Dan Savage Quotes & Sayings

Really, when it comes to gay rights, there's two wars going on. The first war is political. But the culture war is over. — Dan Savage

I'm searching for some exit poll data from California. I'll eat my shorts if gay and lesbian voters went for McCain at anything approaching the rate that black voters went for Prop 8. — Dan Savage

I think the 'South Park' guys are brilliant. — Dan Savage

To be a straight person and discover you're infertile is almost like discovering you're not a straight person. — Dan Savage

You can't pray away the gay, but you can torture a conflicted closet-case to death. — Dan Savage

Don't mistake being an asshole for being a man. — Dan Savage

I didn't want kids to think that to be happy, they had to be famous or rich or live in the big city. — Dan Savage

I wouldn't say that holidays are manufactured by corporations, but they're certainly exploited and mined by them. — Dan Savage

Terry cooked for me, but I resented having to do dishes. As I saw it, Terry liked cooking-he enjoyed it, he told me so. Well, I didn't enjoy washing dishes- I hated it, and I'd told him so-and didn't see why I should have to do something I hated after he got to do something he liked. I mean, that wasn't fair, was it? — Dan Savage

Relationships are monuments build on lies — Dan Savage

Jesus commanded his followers to clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, and care for the sick. Making health care available to all seems like a no-brainer, Jesus-wise, among the most Christian projects a president, or a nation, could possible undertake. — Dan Savage

I own a lot of my house, because I'm Irish and from people who never owned anything. — Dan Savage

I have a thick skin, but I have a heart. — Dan Savage

I waver between a cop-out agnostic and principled atheism — Dan Savage

I don't think that sin and pursuing happiness are not necessarily the same thing. — Dan Savage

I think astrology is annoying bullshit-which is so Libra of me — Dan Savage

Today's unspeakable perversion is tomorrow's kink, is next week's good clean fun — Dan Savage

But it doesn't matter what you're doing, it matters how you're doing it. — Dan Savage

A lot of people are living their lives online in much more public ways with Facebook and Twitter. — Dan Savage

Is it adultery if I'm committing it at one end of a guy and he's committing it at the other end of that same guy? — Dan Savage

We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people. The same way we have learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation. — Dan Savage

Mother's Day is a torment if your mother is dead. Valentine's Day is a torment if you don't got one. And at some point in our lives, we will be tormented by Valentine's Day even if we're relatively lucky in love. — Dan Savage

I got picked on a lot, even by teachers too. I liked to listen to musicals and bake, and my homeroom teacher found out and mocked me in front of the whole class for baking. — Dan Savage

Either way ... you've got to tell him
in no uncertain terms
to knock it the fuck off already. Don't be measured, don't wrap it up in "I" statements, no mewling about your feelings. Give him both barrels: "If you don't knock it the fuck off ... I'm going to kick your ass out, got it?" A strategic blowup or two should occur
scream, yell, smash a few things you're not all that attached to
when he slips up. Repeat until his attitude changes or his address does. — Dan Savage

You know, my problem is I can't say no to people, especially people who want to write me checks to do things. — Dan Savage

Parenting is about being competent and responsible. It's not about gender, necessarily. — Dan Savage

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. — Dan Savage

The moment you begin to believe you're worthy of the good things in your life - God gets all Old Testament on your ass and does something vicious, something insane, something totally uncalled for. He gives you lupus or He allows Satan to slaughter your children and cattle or He delivers Ohio to George W. Bush. — Dan Savage

Whether you're talking about boners, infidelities, late rent, or the Democratic primary: a single plausible excuse will sound like a credible explanation while a basket full of excuses - even a basket stuffed with equally legitimate, plausible/probable excuses - will sound like a desperate/unbelievable lie. — Dan Savage

I really enjoy doing theater, but doing theater in Seattle is like dropping a brick in a bottomless well. It's gratifying, but it's almost like doing radio. It's ephemeral. — Dan Savage

There's going to be some places where you're treated with respect and dignity and some places where you'd have to be a fool to live, .. So, there will be places where people can get their hair done well and places where they can't. — Dan Savage

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

The only way to get gay issues off the front pages of Canadian newspapers is to grant gay and lesbian people our full civil equality and leave it alone. — Dan Savage

The truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H. — Dan Savage

TV commercials make parenting look like there are going to be good days and bad days - like, it'll be this gentle wave, like you'll have a blissed-out, really wonderful day or two, and then, you know, then you'll have an issue. And what parenting is, is kind of earthquake. — Dan Savage

How did people raise kids before plastic came along? "Everything for Baby", said the sign over the aisle we were in. It should have said, "Everything for Baby Is Made from Molded Plastic in Ugly Primary Colors. — Dan Savage

