A Lot Of People Think

You Can’t Pray Away The Gay, But You Can Torture A Conflicted Closet Case To Death.

Most Americans Don't Care About Gay Marriage. But It Matters Very Much To The Knuckle-draggers And Christianists And Whack Jobs In Bush's Ever Smaller Base.

How Can You Tell Somebody Who Is Pursuing Happiness That They're Somehow Not American When That Was The Very First Promise That America Made?

I Always Kind Of Divided The Gay Guys I Met Up Into Two Groups When I First Started Coming Out. There Were The Guys Who Thought There Was Something Fundamentally Wrong With Them And Hated Themselves And Were So Burdened With Shame And Internalized Homophobia. It Just Really Paralyzed And Shredded Them. And Then There Were Guys Like Me Who Thought, "i'm Fine, Everybody Else Is Crazy. My Church Is Sick And The Family's Crazy, But Me? I'm Fine."

I Started Doing Drag In Seattle Because I Started Doing My Column Before I Moved Here, And Then Moved Here And Wanted To Be Able To Go Out And Do Things As Dan Savage Without Being Recognized The Next Day, Because The Column Was Just In Seattle And It Was Kind Of A Sensation And I Was Beating People Up. I Was Really Worried And I Didn't Want To Beat Somebody Up In A Column And Have That Person Know What I Look Like When I Didn't Know What They Looked Like.