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 law, 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 thing. 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 lands. Now,
Speaker 1: what up with that? Dan? How did you become obsessed
Speaker 1: with of all people and landers? Instead of by the
Speaker 1: way her sister Abby, I grew up in a newspaper house.
Speaker 1: My grandfather worked for the Chicago Daily News in Chicago Star,
Speaker 1: both now closed unfortunately, And so we got all the
Speaker 1: papers when I was a kid living in my grandparents
Speaker 1: house of my family, um MultiGen household, and so really
Speaker 1: the comics and the advice columns were the entry point
Speaker 1: for young you know, for the kids who looked at
Speaker 1: the newspapers were spread out over the dining room table. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so I just started reading and Landers, and we
Speaker 1: were liberals and Dems, So we got the Suntimes after
Speaker 1: a while stopped gtting the Tribune, which is where Abby was.
Speaker 1: So I grew up reading and who you know, grew
Speaker 1: and learned over the years and you know, changed her
Speaker 1: position on uh, gay people and a right to exist
Speaker 1: and why we exist. But what I was reading in
Speaker 1: Anne when I was, you know, eight eleven twelve wasn't
Speaker 1: very positive. But that's you know, she was over generation
Speaker 1: and we can't judge her through the light of right
Speaker 1: this minute. We have to look at her in the
Speaker 1: context of them, and she was compassionate in ways that
Speaker 1: other UH folks in the culture at that point weren't.
Speaker 1: In fact, you bought her desk at an auction. Is
Speaker 1: that right? I did? Uh? I got her daughter, Margot
Speaker 1: Howard's her daughter, one of the original dear Prudences. It's late.
Speaker 1: So she wrote an advice came for many years. And
Speaker 1: I called her when I heard about the auction of
Speaker 1: a Landers effects and got her permission because I didn't
Speaker 1: want it to be spun in the media as if
Speaker 1: I was being somehow disrespectful to the memory of a Landers.
Speaker 1: You're doing something that might upset her daughter. Uh. And
Speaker 1: got Margot's permission. And Margot and I are now friends
Speaker 1: and we chat all the time. And so I write
Speaker 1: my very dirty, very different sex advice column at the
Speaker 1: same desk. Grand Landers wrote her column for forty five years.
Speaker 1: We want to give our listeners a feel for your
Speaker 1: column and your podcast. So let's go over some of
Speaker 1: the signature savage love acronyms and catchphrases. Rapid fire, You ready,
Speaker 1: I'm ready? Are your listeners ready? I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I hope. So what's the Campsite rule? The
Speaker 1: Campsite rule is that if there's a large age difference
Speaker 1: or experience gap between two people who are hooking up
Speaker 1: or or friends with benefits or even dating that it
Speaker 1: is on the onus is on the older or more
Speaker 1: experienced partner to leave the younger or less experienced partner
Speaker 1: in better shape than you found them, which is the
Speaker 1: rule for when you camp. You should always leave your
Speaker 1: campsite in better shape than you found it, and we
Speaker 1: should all and it should apply generally like you should
Speaker 1: always leave people that you've dated or been with, hopefully
Speaker 1: in better shape than you found them. But in this context,
Speaker 1: you know the older younger. It means uh, you know,
Speaker 1: no 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 podcasts have 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: so 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 badcast
Speaker 1: 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 questions anymore because the Internet
Speaker 1: 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, I think more about
Speaker 1: gender because it impacts them more severely, you know, gender
Speaker 1: based discrimination, and people of color think more about race.
