Dan Savage first made his sign with his nationally syndicated sex advice column, Savage Love, an X-rated guide for a genesis of kink-savvy readers, from youths interested in trying anal sex to married adults considering a three-way tryst.A gay activist-for days he asked readers to handle him as "Hey, Faggot!"-Savage appears regularly on Bill Maher and The Colbert Report, confronting conservatives who condemn gay marriage and denounce gay sex as half a measure from bestiality.
In September, Savage caught the eye of the White House and the state following a train of suicides by gay youths in Minnesota, Indiana and Wisconsin.He and husband Terry Miller posted a video on YouTube reaching out to gay children, telling them that if they can have on through the torturous middle school and high school years, life does get better.Savage encouraged gay adults to shoot videos of their own emphasizing that same message.
They did.Within days his inbox was awash with homemade videos from prominent gay figures like Ellen DeGeneres and Adam Lambert as good as straight leaders like President Obama and Secretary Clinton.
Today Savage is a columnist, host of one of the most popular podcasts on the Net, and father of the It Gets Better Project, a non-profit organization designed to open his video`s message.He and Miller have also just released It Gets Better the book, collecting the transcripts of their favorite videos along with original essays from once-bullied, now-successful gay adults like humorist David Sedaris and award-winning novelist Michael Cunningham.
Savage spoke with me around his run-in with the White House, the responsibilities of closeted TV news anchors, and that memorable instant when the theme for his video hit him.
Savage: I had read this woman`s blog.This was only after those suicides.She said she wished she had gotten the opportunity to order those kids, it gets better.I say that and thought: so true.It`s the form of message I`ve been delivering at all these colleges.Then I thought, "F- these colleges."That`s not where this substance is truly needed.You need to help gay kids, you get to reach them in middle school and high school, when they`re being bullied.Of course, no middle school would let me in to speak to those kids.A gay man approach to middle school: he`d be looked at as just a potential child molester.
Kors:Right.
Savage: I was seated on a train, headed to JFK, when I realized, oh my God: I don`t get to expect to speak to those kids.With the Internet, I can give them directly, before they throw up hope and kill themselves.Because when a 14-year-old kills himself, that is what he`s saying, that there`s no joy in the next that could pay for this pain.They live there are other fags and dykes in the world.But they don`t love the path, how to go from where they are to there.You know, for so many gay kids, there are no gay role models in their lives, no examples of what a healthy, happy gay life looks like.I realized, we could render them with that example-whether their parents want us to or not.Savage laughs.See, I`m a revolutionist at heart. So that aspect of this project-going round the adult authorities-really appealed to me.Plus, it`s more like: whether the parents want us to do this right now.I figured eventually, when they`re in a different place, a lot of parents of gay kids would thank us for bringing this message.
Kors: When I saw your video, I instantly thought of Bowling for Columbine. In that film, Matt Stone, the co-creator of South Park, addresses the Columbine shooters and says he would have told them, Look, you`re two weeks from graduation. You mean because it sucks now, it`s release to suck forever, but as shortly as you graduate, everything changes.
Savage: You know, a few people have sent me that clip.They called it the beginning "It Gets Better" video.I enjoy it.I reckon the South Park guys are brilliant.And that clip addresses another important facet of this: vengeance.Because those kids didn`t simply kill themselves. They took down a lot of other kids in the process.That hope for retribution is oftentimes a portion of being bullied. I mean about Dr. Trevor Corneil in our series. He referred to his wall of medical degrees as his "F- You" wall.Not his wall of accomplishments but an f- you to all the kids who tormented him in that little town.He triumphed over those assholes.
Kors: Do you think revenge is an acceptable piece of the equation?
Savage: When it`s framed in the kind of the best revenge is living well.Obviously the kids at Columbine didn`t deserve to die.
Kors: Some of them probably felt marginalized themselves.
Savage: Probably. Makes me think some one daughter in our series.She felt like she was run out of town. And I say, they`re doing you a favour to put you out of a spot like that. You give to say to yourself, "When I look back, is this a place I`m going to be glad I was put out of?" Fact is, most of us gay people are refugees. And we`re thankful for it.
Kors: There`s been pressure on you to enlarge the centre of the series to all bullied kids. Your series has moved on non-gay bullying, but you`ve kept the center on the struggles of gay youths. Because that childhood struggle is different for gay kids, isn`t it?
