Dan Savage

Dan Savage in 2005

People here think Seattle is Paris... it ain't. I've been to Paris, and this place isn't Paris.

The butt is not a magical place that only gay people can visit, like a leather bar or the Liberace Museum.

There's nothing the rightwing loves more than a black person willing to say black people are the real racists or a queer person willing to say queer people are the real threat.

We may never eradicate racism and sexism and hatred. But fight it we will. And don't listen to anyone who tells you that music and dance and art and sex and joy are a distraction from the fight. They are a part of the fight.

Daniel Keenan Savage (born October 7 1964) is an American author, media pundit, journalist, and activist for the LGBT community. He writes Savage Love, an internationally syndicated relationship and sex advice column. In 2010, Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, began the It Gets Better Project to help prevent suicide among LGBT youth. He has also worked as a theater director, sometimes credited as Keenan Hollahan.

Quotes

• We don't say to women, "what do you mean you had a three way with two girls and a guy and you ate her pussy a little bit. You must be a lesbian." But we say to guys, "you mean you [touched a dick]. You must be a fag."… Straight male sexuality is all about this paranoia about am I feminine or am I gay. So the man who allows himself to do something perceived as womanly or faggoty is not a man anymore.
  • In a 1998 interview by James Crotty of Monk magazine

• The butt is not a magical place that only gay people can visit, like a leather bar or the Liberace Museum.
  • Butting In, Savage Love column, The Stranger, 27 June 2002

• But just because we're conditioned to view some things as disgusting and immoral doesn't mean that some things aren't, in actual point of fact, disgusting and immoral. Human sacrifice, for instance. Or cannibalism. Or Ann Coulter.
  • Incestathon, Savage Love column, The Stranger, 1 August 2002

• Seattle sucks. New York and Chicago are real cities. Seattle is Dubuque, Iowa, putting on airs. People here think Seattle is Paris... it ain't. I've been to Paris, and this place isn't Paris.
  • Interview on Zulkey.com, 28 March 2008

• Despite what Pope Benedict would have us believe, sex without love can be fucking amazing.
  • Disagreeable Advice, Savage Love column, The Stranger, 2 February 2006

• One man's piss-soaked sadomasochistic orgy is another man's poetic ecstasy.
  • Come to the Bash, Savage Love column, The Stranger, 9 February 2006

• There is a Karmic Rule of Kink (KROK), and it goes something like this: "Dump the honest foot fetishist and you will marry the dishonest necrophiliac." Break up with a guy over his relatively tame fetish — and a foot fetish is about as tame as they get — and KROK will make sure your next boyfriend is some lying corpsefucker who tells you only what you want to hear. ("Honestly, honey, I only like live girls!") Only after you've married the corpsefucker and had a few kids — once extricating yourself from the marriage becomes a hugely complicated ordeal — will he ask you to lie in a tub of ice until you're good and cold. And when you're lying in that tub of ice — and odds are you will, because you won't want to put your poor kids through a divorce — you'll remember that sweet, harmless foot fetishist whose heart you broke back in college, the man you could have married.
  • Mary's Uterus, Savage Love column, The Stranger, 14 December 2006

• Yes, we must donate and volunteer and protest and vote, all while reminding ourselves daily that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. And we must commit to defending our friends, neighbors, and coworkers who are immigrants (documented or not), Muslims (American born, immigrants, or refugees), people of color, women seeking reproductive health care, trans men and women seeking safety, lesbian and gay men seeking to protect their families, and everyone and everything else Trump has threatened to harm, up to and including the planet we all live on.

But we must make time for joy and pleasure and laughter and friends and food and art and music and sex. During the darkest days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, when Republicans and religious conservatives controlled the federal government and were doing everything in their power to harm the sick and dying, queers organized and protested and volunteered and mourned. We also made music and theater and art. We took care of each other, and we danced and loved and fucked. Embracing joy and art and sex in the face of fear and uncertainty made us feel better—it kept us sane—and it had the added benefit of driving our enemies crazy. They couldn’t understand how we could be anything but miserable, given the challenges we faced—their greed, their indifference, their bigotry—but we created and experienced joy despite their hatred and despite this awful disease. We turned to each other—we turned to our lovers and friends and sometimes strangers—and said, "Fuck them. Now fuck me."

