Watch: Dan Savage: “How My Priest Helped Me Come Out”
Dan Savage: Yeah, I mean I was raised in a really religious family, Evangelical Catholics. My parents were in Catholic Marriage Encounter for the Tristate area and I went to a seminary and I was thinking about becoming a priest. And I realized I was gay pretty early and I think I had intimations even as like three and four years old that, you know, I told my mom that I was going to be a girl when I grew up. And what does that mean? Was I trans? No, I think at three and four I was looking at the relationships that my female relatives had with men and thinking well I’m going to have that kind of a relationship, so I must be a girl. That is the only explanation that one day I will be a girl because I want a husband. And that is how you get a husband, you have to be a girl.
And then I sort of buried that because I realized that that was not something my parents wanted to hear or anyone else in my life, but you know you hit puberty, a little before puberty and I was in denial for a long time. I hate to be gross, but I would let myself masturbate about men once if I had masturbated about women four times, so I would like picture men having sex with women and then realize I was only really thinking about the man. It was all very crazy and Catholic.
I came out in the end for the same reason everyone comes out. The anticipated pain and the fear of what might happen by coming out is less scary than a life in the closet. Eventually you realize that a closeted life is going to be more painful and unpleasant than whatever the worst possible consequences could be of coming out. I was afraid that my parents would reject me. I was afraid that they would throw me out of the house. Every day from the time I was about 11 or 12 until I came out to my mom when I was 17 or 18 and to my dad when I was 20, every day when my parents told me that they loved me I thought no you don’t. If you knew me, if you knew what I was you wouldn’t say that. And that is a horrible thing and I was really close to my mom and we were really—you know total mama’s boy—we were really tight and to doubt her love every day from 12 to 17 was kind of emotionally shredding. And I just realized my parents were wonderful parents. They raised four really great kids and they taught us to be honest. They taught us to have some integrity and to be ethical, and what they taught me about how to live my life was on a collision course with who I was. And I couldn’t lie to them about who I was and be the person that they had raised me to be.
I was ready to come out to my mom when I was 14 or 15 years old, but then my dad left and divorced my mom and I didn’t want to pile on. Though, you know: “This will take your mind off the divorce mom. Hey, crying lady in your room in the middle of the night I’ll give you something to cry about.” So I waited a couple of years to tell her and it was hard when I told her. She didn’t react… She reacted pretty well and I want to say I was Catholic and that was the most horrifying, horrible thing about my coming out. But my mom went directly to her priest, Father Tom, called him over and sat down on the porch swing and told Father Tom the news that I was gay or had told her that I was gay and she wanted to know what to do—and it makes me cry every time I talk about it—but Father Tom put his hand on my mother’s knee and said, “Judy, I’m gay.†And came out to my mother at that moment just as I had come out to my mother the day before.
And that helped my mother so much because she… Tom was a good friend and Tom was like one of our—We were so Catholic we had priests. He was one of our priests, right?—and for him to do that for me at that moment really kind of nullified some of my anger at the Catholic Church because that did help my mother and he told her it was better for me to be out and gay than to live the way that he had lived and I was on the verge of living the way he had lived. I was thinking about being a priest so I could be closeted all my life and then I realized I could live in a big house and wear dresses and fuck boys without being a priest.
Via Big Think
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
