Dan Savage

Daniel Keenan Savage
Born	October 7, 1964 (1964-10-07) (age 45) Chicago, Illinois
Other names	Keenan Hollahan
Education	B.A., Theater, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign[1]
Occupation	Author, media pundit, journalist, newspaper editor and sex advice columnist

Daniel Keenan Savage (born October 7, 1964) is an American author, media pundit, journalist and newspaper editor.^[2][3] Savage is known for penning the internationally syndicated relationship and sex advice column Savage Love. Its tone is frank in its discussion of sexuality, often humorous, and hostile to social conservatives, as in the Santorum controversy. Savage, who is openly gay, has often been the subject of controversy regarding some of his opinions that pointedly clash with both those of traditional conservatives and those put forth by what Savage has been known to call the "gay establishment". He has also worked as a theater director, both under his real name and under the name Keenan Hollahan, using his middle name and his grandmother's maiden name.^[4]

Early life and college

Dan Savage was born to William and Judy Savage in Chicago, Illinois.^[5] He is of Irish ancestry.^[6] The third of four children,^[5] Savage was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended Quigley Preparatory Seminary North, which he has described as "a Catholic high school in Chicago for boys thinking of becoming priests."^[7] Though Savage has stated that he is now "a wishy-washy agnostic" and an atheist,^[8] he has said that he still considers himself "culturally Catholic."^[7][9]

Savage attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied theater and history.^[5] As a theater director, Savage (working under the name "Keenan Hollahan") was a founder of Seattle's Greek Active Theater.^[9] Much of the group's work has been queer recontextualizations of classic works, such as a tragicomic Macbeth with both the title character and Lady Macbeth played by performers of the opposite sex. In March 2001, he directed his own Egguus at Consolidated Works, a parody of Peter Shaffer's 1973 play Equus which exchanged a fixation on horses for a fixation on chickens. Savage has not directed, produced, or performed in any productions since a 2003 production of "Letters from the Earth", also at Consolidated Works, his trimmed version of Mark Twain's "The Diary of Adam and Eve", which received scathing reviews, including one from his own paper, "My Boss's Show Stinks".^[10]

Savage Love

In 1991, Savage was living in Madison, Wisconsin, and working as a manager at a local video store that specialized in independent film titles.^[5] There, Savage befriended Tim Keck, co-founder of The Onion, who announced that he was moving to Seattle to help start an alternative weekly newspaper titled The Stranger.^[5] Savage "made the offhand comment that forever altered [his] life: 'Make sure your paper has an advice column—everybody claims to hate 'em, but everybody seems to read 'em'."^[11] Savage typed up a sample column, and to Savage's surprise Keck offered him the job.^[12][13]

Savage stated in a February 2006 interview in The Onion's A.V. Club (which publishes his column) that he began the column with the express purpose of providing mocking advice to heterosexuals.

Savage wanted to call the column "Hey Faggot!" His editors at the time refused his choice of column name, but for the first several years of the column, he attached "Hey Faggot!" at the beginning of each printed letter as a salutation. According to Savage:

In his February 25, 1999 column, Savage announced that he was retiring the phrase: "Lo many columns later, it feels strange to begin every column with a joke about a debate that ended years ago."^[14]

He has written in a number of columns about "straight rights" concerns, such as the HPV vaccine and the morning-after pill, stating in his November 9, 2005, column that "[t]he right-wingers and the fundies and the sex-phobes don't just have it in for the queers. They're coming for your asses too."

Radio and journalism

Dan Savage speaking at Illinois Wesleyan University, 2007

In addition to maintaining his weekly column and authoring four books, Savage has been involved in several other projects.

From at least September 1994 until 1997, he had a weekly three-hour call-in show called Savage Love Live on Seattle's KCMU (now KEXP). From 1998 to 2000, he ran the biweekly advice column Dear Dan on the news website abcnews.com.

