Fuck You Dan Savage

OK, quick update. Returned California Monday night. Michael picked me up from the airport.

Ate dinner at Sauce on Hampton. Home by 9.30.

Couldn’t stop myself from compulsively watering pots, checking the apparently broken (wasn’t) irrigation system. Nipping downstairs to the newly vacated rental apartment…the mess was dealable with.

Nothing a few hours on my knees scrubbing couldn’t handle.

Much to Michael’s amusement I found a pair of shears and, at midnight, hacked at the month’s worth of hedge growth I just couldn’t go to bed thinking about.

On the plane home I had a terrible revelation about my novel. It was written from the wrong point of view.

To my tremendous relief, this morning, everyone agrees with me.

So, I immediately began work rewriting the entire thing.

The gardeners came and restored order. Swept the paths and stowed the trash. Robby came by and we had lunch at the Malibu Country market. Robby is soooo adorable.

Took dog to vet..he has a hot spot. No idea what that is. Anyway, the gorgeous Dr Victor tended to him. Gorgeous and recently married. He gave me a powder I have to squirt on his wound. Don’t you just love the word squirt?

After my reference yesterday to ‘activist’ Dan Savage…who did I chanced upon being interviewed by Keith Obelman?

Our great friend and apologist: ‘Activist’ Dan Savage.

He was raving about critically acclaimed musical The Book of Mormon. That was OK. It’s good. Then he started in on Christian America and how everyone who critiques/damns the gays is either in the closet or jealous of our freedom.

As you know by now…I believe that our so-called freedom seems to enslave most of us.

I am not convinced that Dan Savage is radical or dangerous. He seems mediocre and conformist. He is married and has a kid. He wears boring clothes. He has a predictable hair cut. He probably lives in a gay ghetto.

Benoit introduced me to Dan Savage after I was on Sex Rehab. ‘Activist’ Dan Savage refuses to believe that sex addiction (any addiction?) exists. Why? Because it doesn’t suit his view that we should be able to do anything, whenever we want…without censure.

He can’t believe that something he enjoys so much should ever be labeled as addictive.

Yesterday, there he was on Obleman’s Coutdown tearing into bi-sexual folk who had ‘chosen’ to be straight rather than gay.

Pompous Dan apparently…damning their choices. The arbiter of your sex conduct.

Dan calls those who believe in choice, the ‘choicers’. Dan continues, revealing his limited (Judeo-Christian) understanding of contemporary sex and sexuality…you are either one thing or the other.

People like Activist Dan keep bi-people/people who experiment sexually away from being honest and open about the sexual choices they make. A straight man will rarely, if ever, admit to having sex with another man…because people like Dan Savage will claim him for the cause.

He suggested that bi-sexual people have made a ‘choice to stay in the closet’. Bi-sexual people fuck with Activist Dan’s head.

Is Dan pro-choice? Well…if it suits him. Choose to be gay or straight, choose to fuck out of your gay marriage, choose to live by Dan’s rules. Choose sexual liberation! As long as you choose the gay way.

I mean…I’m just asking. Don’t take it the wrong way…If you have a choice…why not chose a straight lifestyle? If Dan is so damned opened minded and sexually liberated…why shouldn’t that same hetero choosing bi-man also choose to see men on the side? I mean…what’s so different from that and the gay men I know who see other people outside of their relationships?

It’s their choice!

Bisexuality, sexual fluidity, acknowledging our right to choose an evolving sexual continuum.

Why not?

Dan may very well find those sort of bi-choices personally threatening.

Yet, in my experience, those bi-men who fuck other men outside of their straight marriage..are perfectly happy, not conflicted, secular…and of course…EUROPEAN.

If, ultimately, these men choose to ‘come out’…so be it. People leave each other all the time!

Many bi-men have a community of like-minded men and women around them. These men and women are often more closeted than the gays…not because they live in Christian shame but because those who live at either end of the sexual spectrum make it impossible for them to speak freely and honestly about who they are, what they want and the experiences they have had.

The choice to express themselves has been stunted by people like Activist Dan.

Dan’Bi Now, Gay Later‘ Savage.

Dan’s limited and sophomoric opinions about sex are frankly…dangerous. He does as much damage as Tony Perkins the Family Research Council president who denounces the idea that kids suffering from “abnormal” homosexuality kill themselves because they are bullied.

Dan is the equal and opposite of Tony Perkins. His passive aggressive, liberal, sexual free-for-all is as damaging to us as the hate spewing from the Christian right.

Whether we like it or not…Christians have the right to disagree with our lifestyle…why? Because they can. Because sometimes they are right.

Sometime they say things that I agree with.

Am I a self loathing homo? Am I jealous that you are young and getting some? Am I just bitter?

Is this how I can agree with SOME of the things our enemies say about us? Because I am jealous?

As for Dan’s notion that the moment we step out of the closet and embrace gay life we suddenly ‘live with integrity’.

Bull shit Dan.

Obelman asks a reasonable question about men and women trapped in the closet for 50 years. Savage, yet again, blames Jesus.

I have met men who didn’t come out of the closet because of what the gay community had on offer, couldn’t imagining themselves fitting in. The lifestyle simply wasn’t for them.

Can some of us believe that what we have isn’t everyone’s cup of tea? Jesus wasn’t keeping those guys in the closet..we were.

I have no experience of the closet…but I do have experiences as a gay man which include choosing to sleep with and have emotional bonds with women. I presented myself as a gay man to those women and choices were made. Get used to it.

There is something mithering about Dan’s tone. He believes as surely as Tony Perkins that he is right about everything. He is as sure as the preacher who damns us all. The gays here in the USA love Activist Dan. He is their saviour, their dog in the manger, he is their apologist, their very own MMA fighter prepared to get down and dirty defending the gays.

Sometimes I agree with him. Mostly I don’t.

Compared with a true activist like Peter Tatchell this buff hack is just another money spinner, whipping up the gays to buy his stuff so he can live the dream. He is as bad those in the GOP who hate us in public so they can run for office.

Have any of you read Right Wing Women by Andrea Dworkin? It’s worth the read. She doesn’t go after the clan leaders, she goes after their wives. It reveals the experience and motivation of women like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Anne Coulter.

Right wing women who attack feminism even while they are the beneficiaries of its work.

I am not interested if Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has, as he claims, gay friends or a gay head of staff. I am interested, however, in those gay friends and head of staff who have subordinated themselves to Rick’s cause…are willing to overlook his hateful rhetoric, set aside their integrity (magically bestowed upon anyone who steps out of the closet in Activist Dan’s world) and make a pact with the devil.

Dan has made a great deal of money out of being our gay saviour. Many in the gay community are devoted to his unquestioning beliefs, his naive rhetoric, his easy answers (blame the Christians) and his dashing good looks.

Straight liberals like Obelman love him because he’s just the kind of gay friend they would like to have.

He makes me puke.

See the interview with activist Dan here.

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