It’s true that Dan Savage has made offensive remarks in the past. I’m not denying, explaining, justifying, or defending that, because a.) it’s not my place to speak for him, and b.) Dan has already addressed them himself. I’m also not in any way trying to minimize or downplay what I have no doubt is the very real, acute pain that anti-trans bigotry causes, or the way anti-trans language, regardless of intent, reinforces that bigotry. Look: as a gay man, not to mention a married one, I am keenly aware of the sting of bigotry. I feel it every day, both through my own life experiences and those that many of you share with me and the rest of us here at Truth Wins Out. As much as anti-gay bigotry hurts, though — as heavily as it weighs on my heart, and as much as I abhor the construction of a hierarchy of oppression — I recognize the privilege that I possess as a white, cisgender gay man. I simply cannot fathom the magnitude of the journey my trans kinfolk are on, nor do I possess a vocabulary sufficient to convey my admiration for the courage it takes each and every one of my trans friends to be true to hirself and to own, embrace, and love that truth.
But Savage’s glitterbombing still disturbs me profoundly. The reason? Dan Savage is not the enemy. As Bil Browning, another veteran LGBT activist, points out, trans people are not alone in their journey. All of us cisgendered individuals — even those of us in the LGBT movement — are on a journey too, into an ever-greater understanding of the perspectives and experiences that our trans siblings bring to the table and the unique issues, circumstances, and difficulties they face. Our movement is most effective when we fight forcefully for our human rights and dignities against those who oppress us while at the same time dispelling misconceptions by telling the stories of our lives, educating people about our orientations/identities/expressions and the injustices we face because of them, and awakening in all of us the realization of our common humanity and the fundamental rights and protections to which that humanity entitles us.
Even the most outspoken and well-intentioned of us have warts. But Dan Savage is not a trans enemy. Warts and all, his heart is in the right place and he is an ally in the struggle for equality on behalf of our entire community — lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. What’s more, Savage is one of the most visible members of our community. He has a high profile that almost none of the rest of us have, and that enables him to be an especially forceful advocate for the LGBT movement. Absolutely nothing is gained by attacking him; if anything, those who engage in these repeated attacks run the serious risk of silencing one of our most powerful assets.
All of us, including the so-called “trans mafia,” should take care to remember who our real enemies are. It shouldn’t be too hard; there are plentyofthem. Instead of directing our frustration and anger inwards at obviously supportive and well-meaning community members who have a less-than-immaculate record on every single LGBT issue, we need to direct it outwards and upwards towards the Tony Perkinses, Rick Santorums, Keith Ablows, and Laura Ingrahams of the world. Instead of vilifying people for what they don’t fully understand, we need to meet them where they are and bring them further.
Circular firing squads cut all of us down, and guess what? After the last shot is fired, our enemies are still standing.
Let’s be better than that. Our rights and our lives depend on it.
Postscript: I’d like to encourage readers of this article to head over to Bilerico and read this brilliant piece written by Austen Crowder, titled “The ‘Trans Mafia’ Stifles Allies.”
Following the news that Newt Gingrich asked for an “open marriage” with his second wife when she found out he had been carrying on an affair with his current wife, Callista, for six years, Dan Savage has this to say:
Technically you’re not asking your wife for an open marriage if you’ve already been f*cking another woman for six years. You’re presenting your wife with an ultimatum. That doesn’t make you a proponent of open marriage, Newt, it makes you a CPOS.
But Newt’s got a new campaign slogan: “Screw as I say, not as I screw.”
“Increasingly LGBT people are empowered, not ashamed,” he said. “They’re attacking us, and we’re confronting them. We’re holding them accountable and calling them on their lies and their ‘pious baloney,’ to borrow Newt Gingrich’s phrase. America is waking up to the fact that we’re not bogeymen, and we’re not coming to do any harm, and that we’re your daughters and sons and neighbors, sometimes your parents, your co-workers, friends, colleagues. The Republican party, in this desperate [nod] to its dying evangelical base, is just ramping up the homophobia, and they’re doing themselves real long-term damage.
