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Filibuster Cartoons
Title: Savage hate from Savage Love (click to view)
Date: August 30, 2011
If you're a big fan of your city's grungy alt-weekly newspaper (this week's headline: "Reinventing organic nudity"), chances are you've heard of Dan Savage. He's an edgy, anything-goes sex columnist who enjoys quite the omnipresence in the urban hipster media scene. Though actually an internationally-syndicated American based out of Seattle, until quite recently I thought he was an exclusive Vancouver guy — a self-serving misconception I'm sure is not at all uncommon in big cities all over the continent, so high is his indie cred.

Anyway, the gist of the Dan Savage worldview is that a great deal of social dysfunction is caused by sexual repression, and therefore the more liberated, open, and honest we all are when it comes to talking about (and doing) sexual stuff, the happier and better-adjusted we'll be as a collective society. As a gay dude himself, he's a particularly strong booster of the idea that taboos against homosexuality are among the greatest evils of our time, and the people who actively promote such taboos among the most wicked. The "It Gets Better" project, where celebrities, both gay and straight alike, record inspirational videos to gay and lesbian teens who may be facing bullying or discrimination, was his brainchild and probably his most laudable and moving accomplishment to date.

But there's a real dark side to the man as well, and it manifests in the almost pathologically vicious way he chooses to hound, belittle, and publicly humiliate those whom he declares to be enemies of his sexual revolution. I'm sure you're already starting to see the irony.

Some time ago, the now-Republican presidential candidate and arch-Catholic Rick Santorum gave an unfortunate interview where he, in his typically awkward and muddled way, made the point that, in his mind, there was no historic precedent for recognizing same-sex marriages any more than there was a basis for recognizing dog-human marriages, or pedophilic ones.

Once the interview was released, Savage sprang into action with a campaign to ruin Santorum. Employing a very gross Google bombing campaign, Savage asked his readers to come up with the most vile alternative definition of "Santorum" they could dream up, then created the website "spreadingsantorum.com" to clog up any future search results for his name. It worked, and due to the endless links of bloggers and Facebookers, Santorum's e-reputation has now been sufficiently corrupted beyond repair. According to this well-titled article in Mother Jones, even leading online reputation consultants consider him basically beyond help at this point.

Now, if you have not read the Santorum interview in full, it may be worthwhile to do so. The man is not particularly eloquent in his words, but it's nevertheless clear that he is defending his particular worldview with logic and reason, and is not merely a raving bigot. He repeatedly stresses that he has "no problem with homosexuality," and in fact, the only reason he brought up the man-on-dog stuff in the first place was to, quote, "not pick on homosexuality." One can certainly disagree with his thesis that privacy rights are unconstitutional, and that all forms of non-missionary consensual sex are a slippery slope to Vatican-style child rape, but it's still an intellectually valid thesis (and despite his strong faith, not even a particularly religious one).

The same thing could be said for the views of Michelle Bachmann's husband, Dr. Marcus Bachmann, a Christian family counsellor who holds a similarly negative opinion on homosexuality. In Bachmann's case, of course, his views are unambiguously religious; it's now been proven that Bachmann's clinic has conducted scientifically dubious "gay fixing" therapies on the basis that homosexuality is out-and-out sinful, rather than merely socially problematic. As punishment for believing this, Savage has recently turned the guns on the doctor with equal force, claiming that Bachmann is clearly a repressed homosexual himself, and has launched an aggressive propaganda campaign to make that assertion the mainstream consensus of the internet. (The evidence backing Savage's claim is that Bachman kinda talks like a homo.)

Now it's obviously, undeniably clear that a lot of young, gay men and women suffer emotionally from growing up in a culture where their sexuality is constantly condemned, or only discussed as a problem to be solved. And it's equally clear that true bigotry exists in this world, and people who are genuinely motivated by pure, vicious, angry ignorance can unleash awful cruelty in all sorts of hideous ways.

But it's also true that an honest, unemotional spectrum of opinion exists on the issue of homosexuality in modern America, rather than some strict either/or, love/hate duality. If you're a conservative homosexual like me, or Jack Donovan, whose fascinating book on conservative homosexuality I plan to review soon, then you know it's entirely possible to be accepting of yourself and your sexual orientation, while simultaneously being aware that the overly sexualized, overly-permissive, non-judgemental society championed by some gay activists isn't necessarily ideal, either. People like Bachmann and Santorum, who probably know very few gay people and don't really understand a lot of what they're worried about, may be wrong, but all evidence suggests their motivations stem from a legitimate place of concern (the Daily Beast article linked to above describes Bachmann's anti-gay therapist as "caring and not particularly dogmatic"), or a genuine religious passion, much as we may personally disagree with it.

More importantly, however, two wrongs don't make a right. If it's wrong to bully young gays and lesbians simply for who they are and what they believe, as Dan Savage rightly holds, then it should be equally wrong to use those same tactics against innocuous critics of homosexuality. The idea that the appropriate response when encountering people with whom you disagree is to harass and belittle them until they recant in a position of weakness and shame is a stance as abhorrent as the luridly well-documented tactics of certain fanatical gay "fixing camps."