Savage: Absolutely.You know, after our video went viral, I called my elder brother Billy.He was flat and a geek.And he was often more brutally bullied than I was. I told him, "I don`t want you to mean that I forgot about you. Because I do think how difficult it was for you." And he said something so smart.He said, "Yeah, but I went home, I had Mom and Dad, and you didn`t."That`s the way it is for so many of these gay kids. They go house to parents who are bullying them too.Siblings pick on them.They`re dragged to church where they`re bullied by the rector who tells them they`re evil and departure to hell.The kid who`s direct and bullied goes home to a shoulder to cry on.Gay kids often go house to parents who are bullying them as well.
Kors: I know. And a lot of the political figures in your series, the true ones like Obama and Clinton, they say go home and seek reinforcement from your parents.
Savage: Actually Obama said it a little better. He said, Seek reinforcement from "your parents, teachers, folks that you know care about you but the way you are."But yes, a lot of videos said that.It`s one reason there was an outcry to determine the videos to gay videos. We`re not going to do that. But we will make certain the picture stays LGBT-focused.
Kors: I`m wondering how you felt when the White House called saying Obama had disposed a video. Because I saw that video, and I give to be honest, it really enraged me. He`s talking about how tough life can be for LBGT kids, and I`m thinking, "You`re the one keeping gay people as second-class citizens." If it were black masses that couldn`t marry, his thoughts wouldn`t be "evolving."
Savage: And that video came in before "Don`t Ask, Don`t Tell" was repealed, before the White House dropped its denial of the Defense Of Marriage Act. Yeah, I was dubious too. Plus, this project wasn`t about celebrities. I didn`t want kids to believe that to be happy, they had to be famed or deep or exist in the big city.I wanted them to recognize that they could be happy living a regular life.But when I saw the chairman of United States looking right into the camera and expression to gay kids across the country, "There`s nothing wrong with you," that meant a lot to me. This is the president stepping into this battle on behalf of gay kids, jumping in on the same position as porn star Buck Angel and fags like me.
Kors:Right.
Savage:How old are you?
Kors: Thirty-two.
Savage: Well, you get to see it as a gay man from my generation. It took Ronald Reagan seven days to even say the word "AIDS."By that place you had gay men dying left and right.And for those of us who lived through it, to feel abandoned, like our lives didn`t matter at all _ Now four weeks in to the press coverage of gay teen suicides, Obama turned round and made this video.
Kors:In that sense, it is remarkable.
Savage:Listen, I went on CNN and said it wasn`t enough, that the White House has the ability not only to say "It gets better" but to realize it better.But Washington is a Rube Goldberg contraption where to do anything takes forever.So for him but to say it-to link arms with us-that meant something, especially to do it during a decisive political time, with him zipping around the country before elections.He took time off from that to take this video.
Kors:So you weren`t angry?
Savage: (Savage laughs. Some things have riled me off.I remember Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama`s senior advisers, gave a lecture to the Human Rights Campaign, the gay rights group and called it "It Gets Better," instead of "We Can Do It Better."And I went apo-f-in`-plectic.In my blog, I said, "F- you.We`re cast of your speech and your speeches.F- you and return on your promises."
Kors: You wrote that in your blog?
Savage: I did. And you love what happened after that?Officials at the White House called me.
Kors: No way. What did they say?
Savage: They said they didn`t like my column, and they started pointing out all the things they`ve done for the gay community.And I kept saying, "DADT, DOMA, DADT, DOMA."The awful thing is, it was a few weeks later that that Obama went forward and made the video.
Kors: You know, I saw on Rachel Maddow`s show yesterday that the ban on gays in the military still hasn`t changed.
Savage: I know. It`s astonishing how the military is dragging its feet.Still, everything points to the shift coming. I only saw a picture the Pentagon is now using to indoctrinate Marines, to tell them that they will have and respect gay soldiers. _ Still, I suppose if the White House could have gotten by with not delivering on their promises, they would have.But the pressure from their home was there.The money from gay donors cratered, and the gay vote was no longer a certain thing.I believe finally they thought, "We can`t get them for granted anymore."
Kors:Why a book?Isn`t the online video series enough?
Savage:Well, not every kid has Internet access.And kids don`t need to leave incriminating Internet histories on their browsers either.Plus, I`m a book person.Books are magic: you never know where they`re leaving to end up.A book brings the image inside school buildings.When a gay kid goes to his school library and this word is there, it`s a substance to him that he`s accepted.
