by Dan Savage
LABARBERA: God help us!
KIRKWOOD: So it opens up with Dan Savage introducing him to his partner, Terry. He said, “This is my husband, Terry. This is my son…” because they have an adopted son. And it looks pretty much like, you know, Leave It to Beaver, but the really, really sinister way…. It came out normalizing Dan Savage!
Epilogue
Four months after Brian Brown came to dinner, I was standing on the steps of Seattle’s city hall hoping that someone I’d met in a Seattle park a decade earlier was alive to see this day.
Kerry Park is one of Seattle’s smaller parks. It perches on the south slope of Queen Anne Hill, just northwest of downtown, and boasts sweeping views—parks can be such braggarts—of the Space Needle, Elliott Bay, Mount Rainier, and downtown Seattle. (Frasier Crane’s condo would have been located just behind Kerry Park, if Frasier Crane’s condo had existed in Seattle and not on a soundstage in Los Angeles.) Locals and tourists crowd the park at all hours, day and night, all year long, to admire the view. (Or to take pictures of the view, which they upload to Instagram, so that they—the people taking the photographs—can be admired by their friends.)
I was in Kerry Park on a clear winter day, years ago, in the pre-Instagram era, when a limo pulled up. A wedding party spilled out. The photographer positioned the bride and the groom on the grass near the edge of the park. The newlyweds posed for a wedding portrait with the city and Space Needle behind them. As the bride and groom stood holding each other, with the photographer snapping away, the small crowd in the park began to applaud. Everyone was beaming. People shouted, “Congratulations!” as the newlywed couple climbed back into their limo.
I was standing on the sidewalk, at the edge of the park, near a couple of guys that I knew.
Well, I didn’t know them. I didn’t know them personally. (And, no, I didn’t know them biblically.) But I knew them and they knew me. They were a couple of late-middle-aged gay men, a decade or two older than I was at the time, out for a walk with their dogs. I caught the eye of one of the guys while we were clapping for the straight couple getting in the limo. He shook his head, smiled wanly, and shrugged.
“We’re always happy for them,” he said. “Would it kill them to be happy for us?”
Terry and I got married at Seattle’s city hall on December 9, 2012, the first day that same-sex marriage was legal in Washington State. We had married in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2005, on our tenth anniversary. Our Canadian marriage was legally recognized by the state of Washington on December 6, the first day same-sex couples could apply for marriage licenses, so our city hall wedding was more of a renewal of vows. But we had fought long and hard for the right to marry in the state in which we lived, and we wanted that piece of paper. We slipped off our wedding rings—a pair of silver rings with skulls on them that D.J. picked out when he was six years old (he wanted us to remember that it’s “until death do you part” every time we looked at our left hands)—a moment before our ceremony, quickly exchanged them, and then put them back on each other’s fingers.
When Brian Brown came to dinner, Terry and I weren’t legally married in Washington State. We are now, thanks to the voters here. (I’m proud to say that same-sex marriage passed by a wider margin in Washington than in the other two states that legalized same-sex marriage on Election Day of 2012.) Terry and I have gained something—the rights and protections of marriage that the state of Washington controls (I get to decide where Terry is buried if he dies before me); the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) still deprives us of the rights and protections of marriage controlled by the federal government (Terry will not be able to collect my Social Security benefits if I die before him)—but Brian Brown and his wife lost nothing. Something was given to us but nothing was taken from them.
One hundred and forty-four other couples married at Seattle city hall on that rainy Sunday in early December. Five pop-up wedding chapels had been erected in the lobby of the building, and everywhere you looked you saw couples that had been together five, ten, twenty, even forty years exchanging vows in front of family members and friends. It was impossible to be at city hall that day and not be moved.
But for me the most moving moment came after our ceremony. A huge crowd had gathered on the steps outside city hall. All day long a brass band at the bottom of the steps played wedding marches. The names of each newly married couple were announced to the crowd as they exited the building. Each time the crowd burst into applause and cheers, throwing rice and flower petals. People shouted, “Congratulations!”
And almost all of the well-wishers gathered outside city hall on that glorious gray Sunday were straight people.
As Terry and I walked down the steps—moments after we were married by a straight judge, our marriage officially witnessed by two straight men we both admire (my brother Billy, who was the first person I came out to, and Seattle’s mayor, Mike McGinn)—I thought of those guys in Kerry Park. On the steps of city hall, Terry’s hand in mine, I quietly hoped that those guys were still around and that they were still together.