“What’s interesting is that, you look at who’s been doing the most hate speech: Bachmann? She’s out. Herman Cain? He’s out. Perry? He’s all but out. Santorum? He’s running fourth, he’s trailing even in conservative South Carolina,” Savage continued.
“It’s not winning them the election anymore. It’s not 1992; Pat Buchanan can’t get up and give a ‘gay rights never, family values forever’ speech at the Republican National Convention anymore. Times have changed.”
This is why, though, if we step back from the GOP primaries and look at the state of the whole movement, the Religious Right is becoming more extreme in their rhetoric against LGBT people. They are desperately trying to hold on to the last few clingers, as they’re well aware that the younger generations just aren’t replacing the older generations when it comes to anti-gay bigotry. They won’t admit it, but they know they’ve lost the overall war. In the piece above, we find Dan wondering whether the GOP will ever look the same again, once they truly realize that the bigot thing doesn’t play with the general population anymore. I wonder the same thing, because it’s really not like the current Republican party believes IN anything.
I’m not speaking for Dan, but I have a feeling the answers are “Hahaha,” and “No.” Here is what Porno Pete has to say. I went ahead and added the “Santorum” links, because I guess Pete forgot them.
Today, I appeal to homosexual activist Dan Savage: take down your anti-Rick Santorum hate-site, Santorum.com.
Admittedly, it seems ludicrous to appeal to man who would go to such hateful lengths to sabotage religious conservatives that he would intentionally try to give a Republican presidential candidate a cold (Gary Bauer, 2000), or use Google to demonize an opponent in such a despicable way. Nevertheless, I make the appeal because bullying is bullying, and it must stop.
We get it, Dan, you HATE Rick Santorum, and you want to punish him for comments he made about the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing sodomy. But as a prolific writer and advocate, surely you have abundant opportunities to address Santorum’s arguments civilly — without resorting to cruel, twisted campaigns designed to destroy a man’s name and reputation by associating it with perversion.
“Santorum.com” (like its malevolent cousin, “Spreading Santorum”) is advanced cyber-bullying, pure and simple. You are a role model for “gay” youth, and your “It Gets Better” video campaign to help kids overcome bullying in their teen years has gained international attention. Yet bizarrely, with apparent ends-justifies-the-means rationale, you yourself have employed heinous bullying methods to malign Mr. Santorum – tactics you would strongly condemn if used against a self-identified “gay” kid. [AFTAH opposes all bullying of youth without regard to special criteria; we disagree with the “It Gets Better” campaign because it seeks to normalize homosexuality and celebrate immoral LGBT identities.]
Is this the lesson you want to teach young people? That if they encounter a person who disagrees with homosexual behavior, it’s OK to use the slimiest tactics imaginable to go after that person?
You and your homosexual partner have an adopted son. What did or will you tell him about Santorum.com? Have you no compassion for Rick Santorum’s wife, children and extended family, who too must bear the brunt of your high-tech smear?And to the media I ask this: please hold Dan Savage and his homosexual and liberal supporters accountable for this heinous and malicious web slander. Stop joking about it, and do not act as if Rick Santorum’s “Google problem” just appeared out of nowhere. This is calculated character assassination engineered by a “gay” activist who, ironically, crusades against hate. Do not reward Savage with media appearances. In fact, treat him as you would, say, a deranged, far-right activist who had created “BarbaraBoxer[dot]com” and “redefined” her name in a similarly evil manner.
Anyway. No comment because it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
Andrew Sullivan has opened polling for his year end awards, one of which is the “Moore award,” given to some liberal who says something completely crazy like what Michael Moore might say. Or something. Usually, the nominees range from people who said completely reasonable, factual things, but that go against Conventional Wisdom, to people who just weren’t civil enough in their prose.
Of course, what I said that earned me a Moore Award nomination was a true and accurate characterization of the position taken by HPV vaccine opponents. I stand by it and I don’t think accurately describing the POVs of anti-HPV vaccine POS’s counts as “divisive, bitter and intemperate left-wing rhetoric.”
