speaker 1: four months, Uh, he might get us all killed. And
Speaker 1: it's a little bit you know, you want to like
Speaker 1: return to the president who you know, in retrospect didn't
Speaker 1: get us all killed but might have at the time
Speaker 1: condess all killed. How realistic do you think it is
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump will be impeached. If Donald Trump or
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton, he would have been impeached twenty three times already.
Speaker 1: H If Chelsea Clinton was filling in for Hillary UH
Speaker 1: in an official capacity in any way, there would be
Speaker 1: no end of screaming and yelling, complaining, um, the corruption, hypocrisy,
Speaker 1: the double standards UH are are appalling. So you know, realistically,
Speaker 1: he's probably not gonna get impeached as long as Paul
Speaker 1: Ryan is sitting there and a Speaker of the House.
Speaker 1: I'm hopeful that the Dems can take at least the
Speaker 1: House and hopefully the House the Senate u in. But
Speaker 1: if the Democrats do take the House in do you
Speaker 1: really want Donald Trump to be impeached? Given what you
Speaker 1: just said about Mike Pence? People ask that question a lot, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. But if we impeach him, then it's Pence,
Speaker 1: And my feeling is as awful as I think Pence is.
Speaker 1: Pence oscillates in a predictable band of Republican awfulness, whereas Trump,
Speaker 1: you don't know what's going to happen next, and it's
Speaker 1: a bit of an existential terror living with that man
Speaker 1: in the Oval office. You're highly critical, obviously of Republicans,
Speaker 1: But you also get annoyed by liberal Democrats. What do
Speaker 1: you think they get wrong? And why are they why
Speaker 1: do they seem to be struggling, you know, and having
Speaker 1: a bit of an identity crisis. Democrats are just so
Speaker 1: bad at messaging. You know. The word goes down from
Speaker 1: some you know, the Republican death star, that we're going
Speaker 1: to call these partial birth abortions, that we're gonna call
Speaker 1: them death taxes, and we're gonna talk about a death
Speaker 1: panel and or fake news, and then every Republican marches
Speaker 1: in lockstep, every Republicans behind whatever the message is, until
Speaker 1: even liberals can't think of, uh, that abortion procedure without
Speaker 1: thinking partial birth abortion, or can't think of estate taxes
Speaker 1: without thinking death taxes, and Democrats can't seem to uh
Speaker 1: make that same sort of effort. Democrats can't seem to unite,
Speaker 1: for instance. And this isn't my idea of suggested years
Speaker 1: ago by a Republican operative who walked away from the
Speaker 1: right wing movement because he was so disgusted by what
Speaker 1: he had witnessed and his name escapes me, because marijuana
Speaker 1: is legally here where I live, and he he said,
Speaker 1: why are you calling them entitlements. We don't like people
Speaker 1: who are entitled. No one's entitled to anything, right, that's
Speaker 1: the American myth. You have to make it happen for yourself.
Speaker 1: What they are is and what you should be calling
Speaker 1: them are earned benefits, Social Security, medicare earned benefits. You
Speaker 1: paid in. You earned this, not you're entitled to it.
Speaker 1: And this has been floating around now for like a
Speaker 1: dozen years, this advice. And yet every time you see
Speaker 1: a Democrat on television talking about Social Security, it's entitlement, entitlement, entitlement, entitlement.
Speaker 1: Even though that's it's right wing rhetoric to call it
Speaker 1: an entitlement, it undermines social security every time a Democrat
Speaker 1: lets the word entitlement fall out of their mouths and
Speaker 1: you see it on I think single pair is not
Speaker 1: a term that Democrats should embrace. And Democrats are just
Speaker 1: terrible messaging. So what should it be? Universal healthcare? Everyone
Speaker 1: is pro universe, everyone's pro healthcare. When you hear single pair.
Speaker 1: And what what the ours will do, when already are doing,
Speaker 1: is they'll say to an individual voter, you know who
Speaker 1: they mean when they say a single pair, they mean
Speaker 1: you you're going to be paying for their healthcare for
Speaker 1: those people. So they really need sort of new branding,
Speaker 1: don't they. They need to hire a consultant to come
Speaker 1: up with better terminology. I think he's talking about kind
Speaker 1: of like a Frank Lence for the left. Frank was
Speaker 1: a guest on this show, and he's of course famous
Speaker 1: for coming up with words and catch phrases that Republicans
Speaker 1: can use to defend and promote their ideas, and the
Speaker 1: Dems desperately need one. And I think there's an example
Speaker 1: in gay marriage when it comes to messaging. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: even advocates of of same sex marriage, advocates of marriage
Speaker 1: equality like me and other folks who you know, pushed
Speaker 1: the movement, Mary von Otto and Evan Wolfson and Andrew Sullivan.