Kors: I wondered about that.Having this word in the school library would be nice, but do you mean a lot of these schools that don`t need you and early gay educators on campus would want your book in their library?
Savage:It`s already happening.Over 1,000 copies of the record have been donated to school libraries across the country.People are buying it for their alma maters and career to come up, to make sure they`re placing it on the shelves.At this point, the design is moving on all fronts: a documentary, an upcoming piece for TV.We wish to alter the culture.
Kors: Do you see a future where you are invited to talk at middle schools and high schools?
Savage: (Savage laughs. You know, I said that in my book, and now I`m getting invited to schools across the country.We`re passing to our first one in the end of May: Terry`s high school in Spokane, Washington.Terry writes in the reserve about how he was just brutalized there. Now the train has a new Gay Straight Alliance.
Kors:That`s a big change.
Savage: Yeah.The irony, of course, is that any train that would tempt me isn`t the train I want to go to.It`s the ones that don`t need me-the religious middle schools out in the spirit of the red states-where this message needs to give most.So, I`m glad to go, and I will be visiting a few schools in the fall. It`s hard because a lot of these schools don`t make a budget to fly you out there, like universities, and irrespective of what people may think, working for an alternative weekly newspaper, I`m not rolling in the dough.
Kors: You had Adam Carolla on your podcast recently.
Savage: Yeah, that was a few months back.
Kors: Then the following episode you announced that the point now contained "100% less Adam Carolla."
Savage: (Savage laughs. Yeah, I don`t mean that argument was me, more like an intro cooked up by my staff, the tech-savvy, at-risk youth.
Kors: Well, Carolla likes to say he ever wished he were gay. That way he and Jimmy Kimmel could have sex, live happily ever after and watch football on Sunday without dealing with women`s s-.I surely infer that.But _ do you mean that`s crazy?
Savage:No, no, not at all.Straight men looking at gay life, at gay culture, and it does looks like paradise because you don`t get to contend with women, and you can have sex all the time.Other people looking at bathhouses and places like that, and they`re disgusted by gay men.But the working word there is "men."If true men didn`t need women, the natural way is to hold sex all the time.With women in the picture, it`s not that easy.
Kors:Yeah.No doubt. _ I get to say you, in all honesty, I understand your book wondering, "Will it get better for me?"Living in New York, single a long time.I`m not saying I`m the 40-year-old virgin or anything.But _ let`s say I haven`t had James Bond`s dating success either.Family and friends always say, "It`ll get better.Don`t worry: it`ll get better."But they don`t know.They don`t give a crystal ball.They can`t see the future.Dr. Phil says that mass can hold the same mistake over and over again until they die.What if I`m making the same mistake over and over again on these dates?If I can`t see out what that fault is, why would it suddenly get better?
Savage:You need some advice?
Kors: Oh, absolutely.I would enjoy it.
Savage: Okay.I mean the best thing for you to do is just be your life.Live a spirit that`s worth living, one where you do what you need to do, pursue your passions.That way, if you meet someone, they`ll be joining a spirit that`s already really good.And if you don`t see anyone, you can even looking backward at the end and say, "You love what: I lived a very great life."
Kors:Makes sense.
Savage:Keep going on dates.And don`t get bitter, either about women or the dating process. _ Life doesn`t owe you anything, and I suppose it`s up to all of us to go out and make a fulfilling life for ourselves.Like, my husband Terry, he left the family an hour ago.We make a lifetime together.But if he never comes back, I still want to get something here, a spirit of my own, one that`s fulfilling in itself.
Kors:In the television you speak about your aliveness with Terry and the joy you guys have had.And in the book, you note that you shot an initial rendering of the picture where you detailed all the pain you endured before you met, back when you were bullied.You spell that you scrapped that video because "kids who are presently being bullied don`t want to be told what bullying looks and feels like," that your message would be stronger if you focussed on the happiness coming down the road.
Savage:Absolutely.
Kors:I guess there`s an important lesson there: that while empathy is good, hope and optimism are more important.
Savage:Exactly.That`s what Harvey Milk said: "You gotta give `em hope."Ultimately life is disease, death and oblivion.It`s even better than high school.
Kors:I take a hypothesis about why there`s so much disgust for homosexuals, and I`m wondering what you think.Most straight men are absolutely revolted by the mind of gay sex-hairy, sweaty, man-on-man anal penetration.It`s really slow to ricochet that revolt for gay sex towards a disgust for gay people.