Speaker 1: I think when you're gay, you think more about sex
Speaker 1: because it's what makes you different. It sets you apart
Speaker 1: and complicates your life, and you have to be a
Speaker 1: little bit more thoughtful about it, and I realized early
Speaker 1: in life, and I was rare for gay out of
Speaker 1: my generation. I'm fifty two years old. It was rare
Speaker 1: for kids to be coming out in high school who
Speaker 1: are my age. But I did come out in high
Speaker 1: school and instantly became kind of the go to guy
Speaker 1: for my straight friends who had relationship problems or sex questions. UM,
Speaker 1: because I think they just intuitive that I was thinking
Speaker 1: more about these things than they were, because I had
Speaker 1: to think more about these things. Uh. And I think
Speaker 1: that's true for a lot of gay people. We talked
Speaker 1: a lot of gay men, lesbians, uh, even very young
Speaker 1: uh and recently out or out in college, and they'll
Speaker 1: tell you that they're the person that their friends confide
Speaker 1: in about their sex and relationship problems. I think because
Speaker 1: you know, they figure, you gave yourself permission not to
Speaker 1: be gay, but to be out, and maybe you'll give
Speaker 1: them permission to be whoever they actually are and help
Speaker 1: them let go of normal, which plagues a lot of people.
Speaker 1: You know. I was. I was struck that you came
Speaker 1: of age as a gay guy in a conservative Catholic
Speaker 1: household and during the height or the depths of the
Speaker 1: aids epidemics. I'm just curious how those two experiences shaped
Speaker 1: the sort of journalist and columnist you later became. Well,
Speaker 1: I got a Catholic education, educated by Jesuits, and you know,
Speaker 1: my parents were evangelical Catholics before that was a hip
Speaker 1: thing to be, which seems to be now. Um. And
Speaker 1: my mother would joke later, you know, after she came
Speaker 1: around on the gay thing, which she did pretty quickly
Speaker 1: after I came out, that the values that they had
Speaker 1: imparted to us, part of sort of their interpretation of
Speaker 1: the Catholic tradition was one of the reasons that I
Speaker 1: was out to them. And so it kind of blew
Speaker 1: back and bit them on the ass because they were
Speaker 1: very much about, you know, the importance of being honest
Speaker 1: and 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
Speaker 1: out and I actually came out before the AIDS epidemic.
Speaker 1: I came out in and then uh into that buzz
Speaker 1: saw UH and watched a lot of my friends die
Speaker 1: in their mid twenties and early thirties, and that was
Speaker 1: really rough, and there was you know, there were moments
Speaker 1: there at the beginning of the HIV AIDS epidemic where
Speaker 1: I watched people that I knew to be gay go
Speaker 1: back in the closet um or or renounced their homosexuality
Speaker 1: and who were already infected and then died anyway, Uh,
Speaker 1: and it it, you know, the AIDS epidemic forced us
Speaker 1: to start telling the truth. Um. People were outed because
Speaker 1: they you know, suddenly had Carposi sarcoma UM. And it
Speaker 1: also forced us to tell the truth about about how
Speaker 1: we were having sex. You know, it used to be.
Speaker 1: You know, before HIV AIDS, there was the sex that
Speaker 1: everybody agreed that everybody ought to be having, even though
Speaker 1: everybody kind of knew that everybody wasn't having necessarily that
Speaker 1: kind of sex. And what AIDS force was a conversation
Speaker 1: about the sex people were actually having, not the sex
Speaker 1: that we all agreed people ought to have, which was
Speaker 1: the kind of sex that most advice columnists specialized in,
Speaker 1: like what you ought to be doing, And it was
Speaker 1: different about savage love. When I started, it really did
Speaker 1: grow out of my experience in the HIV AIDS epidemic,
Speaker 1: um the crisis, the worst years of it was let's
Speaker 1: talk about what we're actually doing, because that's where the
Speaker 1: risk comes in. As as I'm listening to Dan, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking how ironic it is that in some ways the
Speaker 1: AIDS epidemic accelerated the acceptance and tolerance in it, certainly
Speaker 1: in some quarters of gay people in general. Absolutely, you know,
Speaker 1: before the AIDS epidemic, we were just you know, gay
Speaker 1: people started coming out on mass after the Stonewall riots
Speaker 1: in nine and there was this kind of you know,
Speaker 1: bakan knowledge, youthful, exuberant adolescence of the movement where people
Speaker 1: were just so thrilled to be out and open and
Speaker 1: able to live openly, love openly, and it was just
Speaker 1: kind of a party. And that was the you know,
Speaker 1: the hedonism that people like Jerry Fallwell pointed to um