It’s been a while since we’ve posted a video from Molotov Mitchell of WorldNetDaily. He’s a sad attempt at right-wing humor and “biting” commentary, which fails for all the reasons right-wing “comedians” and commentators always fail, and honestly, unless you really go looking for his work, you’re not going to just run across it. As with all right-wing attempts at being cool, what comes across is a sad, weakling of a man who is so frightened of the world around him that he simply spews hatred at all the people who are smarter than he is. He believes he has gay friends, like so many bigots do. “I have a black friend! I have a gay friend!,” they are known to say. In reality, it’s usually that there’s a gay person or a person of color who lives in their neighborhood, and who tolerates the right-wing idiot in their midst, while making fun of them behind their backs. He expressed support for the Ugandan “Kill the Gays” bill, of course claiming, like so many stupid right-wingers, that it wasn’t about killing gay people, except for the times he pretty much advocated for genocide.
Anyway, Porno Pete is excited about Molotov’s new video where he goes after Dan Savage for saying mean things. I’m not going to defend every single thing Dan has ever said — Dan doesn’t even defend every single thing he’s ever said — but I will point out that while there are those on the side of fairness and humanity who are lit fuses and sometimes pop off, we are actually fighting for good. This is in direct opposition to fundamentalist religious bigots who tend to value “civility” in discourse, all while advocating, for instance, for non-existent policies on teen bullying and promulgating hateful messages which lead to kids taking their own lives. I’ll side with the people who actually fight for good, with a liberal use of the word “f*ck,” thank you.
Moreover, Molotov claims that Dan has bragged about “cheating” on his spouse. Um, no. Dan has explained the arrangement of his marriage many times, and all literate people are free to look that up. But as Dan and Terry’s arrangement is “consensual,” it wins the moral contest over the Fundamentalist Christian version of open marriages, which tends to involve a lot of lying and closet homosexuality.
In this video about Dan Savage, Molotov also expresses his adoration for Rick Santorum, which makes sense, as overgrown WATB child-men with bizarre fixations on gay sex tend to flock together.
Hey Molotov? Actually, a majority of Americans support marriage equality. I know you simply can’t get your small head around that fact, but it’s true. You’ve lost.
Porno Pete adds:
If you haven’t seen Molotov’s previous video “My Gay Friends,” please watch this YouTube of it as well. It is compassionate yet honest Christianity in action and I believe the finest short video ever produced on this H. issue.
The video he’s talking about was universally reviled by gay people. But I will agree that it’s a good example of Porno Pete’s perverted version of Christian love in action. If you want to see it, click on Molotov’s name above and do some scrolling.
Herman Cain with CNN’s Piers Morgan (h/t: Rex Wockner)
On issues from evolution to climate change, the members of the GOP presidential class of 2012 (with one notable exception) have demonstrated a shocking contempt for science, dismissively tossing aside research-tested, reality-based scientific consensus and deciding instead to stick their collective heads in the sand in order to please their increasingly deranged, reactionary base. Concerned people from across the political spectrum, from Jon Huntsman to Paul Krugman, are alarmed by a Republican Party that is, to quote Mr. Krugman, “aggresively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge.”
This certainly holds true where LGBT issues are concerned. The current crop of Republican candidates have practically tripped over themselves in a quest to outdo each other in the homophobia department. Michele Bachmann, who has made opposition to LGBT rights the central pillar of her entire political career, co-owns a clinic that claims, in the face of the overwhelming medical and scientific evidence to the contrary, to be able to “pray away the gay.” Newt Gingrich and RickPerry are both enthusiastic supporters of the American Family Association, a Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate group that actively promotes the idea that sexual orientation can be changed. Rick Santorum, whose name will be forever linked with homophobic bigotry thanks to Dan Savage, most recently raised the horrifying specter of gay soldiers showering with other soldiers as a reason to reinstate the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and publicly embraced “ex-gay” propaganda.
The GOP’s current flavor of the month, Herman Cain, has eagerly jumped onto the anti-science, gay-hating bandwagon. Earlier this month, Cain told The View’s Joy Behar that he believes homosexuality is a personal choice and issued a challenge:
“You show me the science that says that it’s not [a choice], and I could be persuaded. Right now it’s my opinion against the opinion of others who feel differently. That’s just a difference of opinion.”
