Lauerman: There's still a lot to be concerned about. But do you get giddy with the progress you're seeing?
Dan Savage: [Laughs.] Yeah, I actually am! You know, we're winning.
Anyone who wants evidence that we haven't won yet just needs to look at the Republican field. You know, we live in a two-party system, and for one party, the only thing they can seem to agree on is hating gay people. They hate us like they hate evolution. Unfortunately, they just can't wish us away, any more than they could wish evolution away. It's not a done deal and it's not sewn up. But they're now fighting a rear-guard action, while we're advancing on all fronts.
The heartening thing, even if we are cursed with a President Santorum, which is not going to happen, or President Perry or Bachmann, is what we've seen over the past 20 years, under Democrats, there's been some progress. There's been great progress since the Democrats got the wake-up call in November of last year, on gay issues, legislatively. But there's not a lot of regress under Republicans. They seem to shrug and live with it, with gay progress, once it's achieved.
[. . .]
So how do I feel about the Obama administration? I'm really very pleased with what's been delivered. I am not an idiot, and I'm not a Pollyanna sort of kumbaya type. I don't doubt we wouldn't have seen these things, that these things would not have been delivered, if we didn't make it clear there would be a price to pay if they weren't. Obama "isn't there yet" on same-sex marriage -- if you believe him. And, frankly, I don't. I don't think somebody who was for same-sex marriage in '96 is against it in 2011. And I agree with Tracy Baim, the editor of Windy City Times, who did the interviews with Obama back in the '90s when he was running for state Senate in Illinois, that we're not going to listen to what he says anymore, because it's too aggravating. We're going to watch what he does. And he's doing the right stuff. (interview with Dan Savage, Kerry Lauerman, “The evolution of Dan Savage, Salon, 16 August 2011)
Losing the language for complaint
I hope true progressives out there are taking note as to what is currently happening. When (ostensibly, but certainly within the current reigning paradigm) absolutely righteous men like Dan Savage more and more bond with end-of-growth, depression/mass cruelty/regression-ensuring Obama, and begin to turn their venom as much against the unpersuaded, taken-aback left as the Santorums, they'll be left stumped for a lexicon for successful protest for their greatest composed efforts gleamingly undeniably evily back at them.
You'll be left wanting to argue against everything you've suely ever hoped for, and for it will be vulnerable in a hundred different ways. You'll be tempted just to disengage with thought altogether, else just resigning yourself to concluding you're the biggest suckers who've ever lived, who surely deserved what they got. Some of those left now without any sustainable defense, will wish you could have been a bit smarter.
@nortonshitty
A slight mistake Mr Shitty? Read it here:
Dan Savage--Oct. 2002-"Say Yes to War on Iraq"
"No to War! No to Oppression!"
The above anti-war message was delivered to me via a sad-looking pink poster. I pulled the poster off a light pole and hung it in my office over my desk. I look at the poster every day when I sit down to work, and every day I wonder how and when the American left lost its moral compass.
You see, lefties, there are times when saying "no" to war means saying "yes" to oppression. Don't believe me? Go ask a Czech or a European Jew about the British and French saying "no" to war with Germany in 1938. War may be bad for children and other living things, but there are times when peace is worse for children and other living things, and this is one of those times. Saying no to war in Iraq means saying yes to the continued oppression of the Iraqi people. It amazes me when I hear lefties argue that we should assassinate Saddam in order to avoid war. If Saddam is assassinated, he will be replaced by another Baathist dictator--and what then for the people of Iraq? More "peace"--i.e., more oppression, more executions, more gassings, more terror, more fear.
While the American left is content to see an Iraqi dictator terrorizing the Iraqi people, the Bushies in D.C. are not. "We do not intend to put American lives at risk to replace one dictator with another," Dick Cheney recently told reporters. For those of you who were too busy making papier-mâché puppets of George W. Bush last week to read the papers, you may have missed this page-one statement in last Friday's New York Times: "The White House is developing a detailed plan, modeled on the postwar occupation of Japan, to install an American-led military government in Iraq if the United States topples Saddam Hussein."
These developments--a Republican administration recognizing that support for dictators in Third World countries is a losing proposition; a commitment to post-WWII-style nation-building in Iraq--are terrific news for people who care about human rights, freedom, and democracy. They also represent an enormous moral victory for the American left, which has long argued that our support for "friendly" dictators around the world was immoral. (Saddam used to be one of those "friendly" dictators.) After 9/11, the left argued that our support for brutal dictatorships in the Middle East helped create anti-American hatred. Apparently the Bush administration now agrees--so why isn't the American left claiming this victory?