He is now the editorial director of the weekly Seattle newspaper The Stranger, a promotion from his former position as The Stranger's editor-in-chief.^[15] Savage is currently a contributor to This American Life, an hour-long radio show on Chicago's WBEZ syndicated by PRI, as well as a frequent contributor to Out magazine and a "Real Time Real Reporter" on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher.

Podcast

The Savage Lovecast is a weekly audio podcast based on Savage's column Savage Love, available via iTunes and at the Stranger's website for free download. It features Savage doing a call-in version of his sex advice column.

Opinions and points of view

Political advocacy

Dan Savage at the 5th Avenue High School Musical Theatre Awards, 2006

Savage has written about his interest in political matters. His political leanings are primarily leftist or liberal, with pronounced contrarian and libertarian streaks.^[16] For example, he wrote that in 2000, suffering from the flu while on an assignment for salon.com to cover the Iowa caucuses,^[17] he was so angered by televised remarks in opposition to same-sex marriage by conservative Republican presidential hopeful Gary Bauer that he abandoned his original plan "to follow one of the loopy conservative Christian candidates around — Bauer or Alan Keyes — and write something insightful and humanizing about him, his campaign, and his supporters."^[18] Instead, he volunteered for the Bauer campaign with the intent to infect the candidate with his flu. He wrote that he licked doorknobs and other objects in the campaign office, and handed Bauer a saliva-coated pen, hoping to pass the virus on to Bauer and his supporters (though he later said that much of the article had been fictitious). He also registered and participated in the caucus, which was illegal, as Savage was not an Iowa resident. He was charged and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of fraudulent voting in a caucus, and was sentenced to a year's probation, 50 hours of community service, and a $750 fine.^{[19][20][21][22]}

Savage frequently mentions political issues in his column, particularly issues that affect family planning, birth control, and sexuality. He often encourages readers to get involved and/or voices a positive or negative opinion about a politician or public official. After Rick Santorum, then a United States senator from Pennsylvania, made comments to a reporter comparing homosexual sex to bestiality and incest, Savage assailed Santorum in his column. Later, he sponsored a contest that led to the term santorum being used to refer to "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes a byproduct of anal sex".^[23] Savage continued the tradition in 2009 by having his readers vote to define saddlebacking as "the phenomenon of Christian teens engaging in unprotected anal sex in order to preserve their virginities", ^[24] as a protest against the vocal support given to California Proposition 8 by Rick Warren (pastor of Saddleback Church), and President Obama's invitation to Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration.

Savage strongly supported the war in Iraq in the pages of The Stranger in October 2002.^[25] By the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003, however, he had somewhat softened his argument.^[26]

Savage has also been a vocal opponent of state legislation proscribing the sale of sex toys. After an exposé by Kandiss Crone from WLBT (Jackson, Mississippi) precipitated the arrest and fining of an adult video store owner, Savage suggested that readers send any sex toys that they needed to dispose of to Crone.^[27][28]

Personal opinions

• Savage initially supported the Iraq war and advocated military action against other Middle Eastern states, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, saying, "Islamo-fascism is a regional problem, like European fascism – and the Middle East [has] to be remade just as Europe was remade." One week before the war began, Savage spoke against it, citing the inability of President George W. Bush to form a convincing case and sway the UN and NATO allies.^[26] He now deems the situation "hopeless" and advocates an immediate troop withdrawal.^[29]
• He describes his view toward family as "conservative", and his husband, Terry Miller, is a "stay-at-home dad" for the couple's adopted son. He has, however, expressed skepticism of "simplistic" views of monogamy.^[30]
• He has often clashed with other prominent figures in Seattle's gay community. For example, he has often expressed contempt for the editorial calibre of the Seattle Gay News.^{[citation needed]}
• In response to a letter asking "Is the AIDS crisis over?" Savage, in his October 22, 1997 column, answered simply, "Yes." Several weeks of columns were devoted in whole or in part to discussion of the issue.^[31][32]
• In an interview with the Daily Pennsylvanian, Savage stated that then-Green Party Senate candidate Carl Romanelli, whom Savage claimed was partially funded by state Republicans for a spoiler effect against Democrat Bob Casey, "should be dragged behind a pickup truck until there's nothing left but the rope." In the same interview, he stated, "Mr. Romanelli should go fuck himself."^[33] For this comment, Savage wrote right after the interview that "I regret using that truck metaphor, and didn't mean it literally, and it was in poor taste, and I regret it."^[34]
• He opposes the tactics of the War on Drugs, and opposes the prohibition of certain controlled substances.^[35]