Dignity begets dignity. What I hate most about the term "culture war" is its implication that America's major cultural cleavages, on issues such as sexuality, can only be resolved through the rhetorical and political equivalents of weaponized violence, complete with dehumanized enemies and a scorched-earth pursuit of total victory. The more vicious — and in Savage's case, frankly gross, reactionary, and immature — tactics that are employed, the more likely one's opponents are to respond in kind, and the very cycle of ignorance we're supposed to oppose merely becomes ever-more heated and hysterical.

I actually quite like the Santorum interview above, not because of what it contains, but what it represents. Santorum is calmly being asked to justify his worldview in neutral, intellectual language, and the reader can decide for himself if the case is sound or not. We'd all be a lot better if the discussion had just stayed in that phase. There'd certainly be a lot less evidence that gay activists are hateful, disgusting subversives, for one thing.

[DanSC]

Obviously no one told Mr. Savage that there is no Gay Hive Mind, requiring all homosexual men to think alike. If anyone told him, he wouldn't believe it.

[Kjorteo]

I think Santorum's stance perfectly illustrates one of the biggest problems with the struggle for LGBT acceptance, which is that a lot of it seems to be based on a paranoid rejection of any sort of perceived slippery slope argument, even in cases where it might actually be true.

Santorum's position is more or less one based on the complete rejection of the idea that parties consenting to an act in which no outside nonconsenting party is harmed automatically makes it okay. I do believe in the power of consent, so I would absolutely never personally support Santorum for any elected office; his views are almost the exact opposite of mine. However, at least they're consistent and not based on double-standards, which is unfortunately what started happened when Savage got involved and everything got heated and hyperbolic.

Santorum's position: if you agree that consent makes it okay, such as the whole Lawrence v. Texas thing, then you're implying that other abnormal relationship structures which technically have all parties' consent--consenting polygamous relationships, incestuous relationships between consenting adult siblings or something, etc.--should be okay, too, and Santorum strongly rejects this.

Savage's position, and the position of much of the LGBT activists at large: Santorum is a horrible human being for daring to equate homosexuality with polygamy/incest/etc., let's destroy him.

My position: Actually, there is an equivalency in that they're all relationships between non-coerced consenting adults. Santorum is right to compare them, but wrong to oppose them. Legalize the other stuff too.

And because we've been conditioned to the debate being "there is a slippery slope, you heathen" versus "no there isn't, you bigot," here is where the anti-LGBT crowd points at my position and shouts "I knew it!" at how the gay agenda really is step one on the road to complete moral ruin, the pro-LGBT crowd disagrees with me and tries that much harder to distance themselves from everything else just to secure their own specific piece of the acceptance pie, everyone hysterically accuses everyone else of hysteria, and so on.

Honestly, the more I type here, the more I suddenly see parallels between Psudo's stance on marijuana reform, on how he'd be willing to entertain the notion but only in the form of actually reforming the rules themselves, rather than just making pot a specific exception to them. (For example, I consider the biggest obstacle in the gay marriage debate to be the fact that we give legal weight to the religious institution version of marriage, in what I consider to be a clear violation of the Establishment Clause. We could solve the "ruining our sacred institution" and "civil unions = second-class citizenship for gays" arguments at the same time just by making everyone switch to civil unions, but alas.)

[commanderkai]

Thankfully I'm not a fan of my city's grungy, alt-weekly paper, which is immediately recycled once I see it at my apartment's front door.

[Psudo]

I remain a little skeptical that marriage is a religious institution. It's certainly not restricted to any particular religion, and it remains an institution in largely nonreligious cultures like Nordic countries and the Northwestern US. Most American Indian tribes had monogamy traditions very analogous to marriage before Columbus brought organized religion with him from Spain. Perhaps "cultural institution" is a more accurate description.

In my own particular religion, the religion recognizes civil marriage "until death do you part" and has a religious ceremony for continuing marriage in the afterlife. In that respect, civil gay marriage presents a crisis of policy for my religion. Either they have to accept a civil law that defies their precepts (which conflicts with the religion's internal logic, invalidating it), or they have to selectively recognize some civil marriages but not others (which is awkward), or they have to abandon recognition of civil marriage and only recognize the religious version (which invalidates many millions of marriages, including my own, in the eyes of the church).

It's not a problem limited to my specific religion, either. I think Orthodox Judaism refuses to recognize civil marriage, but most religions have given civil government a kind of trust pertaining to the recording and regulation of marriage. If civil government simply stops tracking who is and who is not married, religions and religiously pluralistic societies face a crisis of marital recognition. Every bureaucracy and law and organization that needs to know whether people are married will have to come up with a policy of determining that, which will inevitably lead to great numbers of conflicting definitions and tests. Maybe this is easy for me to say because it's not my rights that are missing, but I don't see how that scenario any better than the status quo.

Be that as it may, there is a need for some consistent set of rules based in a logical and just philosophy of governance. Obviously, the independence of religion from government should be respected and maintained. Obviously, no one should lose rights by coming out as gay. Less clear are the details of what specific rights gays and gay couples are missing out on. I'm sure there's some common ground to be had there; I'm for hospital visitation rights and inheritance for long-term gay couples, for example. What other principles are important?