Speaker 1: and condemned. And then the AIDS epidemics slammed into the
Speaker 1: community and you suddenly saw that, you know, we suffered
Speaker 1: and died, and we suffered and died and loved and
Speaker 1: took care of each other at a time when even
Speaker 1: our own families refused to take care of us. Plus
Speaker 1: the activism, I think that that grew out of the
Speaker 1: AIDS epidemic. I think made a lot more people aware
Speaker 1: and exposed to the fact that there were a lot
Speaker 1: of gay people in the world, right, and it put
Speaker 1: put them front and center in some ways, obviously under
Speaker 1: terrible circumstances, but gave them much greater attention. And if
Speaker 1: people don't have awareness, obviously it's hard for them to
Speaker 1: go from awareness to acceptance. Right. It was a terrible
Speaker 1: circumstance in some ways. To borrow a phrase, also our
Speaker 1: finest hour, because we didn't collapse. You know, people forget
Speaker 1: what was being said that I remember it all very distinctly,
Speaker 1: you know, William F. Buckley saying that gay men should
Speaker 1: be tattooed on the arm and the buttocks. You had
Speaker 1: people talking about mass quarantining of openly gay people on islands.
Speaker 1: Um Pat Buchanan floated that in columns that ran in
Speaker 1: the Washington Post. It was a perilous moment, and we
Speaker 1: did feel like everything, that what little visibility and little
Speaker 1: security that we enjoyed, was going to be ripped away
Speaker 1: from us. And instead of uh, you know, I mentioned
Speaker 1: you know, a few people I knew who went back
Speaker 1: into the closet, that's not the reaction that uh, the
Speaker 1: overwhelming majority of gay people had. People who were not
Speaker 1: out yet came out and came out fighting, and people
Speaker 1: who are already out refused to see an inch of
Speaker 1: the ground that we had secured for ourselves. And it
Speaker 1: really was a war, and it was a war that
Speaker 1: we won. It's interesting. Jerry Folwell, whom you mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: and other key figures on the religious right, basically said
Speaker 1: this was punishment for the sin of being gay. Why
Speaker 1: do you think you were able to win that battle
Speaker 1: in the public consciousness against all of these figures who
Speaker 1: you know, had a lot more history and maybe credibility
Speaker 1: 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 We did have
Speaker 1: 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 amend of
Speaker 1: lesbians standing on the side of the street watching the preade.
Speaker 1: Go by would see these people, other gays and lesbians
Speaker 1: Marsham Street with their parents, their parents who loved them
Speaker 1: and were willing to love them publicly in March and
Speaker 1: the Pride parade, and everybody would cry when p flag
Speaker 1: came down the street because almost no one had that
Speaker 1: kind of support from their parents, from their families. It
Speaker 1: was so rare. I bet that was incredibly moving. And
Speaker 1: you know, I just spent the weekend I was in
Speaker 1: 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 twenty 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 Marchtown Street
Speaker 1: thirty four years ago everyone would sob Now P flag
Speaker 1: marches down the streets, priparate. We're all happy to see
Speaker 1: P flag, But most of us at the parade, most
Speaker 1: of the people there have families that love and support
Speaker 1: them now, so it's not as impact. It's not as
Speaker 1: 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 get people
Speaker 1: get married, family is going to collapse. It's always, you know,
Speaker 1: do this, there will be a catastrohe And that's the
Speaker 1: right wing myth, and they're proven wrong again and again
Speaker 1: and again and again. There their dire predictions never come
Speaker 1: to pass. The left wing myth is there's been no progress,
Speaker 1: that we're as racist, as homophobic, as anti semitic, as
Speaker 1: transphobic a culture as we have ever been, and that's
Speaker 1: demonstrably false. We are not free from racism or sexism,
Speaker 1: or homophobia, or transphobia or anti semitism, but we've made
Speaker 1: tremendous progress. And on the left we shouldn't. We shouldn't
Speaker 1: propagate a myth. It's in some ways as damaging as
Speaker 1: that right wing myth that we can risk no progress
Speaker 1: because we want to be able to point to the
Speaker 1: progress we've made and be able to say, look, we've
Speaker 1: done this, We've taken all of these steps, and it
Speaker 1: hasn't just you know, the sky hasn't fallen and the
Speaker 1: 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: So the left should always be pointing to the progress
Speaker 1: that we've made to argue for more progress, to refute
Speaker 1: the right wing myth that we can risk no progress.