Speaker 1: A lot, everyone was using gay marriage, gay marriage, and
Speaker 1: then there was this shift on a dime one day
Speaker 1: where everyone started using marriage equality because gay marriage put
Speaker 1: gay first gay for a lot of straight people, who
Speaker 1: are the people we are trying to convince is a negative.
Speaker 1: It conjures up negative mental images of frankly, of gay
Speaker 1: sex gay marriage. It's like gay sex marriage, this is
Speaker 1: butt sucker marriage. And that made people uncomfortable because not
Speaker 1: everyone is for gay or that's okay with gay sex.
Speaker 1: And then marriage equality, everyone's for marriage, everyone's for equality,
Speaker 1: universal health care, not single payer, because everyone's for the
Speaker 1: universe and everyone's for health. That's so interesting, isn't it?
Speaker 1: How much that changed the perception and ergo the progression
Speaker 1: of of gay marriage or marriage equality. Right, and that
Speaker 1: happened on a dime where everyone started using marriage of quality.
Speaker 1: Why twelve years after uh this, I think kind of
Speaker 1: seminal op ed was written about. Stop calling them entitlements,
Speaker 1: call them earned benefits. Our Democrats still going on CNN
Speaker 1: and MSNBC sometimes even Fox and saying and having the
Speaker 1: word entitlement come out of their mouths. It's political malpractice
Speaker 1: at this point, speaking of Fox, does your dad still
Speaker 1: watch Fox News only twenty four hours a day so
Speaker 1: he's limited himself. That must be a fun dinner table conversation.
Speaker 1: I mean, because you do. It's it's amazing to me.
Speaker 1: You watch the different networks and it's like a parallel universe,
Speaker 1: it is. You get a completely different perspective given who
Speaker 1: you're watching right now. Do you have a hard time
Speaker 1: even discussing things with him? Yeah, we don't talk about politics.
Speaker 1: We can't we we we don't have the same language,
Speaker 1: we don't live in the same universe. And you know,
Speaker 1: my dad, like I think a lot of people exist
Speaker 1: in kind of hermetically sealed right universe. Although he claims
Speaker 1: he's an independent, and yet he only votes for Republicans
Speaker 1: and except says, fact a lot of the crap that
Speaker 1: is shoveled out out of the television screen every day
Speaker 1: by Fox News in Hannity and all the lying liars
Speaker 1: over there, How can we ever come together if people
Speaker 1: are getting their worldview from two such disparate places. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we're probably overblowing the number of people who
Speaker 1: watch cable news, which is not that many. You know.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes if you watch it, you feel like
Speaker 1: everybody is. But it seems to me that it's it's
Speaker 1: only I think, exacerbating this divide in the country. It is.
Speaker 1: And but but we're never going to bring everybody together.
Speaker 1: There was never a moment where we were were all together, um,
Speaker 1: and there never will be. You know, what you want
Speaker 1: to do is assemble a majority, and sometimes that means
Speaker 1: looking at the people you can't persuade and not not
Speaker 1: trying to persuade the unpersuadable, not not expending that effort, uh,
Speaker 1: and to not st effort on those who cannot be persuaded.
Speaker 1: You have to first be able to identify accurately those
Speaker 1: people who cannot be persuaded, and identify accurately those people
Speaker 1: who can be moved. And maybe the people you cited
Speaker 1: earlier who voted for Obama eight years ago or four
Speaker 1: years ago and voted for Trump this year, that those
Speaker 1: are the people that Dems should be really digging into
Speaker 1: and figuring out how to speak to and how to
Speaker 1: what language and what sort of words and phrases that
Speaker 1: best encapsulate and communicate. Democratic policies which are better for
Speaker 1: those people, uh, will work and to bring them around.