Savage:I suppose there`s some truth to that.
Kors:On your podcast, you`ve even spoken about your own disgust with the theme of licking vagina.
Savage:Right.And I believe that revolt is fine.The job comes when straight people have limited interactions with gay people, so when they see gay people, their minds immediately jump to anal sex.When straight people see each other, they don`t mean of the other person`s sex acts. _ Anyway, that "ick factor" and the anti-gay bigotry with it is fading the more straight people and gay people interact.I experience when my neighbors think about gay people, their minds leap to barbecuing and block parties because that`s what we do.
Kors:That`s excellent.You know, Adam Lambert`s video addresses this issue.He talks about articles written about him on the Internet and how the reader comments section always overflows with discussions about how he`s a "faggot," a homo, gay, gay, gay-when, as he says, there`s so much more to him than his sexual orientation.His substance to gay kids is: Don`t let bullies narrow you down so that you see yourself as solely "gay."
Savage: Exactly.
Kors:Talk to me some Hump, the amateur porn film festival you started in Seattle and Portland.The thought can the festival, if I understand correctly, is to eat that "ick factor," heal the divide betwixt the gay and straight communities, and get everyone more comfortable with each other.
Savage: Absolutely. It`s a festivity of sexual diversity.Of course, there are people who set out to create professional pornography, with cameramen hired from Craigslist, but those entries always get out like sore thumbs.The videos audiences love to watch-the ones that get them cheering-are videos of couples doing what they know to do.That joy: that`s what everyone comes together to celebrate, going outside your comfort zone, watching something you wouldn`t normally watch and, in some way, recognizing a bit of yourself.
Kors: Because we all need sex.
Savage: Right. We`re all human, and sex is ridiculous, and we all take a laugh.There`s something about Seattle and Portland, too, that`s very accepting and loving. The open culture here-it`s very West Coasty.
Kors:Do you always think most how tight things are changing?For example, in 1997 when Ellen came out of the press and appeared on Oprah, she was restive and neural and talked about how her family didn`t require her to be about the kids because the gay might be catching.Now CoverGirl makeup has hired her and is singing its customers, what she smears on her face, we wish you to smear that on your face too.
Savage: I`ve never heard that put so well.Savage laughs.Ellen is, for a lot of people, the gay person they know.People were dubious when her show started.Her appearance is not about her lesbianism, but she doesn`t work it down.It reminds me that there are two simultaneous wars: legislation battles, like gay marriage, which are more like trench warfare, and the former is a culture war.We have won the polish war.Flat-out we won it.And it`s not only from Glee.
Kors: Oh yeah.You hate Glee.
Savage: I don`t hate it.It simply doesn`t make for me. _ But the polish war is more than what`s on TV.It`s blogs and podcasts and everywhere regular people can be heard.Think about this: we take our son snowboarding with a lot of his friends, kids from the neighborhood.And no one thinks, "Oh no, two gay men with our kids.They must be child molesters.They`re leaving to rape our kids."No.People are complete and through with those stereotypes.
Kors:To aid that progress, do you think Anderson Cooper and Fox News` Shepard Smith should be out?
Savage:I believe people in general should be out.But outing someone is an aggressive act.It`s a cruel thing to do, and it should just be done to brutes.Outing Ted Haggard is one thing, after the way he tempered the gay community.On the early end you have Rachel Maddow, who has shown how to be clear and classy at the same time.
Kors:So with Cooper and Smith, you`d say it`s their decision.
Savage:Yes.It`s their choice.Though there is an argument to be made about outing Shep Smith because his system is a homophobic piece of s- that, like the Republican Party itself, stands for low taxes and licking up queers.
Kors:I wanted to separate you how often I know the first man in your book, "Stay With Us."
Savage:Oh yeah, Jules Skloot, choreographer from Brooklyn.She made such a large video.It`s just 50 words, and she expresses it all, with attitude."Listen up, people."(Savage laughs.She put it beautifully.
Kors: One of the better parts of your present and now your script is that you have way for voices that see the man a different way.Like Bronx poet Gabrielle Rivera, whose composition is featured in the book.She says it doesn`t get better.
Savage: Yes!She was the 1st person we contacted about making this book.When people saw her video, they said, "Ah, you`re going to hate this."I watched it, and I thought, "I know this."She says it doesn`t get better-but you get stronger.And I thought, "You get stronger" is the Bronx Latino lesbian way of saying "It gets better."Surviving as a gay kid in a bad neighborhood, that`s a hero`s journey.