Speaker 1: And what about the nature versus nurture argument? You know,
Speaker 1: it's funny because I thought it was pretty established that
Speaker 1: it was nature that people are born gay. But then
Speaker 1: other people 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 p saw 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 new then. And the argument that the Fallwells and
Speaker 1: Brian'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: something 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're saying 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, and 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 wouldn 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 Gorcus 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 statue as covering sexual orientation, and the
Speaker 1: 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 military without even consulting the generals who would
Speaker 1: have to oversee and implement that policy. The scariest thing
Speaker 1: about that announcement he made on Twitter about banning trans
Speaker 1: people from military without consulting his generals was that that
Speaker 1: was three tweets, and the first tweet ended without the
Speaker 1: announcement about what the hell he was talking about, And
Speaker 1: there were nine minutes between that first tweet and the
Speaker 1: second tweet where the Pentagon thought that the Trump might
Speaker 1: 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: paralleling us all not just where 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 gaze 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 Refugee 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
Speaker 1: person in my opinion, because they lie there, laugh and
Speaker 1: think that's hilarious and want the T shirt themselves, or
Speaker 1: they'll luf off and on. It's interesting you just said
Speaker 1: that because there are a lot of people, a few
Speaker 1: million in fact, who voted for Barack Obama in and
Speaker 1: then voted for Donald Trump in. Are you saying that
Speaker 1: they're all bad people, that the sixty two million people
Speaker 1: who voted for Donald Trump were all bad people? Or
Speaker 1: is there some shift that needs to happen in the
Speaker 1: society where the Democrats or commentators like you need to
Speaker 1: make a stronger case to those people about why and
Speaker 1: how Donald Trump is bad for them. Yes, I agree
Speaker 1: that They're not all in the basket of deplorables. I
Speaker 1: think there definitely are some who are in the basket
Speaker 1: of deplorables. That statement Hilary made that was just so
Speaker 1: problematic for her, in such a burden for her, is
Speaker 1: really kind of true. You know, in politics, you can't
Speaker 1: win over everyone. You have to work at the margins.
Speaker 1: And there are people who support for Trump was marginal
Speaker 1: and conditional. You've seen his poll numbers dropping. You've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of people even in the base, the GOP
Speaker 1: base and his base, regret their support for him, including
Speaker 1: one of his highest profile queer supporters, who's Peter Teal,
Speaker 1: the Silicon Valley investor billionaire uh now thinks that the
Speaker 1: Trump administration is incompetent in a disaster. Thinks now what
Speaker 1: we all could see coming plainly before he was elected. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to work on reaching those folks. And you
Speaker 1: know the message I think the Democrats need to send
Speaker 1: us that the Republicans are lying to you about cause
Speaker 1: and effect. They're pointing to the fact that people of
Speaker 1: color it's not legal to discriminate against them anymore. That
Speaker 1: you know, women are empowered in the workforce, and gender
Speaker 1: discrimination is wrong that like there's all these openly gay
Speaker 1: people around, and you know, there's more people causing more Mexicans,
Speaker 1: there's more immigrants, and they say, look at these things,
Speaker 1: this is why you don't have a living wage job,
Speaker 1: and actually those things, you know, there's correlation perhaps there,
Speaker 1: but there's not causation. You have a living wage job
Speaker 1: because we've destroyed the union movement, because we've shredded the
Speaker 1: social safety net, because we don't invest in schools and
Speaker 1: communities and transportation and housing the way we once did.