Speaker 1: But the hardcore Donald Trump can do no wrong. Dear
Speaker 1: leader Dan, you were introduced to many Americans through the
Speaker 1: It Gets Better project, which you started in with your husband,
Speaker 1: and the idea was to have adult submit videos assuring
Speaker 1: gay teenagers that they can go on to you know,
Speaker 1: have good lives even after being bullied as teens or
Speaker 1: or feeling bad about themselves for being gay. How did
Speaker 1: how did this idea come about? Well, there was this
Speaker 1: kid in Indiana named Billy Lucas who killed himself. Uh
Speaker 1: and he it's a it's a horrible story, but you know,
Speaker 1: he was very brutally bullied all through middle school in
Speaker 1: high school, never came out to anybody, may not have
Speaker 1: been gay, but was perceived to be gay. And after
Speaker 1: he died, a Facebook memorial page was created for him
Speaker 1: by his family. Were the same kids who had been
Speaker 1: bullying him uh in school went They went to that
Speaker 1: page to say they were glad he was dead and
Speaker 1: to call him faggot one last time in front of
Speaker 1: his grieving parents. And I wrote about that, and I
Speaker 1: was just so furious, as we're all the commenters except
Speaker 1: one who wrote a comment on my blog on the
Speaker 1: thing I wrote about Billy's death and that Facebook page
Speaker 1: where she said I wished I had known you, Billy,
Speaker 1: and being able to tell you it makes me cry.
Speaker 1: I've been able to tell you that things get better.
Speaker 1: Rest in peace, And that really leapt out at me,
Speaker 1: because things do get better, often on the personal level,
Speaker 1: on the macro level, for the queer community, things have
Speaker 1: gotten much better, and we need to be able to
Speaker 1: share that with kids. And I just was thinking about
Speaker 1: things get better and you know, particularly the kids who
Speaker 1: have parents would never allow them to talk to a
Speaker 1: queer adult or go to an LGBT youth support group
Speaker 1: or join the g s A in their school. Those
Speaker 1: kids need to hear from queer adults about how it
Speaker 1: gets better, um and how to make it better for themselves,
Speaker 1: what we did to make it better for ourselves, And
Speaker 1: we wouldn't get permission to talk to those kids, right,
Speaker 1: And it just occurred to me that, oh, there's the Internet,
Speaker 1: there's YouTube, there's Twitter and Facebook. We don't need permission
Speaker 1: to talk to those kids anymore. That they're queer kids
Speaker 1: out there who can't get to a queer youth support group,
Speaker 1: but we can bring the queer youth support group and
Speaker 1: the adult perspective to them using these new tools. Because
Speaker 1: when you think about you know, people have said to me,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just gay kids who are bullying,
Speaker 1: like absolutely true. The kid is bullied at school because
Speaker 1: of his race or her faith or his class goes
Speaker 1: home to parents with the same race, faith, class that
Speaker 1: they can open up to and expect support. A kid
Speaker 1: who's queer or gender nonconforming or gay goes home to
Speaker 1: parents who aren't queer and sometimes disastrously are there. We're
Speaker 1: the worst bullies in their lives are bullying them too,
Speaker 1: and they have no one to turn to. You know,
Speaker 1: a kid of a kid who's uh, you know, an
Speaker 1: African American kid goes home to his parents and can
Speaker 1: talk about what he's encountered, what he's seen. The parents
Speaker 1: will share with their kid how they navigate living in
Speaker 1: a society with the were plague by systemic racism, how
Speaker 1: you know, how they survive. And the kid who's gay
Speaker 1: goes home to parents who can't impart that, who can't
Speaker 1: share that. Even if the kids openly gay and the
Speaker 1: parents are supportive, they don't know how to illuminate that path.
Speaker 1: And what the Gets Better campaign did was it allowed
Speaker 1: LGBT adults to share what they learned navigating that often
Speaker 1: all by themselves. Um with queer kids who are just
Speaker 1: starting out, who are just figuring out who they are,
Speaker 1: and also straight people who are were supportive of or
Speaker 1: are supportive of the community. They participated as well. You
Speaker 1: had people like Stephen Colbert, for example, in Jannet Jackson
Speaker 1: and all sorts of people, Barack Obama, Barack Obama exactly,
Speaker 1: and Joe Biden. They all contributed videos to this effort,
Speaker 1: which was really, I imagine also very important. It was important,
Speaker 1: you know, for my money, Uh, I think the most
Speaker 1: important videos are the videos by LGBT folks that no
Speaker 1: one's ever heard of, not celebrities, not famous. There was
Speaker 1: one by a lesbian dairy farmer in Vermont talking about
Speaker 1: even living in this oral community, how it got better
Speaker 1: for her, and how she's loved and accepted by her
Speaker 1: family and uh and her community, and that's really important.
Speaker 1: What wasn't great about the videos from straight folks? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, as re Kline from Box made a really
Speaker 1: wonderful it gets Better video was an important message for
Speaker 1: a lot of young queer kids who are being bullied
Speaker 1: by their families and by every straight person that they know.