Truth Wins Out, Think Progress, and other groups hit back with the facts: sexual orientation is not a choice and cannot be changed. Ours isn’t an opinion, but scientific fact.
But apparently, to Cain, facts don’t matter — he’d rather cling to his anti-gay bigotry, thank you very much. In an interviewlast night with CNN’s Piers Morgan, Herman Cain reiterated his Stone-Age, anti-science views on homosexuality: “Although people don’t agree with me, I happen to think that [homosexuality] is a personal choice.” When Morgan told the candidate that his comments were just as ridiculous as a gay person telling Cain that he chose to be black, Cain bristled: “You know that’s not true. I was born black;” he added that race “doesn’t wash off.”
Herman, Herman, Herman. I, along with most LGBT people I know, happen to be a big fan of regular bathing. Trust me: I’ve bathed over 9,700 times in my 26 years and it hasn’t washed off — I’m still gay.
Mr. Cain thinking he’s entitled to an opinion on a matter of scientific fact is quaint at best. When one considers that he’s a member of an oppressed minority group turning around and contributing to the oppression of another minority group, Mr. Cain’s bigotry seems tragic, hypocritical, and profoundly sad. When one remembers that Herman Cain is seeking the office of the Presidency of the United States, it becomes a cause for alarm. His dangerously unscientific views about LGBT people render him unfit for that office.
This screed from supposed “ex-gay” and anti-gay crusader D.L. Foster, about the suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer, has to be seen to be believed. It’s been amazing to watch, over the past year, as the suicides of gay teens have reached a certain level of prominence in the media, as members of the Religious Right like Linda Harvey have gleefully pissed on the graves of those we have lost. But I think Foster has outdone Harvey in the hate department, which is quite a feat. Is the hate of the Religious Right, which feeds the casual bigotry of those who bully gay kids into severe depression and, tragically, sometimes suicide, to blame here? No, Foster, hateful twit that he is, blames Dan Savage and Lady Gaga:
Homosexual activists Dan Savage and Lady Gaga should be brought up on charges of murder for issuing wholesale false promises and lies to young people confused about their sexuality.
“Lies” like “you can have a happy life” and “don’t let the bullies get you down.” This runs completely counter to D.L.’s message of “I’m filled with self-loathing to such a degree that I have become an abuser, and you can too!”
Just this past week, Savage’s so-called “it gets better campaign” proved just how ineffective it is when a fourteen year old boy in Buffalo, New York committed suicide after embracing its dead message. ABC News reported that Buffalo police are considering charges.
Yes, against the bullies. Because, unless you are mindblowingly stupid, you understand that the tragedy of Jamey’s death came despite the fact that there are now messages getting out there to tell gay kids that they’re going to be okay. The bullying was still just sadly too much.
Responding to Jamey’s “It Gets Better” video, D.L. says this:
If homosexual activists are looking for a culprit and someone to lay the blame on, they need look no further than what a dollar store mirror will show them. Plying confused children with false hope is just like giving a drunk kid car keys and telling him to drive home safely.
This is why anytime a rube from the Religious Right claims to want “dialogue” with LGBT people, they should be summarily laughed at and scorned. These people do not exist in the reality-based community. They actually believe their ridiculous, disproven dogma, which says that gay kids hate themselves “because of their sin,” which is, again, batshit stupid, as there are many, many, many gay teens who have never dealt with self-hatred or depression, and it’s because they have supportive families and communities. You take away the religion-based bigotry, and you have healthy kids, whether gay or straight. Right from the closet case’s mouth:
The tragic irony of the “it gets better” lie is that it ignores the only true hope for those who are personally embattled with sexuality and gender confusion issues. It (whatever “it” is) never defines what “hope” is, thus its nothing but a carrot stick trick to hurting children. Savage conveniently tosses out the bait only to dissappear then re-emerge with “outrage” when another sexually confused teen succumbs to their inner demons. The real outrage is that America has been suckered into accepting a lie that continues to kill its youth. Of course, it gets Savage and his IGB cohorts lots of media face time and awards and such. For them, the exposure certainly does get better.
