Salon.com > Dan Savage

When gay Americans marry

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 19:37:00 +0000

New Jersey Gov. James "I'm a Gay American" McGreevey has a pretty mouth. Has any pol ever looked better wrapping his lips around his own resignation? That was my first thought while watching the big gay press conference last week that served as the 47-year-old governor's coming out and resignation -- followed closely by, "Wait, what the hell is up with his wife?" If I called a press conference to announce that I was a straight American, that I had conducted an affair with a woman that was going to destroy my career (much of which is based on my cocksucking cred), the only way my boyfriend would stand at my side beaming would be if he was holding my recently amputated testicles behind his clenched teeth.

The reaction of the wronged wife is almost always the most interesting aspect of a juicy political sex scandal; the public seems to look to her before deciding how it should react. Remember when William Jefferson Clinton was impeached for ... well, take your pick: for having an adulterous affair, for lying under oath about having an adulterous affair, for having the nerve to win two elections. When Hillary made it clear she was going to stick with Bill, the American public did the same. Of course, it helped that rumors about Clinton's zipper problems had trailed him throughout his political career -- Americans knew he was a horndog when we elected him. Finding out he got it on with an intern didn't tell us anything we didn't already know or suspect.

What does marriage mean?

Sat, 17 Jul 2004 20:38:00 +0000

We were having dinner at the house of some friends, a nice couple, around our age, good parents to three girls. The kids were tearing around in the yard and the adults were well into our third bottle of wine when the conversation turned to sex. We knew the wife was relatively young and sexually inexperienced when she married -- she had confided that in us the first time we'd been over to dinner, almost a year before. She had always felt as if she'd missed out, she told us. She never really had any sexual adventures; she had never done anything she regretted or looked back on and thought, "Wow! Was that me?"

We were the only gay couple she knew, my boyfriend and I, and she had been initiating slightly awkward conversations about sex with us ever since we met. She seemed hung up on our gayness, but not in a bad way. What she seemed was jealous. She assumed that, because we were gay, we had both had wild sexual experiences, the kind of adventures she had missed out on, and after two or three glasses of wine she would start demanding the details. Tonight she wanted to talk about infidelity.

"Have you ever cheated on Terry?" she asked me.

First they came for Howard

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 21:50:00 +0000

Howard Stern, the self-proclaimed "King of All Media," was booted off six radio stations owned by those Iraq war boosters at Clear Channel Communications, after the radio network was slapped with a half-million-dollar fine by the Federal Communications Commission because of his show. It all could prove to be a serious blow, though, if the King of All Media winds up starving to death in a ditch as a result; well, he's got no one to blame but himself -- if that man hasn't socked away some of the tens of millions of dollars he's raked in over the years, then I have absolutely no sympathy for him.

Professionally, though, I'm more than concerned for Howard. I'm furious and distressed, actually. While I'll admit it's been thrilling to watch Stern, famous momma's boy, battle FCC chairman Michael Powell, famous daddy's boy, and his flock of flying monkeys, when the hammer came down on Stern last week my eyes were suddenly opened. It's not just that I make my living, however meager it may be in comparison to Stern's, doing something similar. Indeed, I was accused of being "the gay Howard Stern" early on in what I laughingly refer to as my "career." (It was a rival advice columnist who made the charge -- whatever happened to Isadora Alman, anyway?) I'm not having a "First they came for Howard Stern, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't an insanely wealthy shock jock ..." moment. I don't think I'm next on the hit list; my column is published on newsprint and the Net, not broadcast on our precious airwaves, the only scarce natural resource the Bush administration is remotely interested in defending. Thanks to the First Amendment, they can't shut down "Savage Love." Not yet, anyway.

