My Newest Hero... Dan Savage

This excerpt was taken from a colum I found in the Village Voice (here). His syndicated column Savage Love can be found in several newspapers accross the country.


I regret three things about the column I wrote after George W. Bush won the election on November 2. I regret writing it in a drunken stupor. I regret uncritically accepting the "gay marriage cost Kerry the election!" hysteria that was flying around the day after the election. (That supposed fact, drawn from the same exit polls that showed John Kerry winning in a landslide, has been thoroughly debunked.) Finally, I regret not making it clearer to my straight readers why, for gays and lesbians, contemplating or threatening a move to Canada after November 2 wasn't and isn't just sour grapes. We live in a country in which one political party—the one that happens to control all branches of the federal government—"activates" its base by demonizing, scapegoating, and actively persecuting homos, a tiny and relatively defenseless minority group. Republicans tell the fundies in their base that the existence of gays and lesbians is a threat to the American family, Western civilization, and as one bigwig R recently put it, "the survival of the earth." At some point, the Rs are either going to have to make good on their rhetoric and actually do something about all the homos out there imperiling the survival of the planet (hey, maybe we're responsible for global warming?), or they're going to have to knock it off. I suspect and hope that they will. But the off chance that the Rs will one day decide to make good on their anti-gay rhetoric—by amending the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage, say, or rounding us all up and putting us in camps (I'd like to be sent to Boy Scout camp, please)—makes the thought of moving to a big, sane, nearby country where gays and lesbians are full and equal citizens extremely tempting.

While we're on politics, I regret being so mean to Republicans in my column—even going so far as to say that people shouldn't fuck them—for two reasons: First, I have a lot of readers who are Republicans, as it turns out, and they send me long, wounded letters whenever I suggest that they're unworthy of sexual release. (Dear Republican Readers of Savage Love: I trust you also send long, wounded letters to the prominent Republicans who suggest that I'm unworthy of equal treatment under the law.) Second, Republicans rule the world now, and it's probably not a great idea to be on their bad side. So I take it back: We should all fuck Republicans—they're fucking us, after all, so why not?