Speaker 1: That's that's why it's tougher for you. That's why college
Speaker 1: is primitively expensive for your kids now. It's not because
Speaker 1: gay people are open. That didn't cause that to happen.
Speaker 1: It's not because there are more Mexicans now than there
Speaker 1: were thirty forty years ago. What the problem now is
Speaker 1: that there's not a union. The problem now is that
Speaker 1: we've shredded that social safety net, that we've done away
Speaker 1: with living wage jobs, but that we don't that the
Speaker 1: rich don't pay their fair share, and then we invest
Speaker 1: that money into programs that benefit anyone. That's the cause
Speaker 1: of your misery, not these those people, whether you're talking
Speaker 1: about people of color or queer people or trans people
Speaker 1: or whoever the scapegoat of the moment is that they're
Speaker 1: pointing to. You know, I have to point out, though,
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting, Dan, that you launched this
Speaker 1: I T M F A campaign during George W. Bush's
Speaker 1: presidency and which and he, the president Bush must seem
Speaker 1: like Nelson Mandela at this point in time to you,
Speaker 1: you know, in retrospect, you know, Bush launched you know,
Speaker 1: a disastrous war and tank the economy. Uh. We got
Speaker 1: out of the Bush era alive, Uh, most of us,
Speaker 1: not all of us. And he also got reelected in
Speaker 1: part on an attack on gay people in gay marriage
Speaker 1: in particulars. That's true. So now we can look back
Speaker 1: on the Bush air thinking, well, it didn't kill us.
Speaker 1: Right now in the middle of the you know, out
Speaker 1: the beginning of the Trump hopefully not era, hopefully the
Speaker 1: Trump twenty four months, Uh, he might get us all killed.
Speaker 1: And it's a little bit you know, you want to
Speaker 1: like return to the president who you know, in retrospect
Speaker 1: didn't get us all killed, but might have at the
Speaker 1: time Gondness all killed. How realistic do you think it
Speaker 1: is that Donald Trump will be impeached. If Donald Trump
Speaker 1: or Hillary Clinton, he would have been impeached twenty three
Speaker 1: times already. H If Chelsea Clinton was filling in for
Speaker 1: Hillary uh in an official capacity in any way, there
Speaker 1: would be no end of screaming and yelling, complaining, um,
Speaker 1: the corruption, hypocrisy, the double standards UH are are appalling.
Speaker 1: So you know, realistically, he's probably not going to get
Speaker 1: impeached as long as Paul Ryan is sitting there and
Speaker 1: a Speaker of the House. I'm hopeful that the Dems
Speaker 1: can take at least the House and hopefully the House
Speaker 1: in the Senate. Uh in. But if the Democrats do
Speaker 1: take the House in, do you really want Donald Trump
Speaker 1: to be impeached? Given what you just said about Mike Pence?
Speaker 1: People ask that question a lot, like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: But if we impeach him, then it's Pence. And my
Speaker 1: feeling is as awful as I think Pence is. Pence
Speaker 1: 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 Republican as behind whatever the message is,
Speaker 1: until even liberals can't think of uh, that abortion procedure
Speaker 1: without thinking partial birth abortion, or can't think of estate
Speaker 1: taxes without thinking death taxes, and Democrats can't seem to
Speaker 1: uh make that same sort of effort. Democrats can't seem
Speaker 1: to unite, for instance. And this isn't my idea of
Speaker 1: suggested years ago by a Republican operative who walked away
Speaker 1: from the right wing movement because he was so disgusted
Speaker 1: by what he had witnessed and his name escapes me,
Speaker 1: because marijuana is legally here where I live, and he
Speaker 1: he said, why are you calling them entitlements. We don't
Speaker 1: like people who are entitled. No one's entitled to anything, right,
Speaker 1: that's the American myth. You have to make it happen
Speaker 1: for yourself. What they are is and what you should
Speaker 1: be calling them are earned benefits, Social Security, medicare earned benefits.