I hope they were one of the couples that married at city hall on December 9. I hope they got to walk down those steps. I hope they had lived long enough to see a crowd of straight people cheering for them. I hope they got to see it. They were happy for us.
Not all of them, of course, certainly not the Brian Browns and Rick Santorums and Maggie Gallaghers and Peter LaBarberas. But a growing majority of straight people are happy for us, just as we’ve always been happy for them. We felt it on election night, November 6, 2012, when marriage equality won in Washington, Maine, and Maryland, and we saw it—we saw it with our own eyes—on the steps outside of Seattle’s city hall on Sunday, December 9, 2012.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my superhumanly patient and always supportive literary agent, Elizabeth Wales, as well as my talented, organized, and insightful editor, and occasional schedule dominatrix, Ingrid Emerick, without whom this book would have been a lot later and a lot longer. I’d like to thank the smart and creative folks at Dutton, especially Brian Tart, Jessica Horvath, and Amanda Walker. I am deeply indebted to Ezra Klein and Mark Oppenheimer and Eli Sanders and John Corvino, all of who took the time to read certain chapters of this book and offer suggestions. I’d also like to thank Evan Wolfson, Kate Kendell, Alice Dreger, Rob Tisinai, Joe Jervis, John Aravosis, E. J. Graff, Jeremy Hooper, and Dominic Holden for their help. Thanks also to all of my bosses at The Stranger—Tim Keck, Nancy Hartunian, Christopher Frizzelle, Bethany Clement, Ira Glass, Lisa Pollak, Julie Snyder, and Nancy Updike—for giving me the time and space to work on this project.
I’m very grateful to my brother, Bill Savage, for giving the manuscript such a careful read and offering such invaluable comments. As a writer, it’s a total bonus to have a brother who is a professor of English at Northwestern University, and even better to have said brother with a top-notch copy editor for a girlfriend. So thank you, Kelly, for putting our personal differences aside long enough to catch some potentially embarrassing mistakes. I promise to be nicer to you in the future.
Many thanks to Brian Pines, Seth Levy, Stephanie Laffin, and Brett Peters for their support on this and every other project I work on. I’d like to thank Bethany Davis and Dave Valencia for helping to compile the excellent endnotes, a job I dreaded and in the end didn’t have to do myself. A huge thanks to Seattle-based photographer and social-media innovator Larae Lobdell for allowing me to use the photograph that appears on the cover of the book. I’d like to thank the baristas at the Fourth and Union Starbucks in downtown Seattle, where I wrote massive chunks of this book, as well as the bartenders at Smith and Liberty. I’d like to thank Pope Benedict XVI for quitting, but I wished he’d done it sooner. I trust that my readers were nimble enough to read “retired pope” whenever “current pope” appeared in the text.
And last but certainly not least, many thanks and much love to my son, D.J., and my husband, Terry. You guys not only p
ut up with the sleep-deprived, stressed-out jerk I become when I’m writing a book, but you graciously allow me to write about you. Here’s hoping you’re never in a position to return the favor.
Finally, I’d like to thank the person I forgot to thank. You were the best.
Notes
1. At a Loss
9 Catholics have long realized that their own grasp of certain things, especially sex, has a validity that is lost on the celibate male hierarchy: Garry Wills, “Contraception’s Con Men,” The New York Review of Books, February 15, 2012, http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/feb/15/contraception-con-men/. Copyright © 2012 by Garry Wills, used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.
13 Ninety-eight percent of Catholic women use birth control: Rachel K. Jones and Joerg Dreweke, Countering Conventional Wisdom: New Evidence on Religion and Contraceptive Use (New York: Guttmacher Institute, 2011), http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/Religion-and-Contraceptive-Use.pdf.
13 Ninety-three percent of Catholics support the use of condoms to prevent disease and HIV transmission: Humphrey Taylor, The Harris Poll no. 78, 2005, http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/Harris-Interactive-Poll-Research-New-Finds-Different-Religious-Groups-H-2005-10.pdf.
13 Seventy percent of American Catholics think abortion should be legal: Catholics for Choice, “Catholic Voters’ Presidential Preference, Issue Priorities, and Opinion of Certain Church Policies,” survey, Belden Russonello Strategists, 2012, http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/news/pr/2012/documents/CFC-BRS_2012_Election_Study.pdf.
13 Sixty-seven percent of Catholics believe premarital sex is morally acceptable: David Morris, “U.S. Catholics Admire, Disagree with Pope,” ABC News, October 15, 2012, http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=129364&page=1.
13 Masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action: Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993), 2352.