[Zipperfish]

Well, I think education works better than persecution, so I don' agree with Dan Savage's approach. And his column never seemed particularly geared to sexual freedom to me. It seemed more like pruning stuff that people would read and push the boundaries. Rank hedonism is a lousy philosophy if you ask me.

That said, homosexuals are persecuted in our societies, and comments by the religious right do little to help those who really need help--mainly young teenagers realizing, to their horror, that they are gay. Gays are (note were, are) hunted and sometimes killed, even in a cosmopolitan town like Vancouver, where I'm from. People who speak out against homosexuality need to be aware of that.

In my book, sixty years ago, Sanctorum would be making arguments against mixed-race marriages. There were some pretty reasonable-soding arguments at the time, I'm sure.

I actually do have a problem with the gay community--specifically the gay male community, and it's the culture of hedonism. I'm not religious, but I am spiritual, and I find hedonism shallow and ultimately damaging to the body, mind and soul.

[bootlegga]

I have to admit the one or two times I've read Savage's column, it was good for a laugh, although not enough to make me a regular reader.

Labelling Santorum's interview as 'unfortunate' is wrong on so many levels. As a straight male, I was very offended the first time I read that years ago. Santorum has every right to his opinion, but the interview is downright offensive - Santorum labels homosexuals as "deviants" and compares homosexuality with bestality. He says, "I don't have a problem with homosexuals, just homosexual acts".

Um, yeah, Mr. Santorum, you obviously do have a problem with homosexuals.

Savage's tactics might be harsh, but then again, IMHO, so was Santorum's interview. Savage's mindset was to fight fire with fire - and it worked (probably much better than Savage ever dreamed it would).

While I agree with the comment about bullying, LGBT get bullied far more and far worse than Dan Savage has ever done to Bachman or Santorum. Of course, two wrongs don't make a right, but from my POV, it is less bullying and more Savage defending LGBT from people who would compare it to bestality that anything else.

[DanSC]

bootlegga wrote:

from my POV, it is less bullying and more Savage defending LGBT from people who would compare it to bestality that anything else.

Must be the American definition of defense.

[DanSC]

JJ mentions in the comic's comments that following Mayor Nutter suggesting homosexuality was a choice, Mr. Savage asked the Mayor to perform fellatio on him.

http://www.straight.com/article-394550/ ... k-his-dick

I know there are no women on the internet, but just imagine Mr. Savage had said this to a woman.

[Psudo]

Zipperfish wrote:

sixty years ago, Sanctorum would be making arguments against mixed-race marriages. There were some pretty reasonable-soding arguments at the time, I'm sure.

That sounds like advocacy that reasonable arguments should be ignored if they go against the preconceived conclusion. Knowing you, I'm sure it's not. But sometimes arguments sound reasonable because they are, even when they're on the wrong side of an issue. That doesn't mean they constitute a complete and conclusive proof, but it certainly means they should be known and depended on.

[andyt]

I dunno, Bush was well meaning, just made a little oopsie, Santorum doesn't really hate gays - I wonder Psudo if these guy were on the left if you'd be coming out with this sort of stuff? Got a can of whitewash left over from your days at Wallmart?

[DanSC]

andyt wrote:

I dunno, Bush was well meaning, just made a little oopsie, Santorum doesn't really hate gays - I wonder Psudo if these guy were on the left if you'd be coming out with this sort of stuff? Got a can of whitewash left over from your days at Wallmart?

So is there a Conservative Hive Mind, the way Mr. Savage seems to think there is a Gay Hive Mind?

[andyt]

I don't know. But this drip drip drip of "these guys weren't/aren't really so bad" is freaking me out. Gay bashing and Iraq 2 described as unfortunate - wow. I guess this is the Bart lite version. But at least when he gets to twisting it's funny.

[DanSC]

andyt wrote:

I don't know. But this drip drip drip of "these guys weren't/aren't really so bad" is freaking me out.

What should be freaking you out is Mr. Savage using arguments about as intellectual as someone saying, "That's so gay!" In fact, in the case of Dr. Bachmann, that's exactly the argument Mr. Savage made. In simpler terms.

Mr. Bachmann: I think homosexuality is a choice than can be corrected.

What Savage should have said: Actually, all evidence points to the contrary. You might as well try to choose how you taste certain foods.

What Savage actually said: Your so gay Bachmann! Why don't you just admit it you fairy!

[andyt]

Well, you have to cut Savage some slack. He's gay - you know how hystrionic they all are.

I think we're getting into John Stewart land here - remember the spanking he gave the Crossfire guys? Savage is an entertainer. If you take him too seriously, fool on you. I've been reading this sort of stuff in the Georgia Straight since I was 14. At the time it was Dr HIPocrates. A woman wrote in saying that when she had sex with her German shepherd, her back got all scratched up from his claws. Hip's advice - wear a shirt. My eyes nearly popped out of my head, but even at 14 I knew to take this stuff with a grain of salt.