Because claiming this victory means backing this war, and the American left refuses to back this or any war--which makes the left completely irrelevant in any conversation about the advisability or necessity of a particular war. (Pacifism is faith, not politics.) What's worse, the left argues that our past support for regimes like Saddam's prevents us from doing anything about Saddam now. We supported (and in some cases installed) tyrants, who in turn created despair, which in turn created terrorists, who came over here and blew shit up... so now what do we do? According to the left, we do nothing. It's all our fault, so we're just going to have to sit back and wait for New York City or D.C. or a big port city (like, say, Seattle or Portland) to disappear.
It seems to me that if supporting tyrants creates terrorists, withdrawing our support from those very same tyrants might help to "uncreate" terrorists. Removing the tyrants from power seems an even better way to uncreate terrorists.
But wait! Taking out Saddam means dropping bombs, and dropping bombs only creates more terrorists!
That's the lefty argument du jour, and a lot of squish-brains are falling for it, but it's not an argument that the historical record supports. The United States dropped a hell of a lot of bombs on Serbia, Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, Germany, Japan, and Italy. If dropping bombs creates terrorists, where are all the German terrorists? Or the Italian terrorists? Or the Vietnamese terrorists?
But wait! Iraq isn't in cahoots with al Qaeda, so why attack Iraq in the war on terrorism?
Because we're not just at war with al Qaeda, stupid. We're at war with a large and growing Islamo-fascist movement that draws its troops and funds from all over the Islamic world. Islamo-fascism is a regional problem, not just an al Qaeda problem or an Afghanistan problem. To stop Islamo-fascism, we're going to have to roll back all of the tyrannous and dictatorial regimes in the Middle East while simultaneously waging war against a militant, deadly religious ideology. To be completely honest, I would actually prefer that the United States go to war against the ridiculous royal family in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have been using American money to export their intolerant and deadly strain of Islam all over the world (the kind of Islam that inspires people to blow up discos in Bali), and getting rid of the Saudi royal family and their fascist clerics makes more sense than getting rid of Saddam. But the Saudis are our "allies," so perhaps we can pressure them to reform, as Josh Feit suggests.
In the meantime, invading and rebuilding Iraq will not only free the Iraqi people, it will also make the Saudis aware of the consequences they face if they continue to oppress their own people while exporting terrorism and terrorists. The War on Iraq will make it clear to our friends and enemies in the Middle East (and elsewhere) that we mean business: Free your people, reform your societies, liberalize, and democratize... or we're going to come over there, remove you from power, free your people, and reform your societies for ourselves.
Post-9/11, post-Bali, what other choice do we have? (Ccommentator)
Ccommentator
I think you'll find a lot of gay men are unconsciously drawn to support efforts -- like Bush's wars or Obama's collective sacrifice -- that ends up looking at the finish to have been mostly about purposely destroying the lives of multiple innocents. Being gay is a defense mechanism against the overwhelming mother, one of a number possible. Children of such insufficiently loved mothers understand that they are bad if they do not devote themselves entirely to them -- an "education" that later in life makes them susceptible to "gay hags," women who blithely readily presume upon them and dehumanize them as property. Since life cannot but be about some growth and "selfish" acquisition, as means to safeguard themselves from annihilative punishmen, unconscious self-protective alters within them will drive them to find some guilt-free way to punish other innocent children for their own neediness. At the finish, after using mostly-impossible-to-argue-against saints like Dan Savage to destroy progressives who would kill this advancing child-life destroying/grossly inhibiting depression if they could, Obama can probably expect people like Dan to masochistically submit to sacrifice expectations themselves.
@Patrick McEtc-Etc
"Being gay is a defense mechanism against the overwhelming mother -- one of a number possible."
And it is a well-established fact of geography that if one sails too far out in the ocean, one will fall off the edge of the Earth.
It is also a proven medical fact that rhinoceros horns and tiger penises are wonderful cures for impotence. (robwriter)
robwriter
Psychoanalysis pretty much died in the '70s, and it's a well-established fact that whatever happened afterwards was so much better for mankind.
Link: The evolution of Dan Savage (Salon)
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