Speaker 1: Is the message that there are straight people out there
Speaker 1: in the world who will love and accept you for
Speaker 1: who you are. You may not know any of them
Speaker 1: right now, but they're out there. You know. I hate
Speaker 1: to end things on a pessimistic note, but I can't
Speaker 1: help but wonder, which makes me sound very much like
Speaker 1: Carrie Bradshaw. But with all the things that are going
Speaker 1: on in the country and some of the things that
Speaker 1: the Trump administration has done so far. Are you concerned
Speaker 1: about the strides that have been made and about going
Speaker 1: backwards and about some of the members of these communities
Speaker 1: who are going to really suffer as a result. I am,
Speaker 1: I'm very concerned. But you know, circling back to when
Speaker 1: we were talking about HIV AIDS, things were dark and
Speaker 1: things looked really dire, and there was you know, we've
Speaker 1: made progress, but then that was halted in some places, reversed, uh,
Speaker 1: and then we got into the fight and that fight
Speaker 1: and having to defend what we'd already uh secured. Um,
Speaker 1: that fight made it better in the end. That fight
Speaker 1: wound up creating more progress and more forward momentum. So
Speaker 1: right now there's a fight on and people have to
Speaker 1: jump in and get engaged. But that's how it gets better,
Speaker 1: because you got out there and fought. That's how the
Speaker 1: Act Up generation made it better for the generations of
Speaker 1: queer people who have come after by engaging in the fight,
Speaker 1: by defending ourselves and fighting for what we know to
Speaker 1: be right. So this is galvanized the community in a
Speaker 1: way exactly. You know, the we talked about the transpan
Speaker 1: and it's being used politically by this Republican administration. George Bush,
Speaker 1: like brand said, George Bush two thousand and four helped
Speaker 1: get reelected by running anti game marriage initiatives in eleven
Speaker 1: states that passed in each and every state, and a
Speaker 1: decade later, we have marriage equality in part, not despite
Speaker 1: those campaigns, but because of them, because the anti marriage
Speaker 1: campaign force us to have an ongoing conversation about marriage
Speaker 1: rights and about gay relationships and straight relationships, and about love.
Speaker 1: And even though we lost those sort of snapshots in
Speaker 1: time in two thousand and four, we were winning the argument.
Speaker 1: The more we had the fight, the more we had
Speaker 1: the argument, the more the needle moved in the direction
Speaker 1: of justice and fairness toward us. And we're having that
Speaker 1: fight now about trans rights. You know, their weaponizing anti
Speaker 1: trans bigotry at this moment. They may win at this moment,
Speaker 1: but the conversation they're starting and the fight that we
Speaker 1: are now in is going to move the needle in
Speaker 1: the direction of progress and justice ultimately and in the end. Well,
Speaker 1: Dan Savage has been such a pleasure to talk to
Speaker 1: you about so many different things. We really appreciate your
Speaker 1: coming on the podcast, and you know, I look forward
Speaker 1: to talking to you in the future. It was my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, A huge thank you to our
Speaker 1: podcast team are indefatigable podcast team, our producer Gianna Palmer,
Speaker 1: our production assistant Nor Ritchie, our audio engineer Ryan Connor
Speaker 1: in l A and Shared O'Connell, who mixes the show. Hi, Jared,
Speaker 1: he's just waiting at me now. Plus Alison Bresnick on
Speaker 1: Keys just kidding, Alison Bresnik on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook,
Speaker 1: everything Social and Emily Beana on snares I mean, who
Speaker 1: keeps things moving at Katie Kirk Media Mark Phillips, By
Speaker 1: the way, thank you for writing our terrific theme music.
Speaker 1: I still think it's extremely catchy. I give it a
Speaker 1: ninety five for dancing. Katie and I are the executive
Speaker 1: producers of this show, and as we keep reminding you,
Speaker 1: you can email us at comments at currect podcast dot
Speaker 1: com or you can leave us a voicemail at nine
Speaker 1: to nine, two to four, four, six, three seven. We
Speaker 1: really love hearing from our listeners, good, bad, and ugly,
Speaker 1: well maybe not ugly, but you know, constructive criticism, nice feedback,
Speaker 1: all of it. We appreciate it, and we really do
Speaker 1: make this show for you not for the money, so
Speaker 1: thank you for the Gods for Dave. Sure, if you
Speaker 1: can't get enough of us, I'm Katie Curic on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram, Katie dot Curic on Snapchat. You can find
Speaker 1: me on Facebook as well. Brian meanwhile, is at Twitter
Speaker 1: at Goldsmith b. So here's the part where we appeal
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Speaker 1: So thank you very very much for listening, and we'll
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