[...] We may never eradicate racism and sexism and hatred. But fight it we will. And don't listen to anyone who tells you that music and dance and art and sex and joy are a distraction from the fight. They are a part of the fight.

• Mourning in America, Savage Love column, The Stranger, 15 November 2016

• Saying someone—like our president-elect—couldn't possibly be into piss because that particular kink doesn't square with a known character trait and/or aspect of his public persona is like saying a hard-driving male CEO would never pay a dominatrix to tie him up, humiliate him, and shove two dozen needles through the head of his cock because he's such a powerful guy. Or saying a feminist would never wanna have her ass slapped or her hair pulled by a male sex partner. Or saying an out-and-proud gay man would never wanna be called a faggot by the dude fucking his ass. While most powerful CEOs aren't BDSM subs and most feminists aren't into having their asses slapped and their hair pulled and most out-and-proud gay men aren't into being called faggots when they're bottoming, [...] enough of all three are for each to be a cliché.
  • Savage Love Letter of the Day: A Germaphobe Couldn't Be Into Piss, Right?, The Stranger, January 11, 2017.

• There's nothing the rightwing loves more than a black person willing to say black people are the real racists or a queer person willing to say queer people are the real threat. If you're queer or a person of color and you're telegenic and articulate and willing to sell the rancid cum rag that passes for your soul, you'll never have to do an honest day's work again in your life.
  • "Milo Yiannopoulos: Girls Are In Danger When Adult Trans Women Use Public Toilets But 13-Year-Old Boys Can Benefit From Giving Head To Adult Males", The Stranger, February 20, 2017.

• Who's more reputable than Dan Savage? I can think of a few hundred million people on the North American continent alone. But, hey, so long as my Wikipedia page—which, for the record, I did not author and only found out about when a web-savvy youngster brought it to my attention—features that hyperflattering photo of me, I'm happy to do my part for them.
  • Savage Love, “Donkey See, Donkey Do”

• There is a strain of the left that is really invested in show trials and purity testing and virtue signaling... And would rather lose surrounded by perfect allies than win with an army that includes imperfect allies.
  • "'Sex dread' education could be on the rise under Trump. Dan Savage is ready to fight it.", Vox interview, August 3, 2017.

Skipping Towards Gomorrah (2002)

So while gun owners are always saying that owning guns is about defending freedom, the only freedom gun owners seem interested in defending with their guns is the freedom to defend their freedom to own guns.

• My proof that homosexuality is not a choice? A question for my straight male readers: Is there anything I could do or say or write that would convince you to willingly, happily, eagerly, anxiously, deliriously, lustfully put my dick in your mouth and leave it there until I had an orgasm? I rest my case.
  • p. 79

• Every American may have equal access to ice cream, but there's no guarantee that the outcome of eating ice cream will be equal.
  • p. 165

• I wasn't going to argue with a German about the psychology of a forced march – not even a guiltless German.
  • p. 203

• No one has ever gone broke underestimating the insecurities of the gay and lesbian consumer.
  • p. 216

• Take me to the driest county in the most conservative state, and in two hours this determined hedonist will find you all the drugs, whores, and booze you'll need to pass an eventful weekend.
  • p. 235

• So while gun owners are always saying that owning guns is about defending freedom, the only freedom gun owners seem interested in defending with their guns is the freedom to defend their freedom to own guns.
  • p. 249

• Natural isn't something I get called a lot in Texas.
  • p. 256

• The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness means that each of us is free to go our own way, even if the ways some of us may choose to go seem sinful or shocking to our fellow citizens.
  • p. 299