Dan Savage
Dan Savage
Daniel Keenan "Dan" Savage 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRadio Host
Date of Birth7 October 1964
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
I don't like to think about what school was like for me.
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.
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.
You want to help gay kids, you have to reach them in middle school and high school, when they're being bullied.
School is very conformist, and one of the very first conforming that goes on in preschool and kindergarten is gender.
Ultimately life is disease, death and oblivion. It's still better than high school.
The bullied straight kid goes home to a shoulder to cry on and support and can talk freely about his experience at school and why he's being bullied. I couldn't go home and open up to my parents.
The successes of the LGBT civil rights movement and the more prominent role openly gay people are playing in the public eye has actually turned up the temperature in middle schools and high schools for queer kids.
It would be as if a print advertiser said 'Gee, The Wall Street Journal reaches all business people in the U.S., so why do I need to advertise in other business publications?' But the truth is it does work to advertise elsewhere.
At that point, I had 50,000 to 80,000 words written about the house. Instead, it became a sequel to The Kid in a way,
It hasn't changed the way we live or relate to each other, ... But there is this intangible, hard-to-pin-down sense of permanence that is hard to describe.
I don't think people should do things that make them miserable. And if being an in-shape, sober, monogamous heterosexual makes you miserable, don't do it. And if being an in-shape, sober, monogamous heterosexual makes you happy, do it.
I felt a sense of loss and dislocation.
To keep the peace, I do show things to my family before they come out, ... It's like a 'heads up, here's what I'm writing. If you really have a problem with it or you're never going to talk to me again, give me a call.'