Dan Savage Won't Read This Interview

Dan lives in Seattle with his husband and their son.

Photos and interview done at the Kessler Theater in Dallas. Special thanks to Wordspace Dallas.

DS:  I started my goofy sex advice column in 1991.

DS:  That is a long time to have a column.

DS:  I don’t know, I’m too catholic to sit here and say I am funny and here is how I’m witty and funny. I just think I’m an idiot, but people seem to think I’m funny so I’ll take it. (laughter)

DS:   When I started writing the column, my idea was to allow myself in print, to use the language that people use when they talk about sex when they are with their friends in a bar and drunk. A conversation about sex naturally makes you a little tense so you are inclined to joke a little bit.

DS:  When you look up advice in the dictionary, it says an opinion about what could or should be done. Literally the only qualification you need to give advice professionally is some idiot asking you for your opinion. So, idiots keep asking me for my opinion. I never thought I was an expert.

DS:  The column and my podcast has always been as much an education for me as it is for readers and listeners. One of the aspects of the advice racket is you look like you have all the answers because you don’t print questions you don’t have the answer for or you go find the answer and pretend you knew it all along.

DS: When religious conservatives object to my work, which they are want to do, I always tell them that if you dumped all the columns into a sauce pot on the stove and boiled it down to its essence, all that’s left is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” 

DS:  Thanks, it is true. Individual results may vary but it’s broadly true.

DS:  It came out of an interaction with my readers. I wrote something about a kid who committed suicide and somebody in one of the comment threads said, “I wish I had known you Billy. I would have told you that things get better. R.I.P.” I looked at ‘things get better’ and thought that’s it.

DS:  The queer kids who need to hear that from queer adults most desperately are queer kids whose parents would never allow them to go to a queer youth support group or they live somewhere there are no outreach programs and the worst-case scenario: parents who are bullying their kids for being queer.

DS:  That’s the worst kind of bullying. We talk a lot about peer to peer bullying when we talk about anti-gay bullying of young people but the worst and sometimes the most prevalent kind is bullying from the parents. That rattled around in my head for weeks. We should tell these kids that, but we can’t because we are not invited to talk to them and we don’t have permission. Then it occurred to me that we have the internet with YouTube, twitter and facebook. We have tools now through social media where queer adults can reach out to directly to queer kids and make an end run around bigoted preachers, teachers and parents, and tell them the truth.

DS:  A kid who is bullied for race or religion can go home and tell the parents of the same race and religion about what’s happening to them and they can expect, as a matter of course, to get their parents support. Queer kids go home to parents that are almost always, not queer, and they fear opening up to them.

DS:  Sometimes this is a legitimate concern and sometimes not. They can’t risk it because they are so vulnerable. Then you have all these queer adults out there who have already lived it and walked that path who have the tools and the skills, but they can’t impart it. There was no way to share that information adult to kid until the internet came along.

DS:  You mean our political calamity? Every day is a trial. What is the most terrifying about him is you don’t know from one minute to the next what he’s going to do or say and neither do his handlers and neither does he!

DS:  I haven’t read it. Mark is a wonderful writer and I love his podcasts and listen every week, but I feel awkward. I don’t look at pictures of myself, no offense, I don’t watch myself on television, I don’t listen to myself on podcasts and I’m not going to read anything about me.

DS:  I’m just not that interested, (Laughter) especially any compliments, I’m too catholic for compliments. Besides if you want to keep improving you can’t think you’re that good.

DS:  Every time I do a television show they ask me if I want a copy of it and I always say, “No. What kind of a psychopath wants a copy of their interview?” (More laughter)

DS:  I’m always adding more. I have a bunch of TV projects right now that are in various stages of development.

DS:  I don’t want to be on TV. I am going to produce.