I'm not good looking. I'm very strange - a very bony face on an enormous skull, and I don't like to be naked because I don't like how I look naked. And - no, no. I own a lot of my house, because I'm Irish and from people who never owned anything. So I could have a lot more trappings of wealth if every time I had 20 extra dollars I didn't pay off more of the mortgage. — Dan Savage

First off, LARDASS, you neglected to include a sign-off, forcing me to create one for you. I tried to create one that captured the spirit and tone of your letter, and I think I did pretty well. [] I am thoroughly annoyed at having my tame statements of fact-being heavy is a health risk; rolls of exposed flesh are unsightly-characterized as "hate speech." — Dan Savage

Women can go on marrying and pretending that their boyfriends and husbands are Mr. Darcy or some RomCom dream man. But where's that going to get 'em? Besides divorce court? — Dan Savage

I think it's better to have limits. My limits are different from other people's limits. I'm all for freedom, I'm all for people doing what they want. I'm also all for people shouldering the consequences of their behaviors, and not being assholes, and not lying unless they need to, and being honest except when you shouldn't, and being faithful except when it's okay to cheat. I guess I'm just a mass of contradictions. — Dan Savage

One man's piss-soaked sadomasochistic orgy is another man's poetic ecstasy. — Dan Savage

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. — Dan Savage

See, I'm a subverter at heart. — Dan Savage

I feel like I'm a compassionate guy, but I also feel if somebody's grip on life or sanity is so tenuous that a joke in an advice column that usually is nothing but jokes pushes them over the edge, then if not me, it would have been a leaf blowing past them that did it, or something else. You almost have to feel that way, doing this. — Dan Savage

I'm an agnosto-theist. — Dan Savage

Like it or not children are being raised by gay and lesbian parents all over America - as many as 10 million children. And it does nothing to make their lives more stable and secure to attack their families, to attack their parents to prevent us from marrying each other. — Dan Savage

You want to help gay kids, you have to reach them in middle school and high school, when they're being bullied. — Dan Savage

I don't understand how real Christians let that little f
ker get away with that. — Dan Savage

The Bible is only as good and decent as the person reading it. — Dan Savage

In an open adoption agreement, you agree to a minimum number of visits - a floor, not a ceiling. It's enforceable. — Dan Savage

I get letters every year from women who think Valentine's Day is an empty exercise, but are ironically pretty exercised when their boyfriends neglect or forget it. — Dan Savage

When you're a writer, you want to try to avoid cliches. Unfortunately, when you're writing about marriage or family, all cliches seem to apply. — Dan Savage

My husband Terry and I are mostly monogamous ... There are times - certain set and limited circumstances - when it is permissible for us to have sex with others. — Dan Savage

A huge part of what animates homophobia among young people is paranoia and fear of their own capacity to be gay themselves. — Dan Savage

Books are magic: you never know where they're going to end up. — Dan Savage

School is very conformist, and one of the very first conforming that goes on in preschool and kindergarten is gender. — Dan Savage

No, I'm not good looking. — Dan Savage

There's always something new with sex. We lived in a world without Viagra, now we live in a world with Viagra. We lived in a world without blowjobs and anilingus in the Oval Office, and then it happens and you get to write about it. We live in a world where now the government is screwing with contraception and holding back vaccines that could save 4,000 women's lives a year, and you get to write about that. It's not as much fun as anilingus in the Oval Office, but what are you going to do? If you pay attention, there's always something new, and it's always really invigorating. — Dan Savage

If what you want is a life where your homosexuality is not an issue, move, as many have done. — Dan Savage

Sometimes I talk to religious people about my column or what I do, and I ask them to, you know, read 20 or 30 of them and then come tell me that the message at the heart of every column isn't, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' In every possible sense. — Dan Savage

I don't think that gay and lesbian relationships are identical to heterosexual relationships. I do think that heterosexual weddings, or at least most of them, are sort of camp pantomimes about male and female sex roles, even if the couple is marrying as individuals and equals ... — Dan Savage

If kids got raped at Denny's as often as they get raped at church it would be illegal to take your kids to Denny's. — Dan Savage

Terry gets annoyed when I describe his mother as cold. She isn't cold, he insists, just a little standoffish, and not so gabby as certain members of my family. While Terry's mom doesn't believe in asking intrusive questions, like "How are you?", she's still a warm and loving mom; just quiet and undemonstrative. — Dan Savage

When you're young and queer and closeted, you can end up in this place where you regard your straight peers as the enemy. — Dan Savage

Yes, yes: Taking out Saddam Hussein means war, and war is bad for children and other living things. I went to grade school in the 1970s, and I recall the poster. But there are times when war is not only a tragic and unavoidable necessity, but also good for children and other living things. — Dan Savage