Speaker 1: You 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 mounds 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 the what the ours will do when already
Speaker 1: are doing, is they'll say to an individual voter, you
Speaker 1: know who they mean when they say a single pair,
Speaker 1: they mean you you're going to be paying for their
Speaker 1: healthcare for those people. So they really need sort of
Speaker 1: new branding, don't they. They need to hire a consultant
Speaker 1: to come up with better terminology. I think he's talking
Speaker 1: about kind of like a Frank Lence for the left.
Speaker 1: Frank was a guest on this show, and he's of
Speaker 1: course famous for coming up with words and catch phrases
Speaker 1: that Republicans can use to defend and promote their ideas,
Speaker 1: and the Dems desperately need more. And I think there's
Speaker 1: an example in gay marriage when it comes to messaging. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, even advocates of of same sex marriage, advocates
Speaker 1: of marriage equality like me and other folks who you know,
Speaker 1: pushed the movement, Mary bon Otto and Evan Wolfson and
Speaker 1: Andrew Sullivan a lot. Everyone was using gay marriage, gay marriage,
Speaker 1: and then there was this shift on a dime one
Speaker 1: day where everyone started using marriage equality because gay marriage
Speaker 1: put gay first gay for a lot of straight people,
Speaker 1: who are the people we are trying to convince is
Speaker 1: a negative. It conjures up negative mental images of frankly,
Speaker 1: of gay sex, gay marriage. It's like gay sex marriage,
Speaker 1: this is butt sucker marriage. And that made people uncomfortable
Speaker 1: because not everyone is for gay or that's okay with
Speaker 1: gay sex. And then marriage equality, everyone's for marriage, everyone's
Speaker 1: for equality, universal health care not single payer, because everyone's
Speaker 1: for the universe and everyone's for health. That's so interesting,
Speaker 1: isn't it? How much that changed the perception and ergo
Speaker 1: the progression of of gay marriage or marriage equality, right,
Speaker 1: and that happened a dime where everyone started using marriage 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 in universe. Although he
Speaker 1: claims he's an independent, and yet he only votes for
Speaker 1: Republicans and U except says, fact, a lot of the
Speaker 1: crap that is shoveled out out of the television screen
Speaker 1: every day by Fox News and Hannity and all the
Speaker 1: lying liars over there, how can we ever come together
Speaker 1: if people are getting their worldview from two such disparate places.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we're probably overblowing the number of
Speaker 1: people who watch cable news, which is not that many.
Speaker 1: You know. I think sometimes if you watch it, you
Speaker 1: feel like everybody is. But it seems to me that
Speaker 1: it's it's only I think, exacerbating this divide in the country.
Speaker 1: It is. And but but we're never going to bring
Speaker 1: everybody together. There was never a moment where we were
Speaker 1: were all together, um and there never will be. You know,
Speaker 1: what you want to do is as symbol a majority,
Speaker 1: and sometimes that means looking at the people you can't
Speaker 1: persuade and not not trying to persuade the unpersuadable, is
Speaker 1: not not expending that effort. Uh. And to not fast
Speaker 1: effort on those who cannot be persuaded, you have to
Speaker 1: first be able to identify accurately those people who cannot
Speaker 1: be persuaded, and identify accurately those people who can be moved.
Speaker 1: And maybe the people you cited earlier who voted for
Speaker 1: Obama eight years ago or four years ago and voted
Speaker 1: for Trump this year, that those are the people that
Speaker 1: Dems should be really digging into and figuring out how
Speaker 1: to speak to and how to what language and what
Speaker 1: sort of words and phrases that best encapsulate and communicate
Speaker 1: Democratic policies which are better for those people, uh, will
Speaker 1: work and to bring them around. But the hardcore Donald
Speaker 1: Trump can do no wrong. Dear leader Dan, you were
Speaker 1: introduced to many Americans through the It Gets Better project,
Speaker 1: which you started in with your husband, and the idea
Speaker 1: was to have adult submit videos assuring gay teenagers that
Speaker 1: they can go on to you know, have good lives
Speaker 1: even after being bullied as teens or feeling bad about
Speaker 1: themselves for being gay. How did how did this idea
Speaker 1: come about? Well, there was this kid in Indiana named
Speaker 1: Billy Lucas who killed himself. Uh and he it's a
Speaker 1: it's a horrible story, but you know, he was very
Speaker 1: brutally bullied all through middle school in high school, never
Speaker 1: came out to anybody, may not have been gay, but
Speaker 1: was perceived to be gay. And after he died, a
Speaker 1: Facebook memorial page was created for him by his family.