Kors:I also know the author bios, which are elongated and variety of wandering in that fun David Foster Wallace-type of way.Like the bio for singer Sia Furler, which notes that Ms. Furler "is currently totally awesome."
Savage:Love that one.Savage laughs.Terry worked with all the authors.People got to establish their own bios, bios that expressed character.He had a lot of fun with it.
Kors: My mom runs an adoption facilitation service, and she loves working with gay couples because they`re excited to adopt.You and Terry adopted your son, D.J. and you wrote an excellent book about that process, The Kid.It must be meaningful that that adoption door is now to give to you.
Savage:It is.And we are really thankful to have D.J. _ I`ve noticed that many straight couples, when they go to adopt, they`ve gone through infertility first, so they occur in trouble and angry.You know, with the way we worked with, the unit first day in the agency`s adoption process was about grieving our infertility.Terry and I were looking at each other like, "Uh, I grieved my infertility when I was 12."
Kors:Right.
Savage:Doors are opening in all areas of life.That`s one of the things I wanted to pass in this book.Gay kids who turn up wanting to be Marines, now that choice is subject to them.Back when I came out, in telling my mom I was gay, I was basically saying that I`d never marry, never take a child, that I was leaving to be a bare existence.And now all of that has changed.I have a son, and I get a great marriage.
Kors:Not actually a bare existence.
Savage:Marginal?When I`m pissed off, I say so in my blog, and I get a shout from the White House.Savage laughs.Things have gotten better.
Kors:On your podcast, you`ve mentioned Pastor Fred Phelps several times, the hate group leader who pickets soldiers` funerals, brandishing "God Hates Fags" signs.I interviewed him, and I want you to know, I don`t mean he`s homophobic in the traditional sense.I believe he`s simply crazy.He started telling me how the Scripture says that Obama will be sending "freeze-dried plump white babies" to Africa to eat the starving villagers.
Savage: Oh, "free-dried pump white babies."That`s awesome.You`ll get to charge me the link.
Kors: In your column, you talking about open relationships.Do you think someday we`ll see three-way marriages?
Savage: I don`t need to go there, at least not now.My coming is, let`s go the conversation one measure at a time.It`s like when people talking about legalizing marijuana.Immediately someone brings up legalizing cocaine.We want to reason out each of these things on its own merits.For three-way and four-way marriage, they`ll be good arguments for and against.And I trust that is an argument we`re passing to bear when the sentence comes.But I don`t require people to throw that with this.
Kors:You and Stephen Colbert are excellent at using neologisms like weapons.Just like his "truthiness," you redefined "lifting my luggage."And after former senator Rick Santorum linked gay sex to bestiality, your turned "santorum" into a neologism so vulgar, it`s actually wreaking havoc with his potential run for the presidency.
Savage: Well, thank you. That was the plan. And did you see, he now turn to it into a square in his cap."Oh, the gays are after me and get wounded my feelings."(Savage laughs.He is definitely running for president though.Not that he`ll win, or level that he thinks he`ll win.Obama`s going to rub the deck with this Republican field.Santorum`s campaign, just wish the rest of them, is for 4 more days of Fox News commentator.
Kors:I`m a big Dr. Drew fan, and I noticed a big difference betwixt the two of you.A woman will bid his show worried because she can`t get an orgasm, and within two questions, he`s uncovered that her mother was abusive and that she has a drink problem, and he`ll tell her, "You get to work these problems first."You remain focused on the intimate questions and resolve them.
Savage:Yeah.Dr. Drew tends to pathologize.He never met a spanking enthusiast who wasn`t raped by her mother or an anal play fan who wasn`t abducted by aliens.Everybody has crap in their past.And they`re calling me for assistance in getting an orgasm.Not having an orgasm in their present can be traumatic all by itself.I need to serve those people.
Kors:What do people want to bed about the It Gets Better Project?
Savage: That it was a true community project.A lot of straight people have made videos.Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein talks in his video about how he was bullied.Though our primary focus is the battle of gay youth, we`re keeping those videos up because they`re important too.Gay kids want to recognize that a lot of straight kids are on their side-that more people are on their side than ever before.Sometimes gay kids think of straight kids as the enemy.We need to direct the content that you will suffer great straight people, and that as you get older, the true people who are in your life-parents, siblings, friends-they`ll also get better and more supportive.
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