I don’t

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 21:35:00 +0000

"In this case, we are confronted with an entire, sizeable class of parents raising children who have absolutely no access to civil marriage and its protection ... It cannot be rational under our laws, and indeed it is not permitted, to penalize children by depriving them of State benefits because the State disapproves of their parents' sexual orientation."
-- The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

My mom has a rainbow bumper sticker on her car. She's determined to do her part for gay visibility in unincorporated McHenry County, Ill., despite the fact that there aren't any gay people in McHenry County to visualize. My mother almost paid a high price driving a gay-identified car: Last summer she and my stepfather were nearly driven off the road by a couple of men screaming, "Faggots!"

I'm opening with my mom because it's nicer than opening with George W. Bush, who took a break yesterday from trashing the economy, despoiling the environment and smirking at the queen to condemn the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for its ruling on gay marriage. Things are apparently going so well in Iraq that Bush can now turn his attentions to more pressing matters, like doing all he can to make sure my mom never has a chance to cry at my wedding.

Brotherly love

Tue, 14 Mar 2000 17:00:00 +0000

This book review contains a little information about the book being reviewed -- a short account of its contents -- but it should not be construed as a serious comment on the qualities of the book under review. In fact, I would like to take this opportunity to advise Salon readers to disregard this book review for several reasons. First, I am totally unqualified to review Dave Eggers' new book, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," or any other book. I would also, then, like to take this opportunity to apologize in advance to Mr. Eggers, the author of a very fine new book, should I make a mess of this review, as I expect I will and fear I already have.

You see, I am no longer accustomed to reading book-length works. While I once devoured three or four books per week, it now takes all the energy I can muster to get through my weekly ration of New Republics, New Yorkers and Newsweeks. I confess that I read Mr. Eggers' very fine new book as I might a magazine, i.e., skipping around, perversely reading from back to front, reading as I fell asleep in bed after taking two Xanaxes. I read chapters out of order, took no notes and in a moment of panic skimmed several chapters for my own name (which, to my relief, I did not find). And I may have inadvertently overlooked a chapter. Readers should bear all of this in mind and remember that this book review, like all book reviews, is merely one person's opinions. In my case, these opinions were arrived at under other-than-ideal circumstances.

Stalking Gary Bauer

Tue, 25 Jan 2000 17:00:00 +0000

It took a $12 cab ride from downtown Des Moines to get to Bauer 2000 campaign headquarters. But by the time you read this, Gary Bauer's Iowa offices will probably be deserted, its computers, staffers and fax machines broken up and possibly redistributed among more viable Republican candidates, like, oh, Alan Keyes. But when I arrived three days before the Iowa Caucuses, the offices of the former Reagan domestic policy advisor and future presidential-election footnote were humming. Softly.

I was the only new volunteer who walked through the door that day, and the campaign staffers didn't quite know what to do with me. They didn't seem all that accustomed to finding work for volunteers, and only after 10 or 15 minutes of asking around was Andy, the young Bauer staffer I was handed over to, able to find something for me to do.

“It's happened again”

Thu, 04 Nov 1999 13:00:00 +0000

Wednesday night, the door to our garage was open. And the last time either one of us remembered checking, it was shut. And padlocked. It wasn't hanging wide open, either, just cracked open a few inches, "suspiciously ajar." We couldn't see in, but the door was open just enough for someone inside the garage to see us standing on the back porch, about 20 feet away, looking concerned about our open garage door.

With three news choppers thumping away overhead, cop cars tearing up and down the street and our 20 month-old son, D.J., pulling newspapers out of the recycling bin, my boyfriend, Terry, turned to me and said, "You better go shut the garage door."

Earlier in the day a scruffy white guy walked into the office of a shipyard on Lake Union, about eight blocks from our house, pulled out a semiautomatic handgun and shot four people. Two men are dead, two men are in the hospital. And by dusk, the shooter was still at large, believed to be hiding somewhere in our neighborhood. Streets are blocked off, schools are locked down and police everywhere are checking cars, houses, trees, basements -- and garages. Seattle's police chief, Norm Stamper, even went on television to warn Wallingford residents to use caution when returning home from work.