Speaker 1: Were the same kids who had been bullying him uh
Speaker 1: in school went They went to that page to say
Speaker 1: they were glad he was dead and to call him
Speaker 1: faggot one last time in front of his grieving parents.
Speaker 1: And I wrote about that, and I was just so furious,
Speaker 1: as we're all the commenters except one who wrote a
Speaker 1: comment on my blog on the thing I wrote about
Speaker 1: Billy's death and that Facebook page where she said I
Speaker 1: wished I had known you, Billy, and being able to
Speaker 1: tell you it makes me cry. I've been able to
Speaker 1: tell you that things get better. Rest in peace. And
Speaker 1: that really leapt out at me, because things do get better,
Speaker 1: often on the personal level, on the macro level, for
Speaker 1: the queer community, things have gotten much better, and we
Speaker 1: need to be able to share that with kids. And
Speaker 1: I just was thinking about things get better. And you know,
Speaker 1: particularly the kids who have parents would never allow them
Speaker 1: to talk to a queer adult or go to an
Speaker 1: LGBT youth support group or join the g s A
Speaker 1: in their school. Those kids need to hear from queer
Speaker 1: adults about how it gets better, um and how to
Speaker 1: make it better for themselves, what we did to make
Speaker 1: it better for ourselves, And we wouldn't get permission to
Speaker 1: talk to those kids, right, And it just occurred to
Speaker 1: me that, oh, there's the Internet, there's YouTube, there's Twitter
Speaker 1: and Facebook. We don't need permission to talk to those
Speaker 1: kids anymore. That there are queer kids out there who
Speaker 1: can't get to a queer youth support group, but we
Speaker 1: can bring the queer youth support group and the adult
Speaker 1: perspective to them using these new tools. Because when you
Speaker 1: think about you know, people have said to me, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not just gay kids who are bullied, like absolutely true.
Speaker 1: The kid is bullied at school because of his race
Speaker 1: or her faith or his class goes home to parents
Speaker 1: with the same race, faith, class that they can open
Speaker 1: up to and expect support. A kid who's queer or
Speaker 1: gender nonconforming or gay goes home to parents who aren't queer,
Speaker 1: and sometimes disastrously are there. We're the worst bullies in
Speaker 1: their lives are bullying them too, and they have no
Speaker 1: one to turn to. You know, a kid of a
Speaker 1: kid who's uh, you know, an African American kid goes
Speaker 1: home to his parents and can talk about what he's encountered,
Speaker 1: what he's seen. The parents will share with their kid
Speaker 1: how they navigate living in a society with the plague
Speaker 1: by systemic racism, how you know, how they survive. And
Speaker 1: the kid who's gay goes home to parents who can't
Speaker 1: impart that, who can't share that. Even if the kids
Speaker 1: openly gay and the parents are supportive, they don't know
Speaker 1: how to illuminate that path. And what the Gets Better
Speaker 1: campaign did was it allowed LGBT adults to share what
Speaker 1: they learned navigating that often all by themselves, um with
Speaker 1: queer kids who are just starting out, who are just
Speaker 1: figuring out who they are, and also straight people who
Speaker 1: are were supportive of or are supportive of the community.