Views on outing

Savage stated in a column that he favors outing in some cases, specifically mentioning anti-gay activist Tyler Whitney. However, in the same column he noted that "I recently talked someone out of outing a public figure. A Savage Love reader was contemplating outing an innocuous celebrity back in April. I advised him against it because, as I wrote to him privately, outing is brutal and it should be reserved for brutes."^[36] See The Frank Rule.

Local issues

Savage's editorship of The Stranger has established him as a voice in local Seattle politics. His most high-profile commentary has been as an outspoken critic of the Teen Dance Ordinance and other crackdowns on all-ages events.

Savage argues that closing down supervised all-ages dance venues drives teens to boredom and reckless activities: "Places like Ground Zero and the Kirkland Teen Center are invaluable from a law enforcement point of view. They keep kids out of, say, 7-Eleven parking lots or the homes of friends whose parents are away."^[37]

Ann Landers

On December 3, 2002, Savage announced in an article that he had purchased columnist Ann Landers's desk; she died on June 22 of that year.^[38] Savage has facetiously referred to Landers as his "college roommate"^[39] and said "I like to think of myself as a gay Ann Landers."^[40]

Family and marriage

Savage's home state of Washington allows LGBT people to adopt, but does not legally recognize same-sex marriage. In March 2004, Savage wrote about an action that he took to highlight what he saw as being indicative of same-sex couples' lack of legal right to marry. After his co-worker Amy Jenniges was denied a license to marry her girlfriend Sonia, Jenniges and Savage obtained a license to marry one another. He wrote at the time, "We emphasized to the clerk and her manager that Amy and I don't live together, we don't love each other, we don't plan to have kids together, and we're going to go on living and sleeping with our same-sex partners after we get married. So could we still get a marriage license?" According to Savage, the license-department manager replied, "Sure. If you've got $54, you can have a marriage license."^[41]

Savage and his husband (since 1994) Terry have one adopted son, and were married in Vancouver in 2005.^[41][42]

Publications

• Savage Love: Straight Answers from America's Most Popular Sex Columnist (October 1998) (ISBN 0-452-27815-5), a collection of letters from his column.
• The Kid (1999) (ISBN 0-525-94525-3), relating how he and his boyfriend adopted a baby boy through open adoption. (June 8, 2000)
  • On May 15, 2009, The New York Times reported that off-Broadway theater company The New Group would stage a musical version of The Kid in 2009.^[43]
• Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America (2002) (ISBN 0-452-28416-3), which describes his exploration of the seven deadly sins (September 1, 2003). The title is a satiric reference to Robert Bork's book Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, which was in turn a satiric reference to Joan Didion's 1968 book Slouching Towards Bethlehem. That title was taken from a line of William Butler Yeats' poem The Second Coming.
• The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family (2005) (ISBN 0-525-94907-0), a memoir of his life, relationship and family and a commentary on the gay marriage debate. (September 27, 2005)
• Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me (February 2008) (ISBN 0-446-58069-4), edited by Ben Karlin, Dan contributes information acquired about women along with such people as Stephen Colbert, Andy Richter, and Will Forte.

References

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Dan Savage

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Dan Savage

• Savage Love - Savage's weekly sex advice column
  • Dan Savage archives on the site of The Stranger
  • Dan Savage's blog on the site of The Stranger
• Savage's podcasts
• Dan Savage announces campaign for Mayor on MyNorthwest.com
• Dan Savage at the Internet Movie Database
• Spreading Santorum, Savage's "santorum" campaign website
• Saddlebacking.com, Savage's "saddlebacking" website
• Audio interview on The Sound of Young America: MP3 Link
• College Crier Interview of Dan Savage