To be gay is nothing to be proud of. It's in how you are gay that you have something to be proud of, considering the obstacles placed in your path if you are gay. — Dan Savage

The mistake that straight people made was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous. — Dan Savage

You could fly under the radar a little bit. You could be a weird kid without defaulting to gay, without everyone assuming you must be gay - that was literally the last place many people went. — Dan Savage

We all have our scars. That's what falling is love is all about: revealing your scars to somebody who then loves you anyway. — Dan Savage

Even if gay marriage were legalized there would still be gay men who didn't want to marry, gay men no other gay men would want to marry, and gay men who didn't want to leave the priesthood in order to marry. — Dan Savage

Sedaris, in his essay in the It Gets Better book, writes that when he was growing up nobody called him gay because you might as well have called him a warlock. Nobody knew what gay was. — Dan Savage

I'm a lesbian and I'd rather you bully me than a thirteen-year-old kid. — Dan Savage

I think abortion should be mandatory for about 30 years, — Dan Savage

A lot of people think that telling people you're gay is something someone might say just to get attention. — Dan Savage

Every question is a hypothetical question for everyone but the person who asks it. — Dan Savage

Christmas can have a real melancholy aspect, 'cause it packages itself as this idea of perfect family cohesion and love, and you're always going to come up short when you measure your personal life against the idealized personal lives that are constantly thrust in our faces, primarily by TV commercials. — Dan Savage

I'm an agnosto-theist. I cross myself on airplanes. I pray when I'm sick. When you're sick I'll keep you in my thoughts; when I'm sick, I'm entreating a higher power. — Dan Savage

Now that all writers everywhere are contractually obligated to blog and tweet all day long, who has time to work on a book? — Dan Savage

Children have a right to some stability and constancy from the adults in their lives. — Dan Savage

You can't have Rosie on The View and Elton John packing Mom and Pop in at Caesars Palace and gay people all over television, and then have these politicians run out there with a straight face and say that gay and lesbian relationships are a threat to the family. We are winning in the culture - which is why we'll ultimately win the political war. — Dan Savage

Actual gay people can make many others feel uncomfortable and paranoid because they don't know and can't articulate what makes a person gay, and they worry that maybe they themselves are gay. — Dan Savage

Oftentimes, when people write me 4,000-word letters, I write them back and tell them if their problem's that complicated, they probably need a lawyer or a cop, and not me. — Dan Savage

I wanted to be a priest when I was a kid. — Dan Savage

Straight couples don't have to be monogamous to be married or married to be monogamous. Monogamy no more defines marriage than the presence of children does. Monogamy isn't compulsory and its absence doesn't invalidate a marriage. — Dan Savage

I'm always telling people who say two men can't make a baby: 'Anything is possible for God. I'm going to keep inseminating my husband and keep my fingers crossed.' — Dan Savage

If sex isn't an important part of your marriage, you can't beef if your wife or husband does this unimportant thing with somebody else every once in a while, if you have no interest in it. — Dan Savage

I'm allergic to dogs, so I couldn't even adopt what gay men typically adopt when they have that maternal gene. — Dan Savage

Owning a gun in America is one way for conservative white males to demonstrate their anger at crime, liberalism, feminism, and modernity. — Dan Savage

I don't think it's the responsibility of gays and lesbians to reinvent the family. — Dan Savage

A certain tiny percentage of everyone is gay. — Dan Savage

I believe it's in the best interests of a child to be in a stable environment. — Dan Savage

My dad and mom were more like World War II-era parents, even though it was the 1960s, because they were both born in the '40s. They were young adults before the '60s even happened, and married, and already having kids. But by the time we were adolescents in the '70s, the whole culture was screaming at parents, "You're a good parent if you're open with your kids about sex." They attempted to be open with us about sex, and it made them want to die, and consequently, it made us want to die. — Dan Savage

I don't like to think about what school was like for me. — Dan Savage

The cultural expectation should be if there's infidelity, the marriage is more important than fidelity. — Dan Savage

Pride became this dogma which meant you couldn't criticize anything gay - if you were the least bit critical of gay culture or people or any gay person doing any gay thing, that was an insufficient display of pride. You were suffering from internalized homophobia. As opposed to external homophobia. — Dan Savage

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. — Dan Savage

Preaching to the choir actually arms the choir with arguments and elevates the choir's discourse. There's a reason the right does it and does it well and triumphs. — Dan Savage

When I was in high school I got involved in the fringe theater scene in Chicago, and I met some openly gay people. I could see that it got better, that they were happy and loved and supported. I saw with my own eyes that it got better. — Dan Savage

Most Americans don't care about gay marriage. — Dan Savage

Kids are like heroin, a little heroin addiction. When it's bad, you've never been so miserable, but when it's good you've never been so high. — Dan Savage