Speaker 1: They participated as well. You had people like Stephen Colbert,
Speaker 1: for example, in Janet Jackson and all sorts of people,
Speaker 1: Barack Obama, Barack Obama exactly, and Joe Biden. They all
Speaker 1: contributed videos to this effort, which was really, I I imagine,
Speaker 1: also very important. It was important, you know, for my money, Uh,
Speaker 1: I think the most important videos are the videos by
Speaker 1: LGBT folks that no one's ever heard of, not celebrities,
Speaker 1: not famous. There was one by a lesbian dairy farmer
Speaker 1: in Vermont talking about even living in this world community,
Speaker 1: how it got better for her, and how she's loved
Speaker 1: and accepted by her family and uh and her community,
Speaker 1: and that's really important. What wasn't great about the videos
Speaker 1: from straight folks? Uh? You know, as re Kline from
Speaker 1: Box made a really wonderful it gets Better video was
Speaker 1: an important message for a lot of young queer kids
Speaker 1: who are being bullied by their families and by every
Speaker 1: straight person that they know. Is the message that there
Speaker 1: are straight people out there in the world who will
Speaker 1: love and accept you for who you are. You may
Speaker 1: not know any of them right now, but they're out there,
Speaker 1: you know. I hate to end things on a pessimistic note,
Speaker 1: but I can't help but wonder, which makes me sound
Speaker 1: very much like Carrie Bradshaw. But with all the things
Speaker 1: that are going on in the country and some of
Speaker 1: the things that the Trump administration has done so far.
Speaker 1: Are you concerned about the strides that have been made
Speaker 1: and about going backwards and about some of the members
Speaker 1: of these communities who are going to really suffer as
Speaker 1: a result. I am, I'm very concerned. But you know,
Speaker 1: circling back to when we were talking about HIV AIDS,
Speaker 1: things were dark and things looked really dire, and there
Speaker 1: was you know, we've made progress, but then that was
Speaker 1: halted in some places reversed, uh, and then we got
Speaker 1: into the fight and that fight and having to defend
Speaker 1: what we'd already uh secured. Um, that fight made it
Speaker 1: better in the end. That fight wound up creating more
Speaker 1: progress and more forward momentum. So right now there's a
Speaker 1: fight on and people have to jump in and get engaged.
Speaker 1: But that's how it gets better because you got out
Speaker 1: there and fought. That's how the Act up generation made
Speaker 1: it better for the generations of where people who have
Speaker 1: come after by engaging in the fight, by defending ourselves
Speaker 1: and fighting for what we know to be right. So
Speaker 1: this is galvanized the community in a way exactly. You know,
Speaker 1: the we talked about the transpan and it's being used
Speaker 1: politically by this Republican administration. George Bush, like Brand said,
Speaker 1: George Bush too thousand and four helped get reelected by
Speaker 1: running anti game marriage initiatives in eleven states that passed
Speaker 1: in each and every state, and a decade later, we
Speaker 1: have marriage equality in part, not despite those campaigns, but
Speaker 1: because of them, because the anti marriage campaign force us
Speaker 1: to have an ongoing conversation about marriage rights and about
Speaker 1: gay relationships and straight relationships, and about love. And even
Speaker 1: though we lost those sort of snapshots in time in
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, we were winning the argument. The
Speaker 1: more we had the fight, the more we had the argument,
Speaker 1: the more the needle moved in the direction of justice
Speaker 1: and fairness toward us. And we're having that fight now
Speaker 1: about trans rights. You know, their weaponizing anti trans bigotry
Speaker 1: at this moment. They may win at this moment, but
Speaker 1: the conversation they're starting and the fight that we are
Speaker 1: now in is going to move the needle in the
Speaker 1: 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 indemfatigable podcast team, our producer Gianna Palmer,
Speaker 1: our production assistant Nor Richie, 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 Beena 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 free you not for the money, so
Speaker 1: thank you for that's for Dave. Sure. If you can't
Speaker 1: get enough of us, I'm Katie Curic on Twitter and Instagram,
Speaker 1: Katie dot Curic on Snapchat. You can find me on
Speaker 1: Facebook as well. Brian meanwhile, is at Twitter at Goldsmith b.
Speaker 1: So here's the part where we appeal to the better
Speaker 1: angels of your nature, just like Abraham Lincoln. Won't you
Speaker 1: please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and subscribe
Speaker 1: as well. Your support helps make this show possible. So
Speaker 1: thank you very very much for listening, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: to you next time.