Actually, Dan gets letters all the time from kids who are doing much better now because of the “It Gets Better” project. D.L. cannot prove that these kids are “personally embattled” or dealing with “inner demons.” No, that’s likely what D.L. deals with, and it’s because he’s a victim of the same machine that he’s now been empowered into abusing others with. And it is precisely that abuse that leads to dead kids.
In a way, I feel sorry for the Religious Right, because it must be quite a concept to grasp, to find out that everything they’ve ever believed is not only a joke, but also leaves a trail of blood and dead kids’ bodies. It must shake them up. But after I’m done feeling sorry for them for about eight seconds, we’re back to normal, where these people need to realize that if they don’t want to be viewed as monsters, they need to stop being f*cking monsters.
But let’s be clear here. The solution to such turmoil in youth isn’t the usual humanistic “just believe in yourself”, “just love yourself”, “you were born this way” screeds. At best, such is fatalistic window dressing. Telling someone that they cannot change what they hate about themselves is no promise, its a death sentence. Imagine if Christ came and told us that we could not be free from sin?
Yet again: take away the Religious Right dogma, and these kids have a hell of a lot better chance of surviving past 12th grade. Pile on the religious hate and the bodycount will continue to grow. It’s quite simple, because, again, for the slow wingnuts, these kids wouldn’t hate themselves if hateful fundamentalist whack-jobs like D.L. Foster didn’t teach them that they should. The fact that D.L. is a make-believe “ex-gay,” which means he actually knows what it’s like to be different because of your sexuality, and that he still chooses to twist the knife in regards to these kids, is simply a reflection of his own lack of character.
D.L. quotes something from that loon Jew for Jesus Michael Brown and then winds up here:
Savage, Gaga, Swilley, Obama and all the rest that have promised “it gets better” have no power to change anything because they are finite humans with the same limitations and frailties as the kids who believe their false promises.
Contrast the false —and powerless— promises of Savage, Gaga (who’s now whining to SOTUS about the issue) to the promises of new life given to all men who are in covenant with Jesus Christ.
Joshua 23:14 – God says not one of his promises will ever fail you
Jeremiah 29:11 – God says his plan for us is filled with hope
Titus 1:2 – You can rest in his promises, because he cannot lie
Numbers 23:19 – God is not a man that he should lie. If he said it, he will perform it.
Nothing will get better when the only hope for change is rejected. The only hope for this world is Jesus Christ. Not a church, not a program, not a campaign, not the lies of gay activists. Jesus Christ.
D.L.’s true message: his perverted vision of “god” created you wrong, but if you swear fealty to his perverted vision of “god,” you, too, can find a way to repress your true self and write hateful screeds about dead kids on the internet.
Apparently Rick Santorum really thinks so? This is very sad, as Santorum is an embarrassing failure all on his own and would never have a chance to be elected president of this or any country, even if he weren’t a frothy mixture, etc. Anyway, he is whining to and about Google right now:
A Google search for Santorum has generated some inappropriate results since gay columnist Dan Savage organized an online campaign to link graphic sexual terms to the socially conservative senator’s name.
Now, the Republican presidential candidate says he’s convinced Google could do something to remedy the issue, if the company wanted to.
“I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it,” Santorum said. “If you’re a responsible business, you don’t let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country.”
He continued: “To have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can’t handle but I suspect that’s not true.”
Someone needs to gently explain to the Frothy Mix just what exactly Google is and how it works. He doesn’t seem to be aware that Google doesn’t actually control the whole internet. [I mean, it sort of does, but that's another discussion.] Oh look, Google is gently explaining it to him:
A Google spokesperson responded to Santorum by advising that users who want “content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly.”
“Google’s search results are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the web. Users who want content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly,” the spokesperson said. “Once the webmaster takes the page down from the web, it will be removed from Google’s search results through our usual crawling process.”
That Google spokesperson is to be commended for issuing that statement without including the words “you stupid moron.”
Anyway, so that is what the Frothy Mix is whining about today.
