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Monogamy: Dan Savage Calls Me Out

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Dan Savage thinks his public comments on marriage, monogamy, and fidelity don’t hurt our efforts to win hearts and minds in our battle for equality — and admonishes me for pointing out that they do.

Dear Dan,

In, “Confidential to David Badash,” a rant on your blog even most of your readers who commented seemed to think little of, you call me out for my article, “Chuck Colson: ‘Gay marriage will inevitably undermine all marriages’,” in which I call your comments in a New York Times interview last month, (in passing, I might add, as the piece is about Chuck Colson, remember, Dan?,) “misplaced rambling,” and your statement on monogamy, “circumspect.”

You didn’t piss me off, but thanks for saying “I’m sorry,” as you write, for, “sharing my opinions and shit like that.”

Time and time again, Dan, as I have mentioned before, you do shoot your mouth off without thinking about the bigger picture or the consequences of your actions. For an advice columnist, surely that’s not wise, is it?

I have no desire to judge the covenants of your relationship or of anyone else’s. Lord knows, the only people who can create and guide and judge their relationship are those whose relationship it is.

And for the record, while I personally believe in monogamy and fidelity — the “forsaking all others” thing — I don’t think I have the right to force that on anyone else.

But I take umbrage with the timing of your comments — even one of your readers made the same observation, and with feeding into the religious right’s pernicious meme that gays are sex fiends. AFA’s Bryan Fischer recently stated, “fidelity in same-​sex relationships is virtually unheard of,” and so, as you can imagine, your comments feed right into that bunk.

Fischer’s was a false statement — as is almost everything that comes out of his mouth about us — but it makes our jobs all the more difficult, especially as he is heard in forty states via the AFA’s 180+ radio stations.

“The view that we need a little less fidelity in marriages is dangerous for a gay-marriage advocate to hold,” the Times piece that started this brouhaha warned. “It feeds into the stereotype of gay men as compulsively promiscuous, and it gives ammunition to all the forces, religious and otherwise, who say that gay families will never be real families and that we had better stop them before they ruin what is left of marriage.”

And that’s my point.

The millions of Americans who are on the fence about us only need to hear that someone billed as one of the most central figures in the LGBT fight for equality thinks that fidelity and monogamy are going to be tossed out by same-sex couples, and there goes another state, say, Minnesota, adding a constitutional ban on same-sex marriages.

Voters, sadly, don’t need to be handed a reason to vote against us — or for the Michele Bachmanns, Rick Santorums, or Rick Perrys of the world. Giving them a reason merely justifies their own ignorance.


 

If you read my entire Chuck Colson piece, which offended you so much you needed to send me a public admonishment, you’d have read the part in which Colson writes, “So the next time you hear friends question what harm gay marriage will do, why not talk about the Times article…”

That’s what we don’t need, Dan. You know so well, from the success of your It Gets Better Project, that words matter, and that we’re fighting a war for hearts and minds. Giving fodder to the enemy only hurts our community — and all those kids you are working so hard to help. Did you ever stop to consider that a great many people read The New York Times, and having your words as ammunition could be used by those who oppose us?

And no, as you write, we’re not going to change Maggie Gallagher’s mind. But the millions of other Americans who are on the fence about us only need to hear that someone billed as one of the most central figures in the LGBT fight for equality thinks that fidelity and monogamy are going to be tossed out by same-sex couples, and there goes another state, say, Minnesota, adding a constitutional ban on same-sex marriages.

Voters, sadly, don’t need to be handed a reason to vote against us — or for the Michele Bachmanns, Rick Santorums, or Rick Perrys of the world. Giving them a reason merely justifies their own ignorance.

You see your job as calling things as you see them, and delivering advice based on your perceptions. I see my job as helping to inform and educate people, and present our issues to the general public honestly and positively — but that doesn’t exclude the importance of calling out those whose missteps harm us.

“We’re fighting for equal rights, sistergirlfriend, not a very special right to a bullshit double standard,” you write. “Gay people don’t have to be on our best behaviors, as defined by you or Maggie or the Pope, to be entitled to our civil rights. They’re called rights, David, and not treats or trophies, for a reason: we don’t have to earn or win them. They’re already ours, technically, even if they’re not yet recognized.”

I agree, seeing that I spend every day, almost every waking moment, writing about our civil rights — and about those who are hard at work trying to prevent legal recognition of them. I certainly don’t need to be reminded that the rights of LGBT people are inalienable, as I’ve written often, like here.

I don’t think we have to earn our rights — they’re ours, they’re inalienable, they exist because we do —  but I do think, for the good of our community, people in the spotlight, people with a platform, have a responsibility to make sure we’re helping, not harming, the movement. That’s why I wrote this. And this.

All that said, Dan, I really do want you to know that I have great respect for so much of what you’ve accomplished. The It Gets Better Project should go down in history as possibly one of the greatest life-saving creations of the decade. You, and Terry, deserve all the accolades you’ve received for that.

As with so many battles within our movement, I fear you may not feel you and I are fighting for exactly the same thing. I hope you realize we’re on the same side.

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