14 The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose: Ibid.
14 The natural purpose of sex is procreation: Garry Wills, “Contraception’s Con Men,” The New York Review of Books, February 15, 2012, http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/feb/15/contraception-con-men/. Copyright © 2012 by Garry Wills, used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.
15 For Homo sapiens, sex is primarily about establishing and maintaining relationships: Christopher Ryan, “What Rick Santorum Doesn’t Know About Sex,” Psychology Today, January 6, 2012, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-dawn/201201/what-rick-santorum-doesn-t-know-about-sex.
15 The vast majority of species have sex only to reproduce—a function reflected in a very low ratio of sex-acts-to-births: Ibid.
2. It’s Never Okay to Cheat (Except When It Is)
27 A recent CNN story offering tips on how to save a “mediocre marriage” suggested divorce: Pamela Haag, “Options for Your Mediocre Marriage,” CNN Living, CNN, June 2, 2011, http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/06/02/marriage.with.issues/index.html?iref=allsearch.
30 According to anthropologists, only 1 in 6 societies enforces monogamy as a rule: Daniel Engber, “Are Humans Monogamous or Polygamous: Archaeologists, Anthropologists, and Biologists Agree: It’s Complicated,” Health & Science, Slate, October 9, 2012, http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolution/2012/10/are_humans_monogamous_or_polygamous_the_evolution_of_human_mating_strategies_.html.
33 Adultery has been documented in every human culture studied: Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships (New York: Harper, 2010).
33 Defenders of “traditional marriage,” circa 1750, not 1950, objected to anyone marrying for something so unstable as a feeling: Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage (New York: Viking, 2005).
35 And the pressure to perfectly execute monogamy over the life of a marriage: Meg Barker, Rewriting the Rules: An Integrative Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships (Oxford: Routledge, 2012).
38 On our life together I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness: Amelia Earhart, Letter to George Putnam, February 7, 1931, quoted in Mary S. Lovell, The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989).
3. Sex Dread
42 Taylor was “given no information” about contraception, condoms, or disease prevention in the abstinence-only sex-ed classes: Teresa Watanabe, “Clovis Unified District Sued over Abstinence-Only Sex Education,” Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/22/local/la-me-sex-ed-20120822.
44 While the teen pregnancy rate in the United States has been dropping for years (hitting a six-decade low in 2010): Brady E. Hamilton and Stephanie J. Ventura, “Birth Rates for U.S. Teenagers Reach Historic Lows for All Age and Ethnic Groups,” NCHS Data Brief 89, National Center for Health Statistics, 2012, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db89.htm.
44 The United States still has far and away the highest teen pregnancy rates in the industrialized world: “Sexual Experience and Contraceptive Use Among Female Teens—United States, 1995, 2002, and 2006 2010,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) 61(17), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, May 4, 2012, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6117a1.htm?s_cid=mm6117a1_e.
44 The teen pregnancy rate in Mississippi, an abstinence-only state, is nearly four times higher than the teen pregnancy rate in New Hampshire: Brady E. Hamilton and Stephanie J. Ventura, “Birth Rates for U.S. Teenagers Reach Historic Lows for All Age and Ethnic Groups,” NCHS Data Brief 89, National Center for Health Statistics, 2012, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db89.htm.
44 Not only does Mississippi lead the country in teen births, but it takes first, second, and third place in reported cases of gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis: NCHHSTP State Profiles, National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010, http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/stateprofiles/usmap.htm.
44 Teenagers who receive comprehensive sex ed are 60 percent less likely to get pregnant: “Sex Ed Can Help Prevent Teen Pregnancy,” The Washington Post, March 24, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/24/AR2008032401515.html.
45 The failure to provide young people with comprehensive sex education: Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, “Did the Pro-Life Movement Lead to More Single Moms?,” Slate, January 22, 2013, http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/01/did_the_pro_life_movement_lead_to_more_single_moms.html.
45 In 2012 the governor of Tennessee signed into law an abstinence-only education bill that included a provision banning teachers: Tim Ghianni, “Tennessee Governor Signs Controversial ‘Gateway Sexual Activity’ Bill,” Reuters, May 11, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/12/us-usa-politics-tennessee-idUSBRE84B00D20120512.
45 There is abstinence-only sex education, and there’s abstinence-based sex ed: Laurie Abraham, “Teaching Good Sex,” The New York Times Magazine, November 16, 2011.
46 Researchers at York University in Toronto interviewed twelve hundred teenagers between the ages of thirteen and nineteen: Sarah Flicker et al., Sexpress: The Toronto Teen Survey Report (Toronto, ON: Planned Parenthood Toronto, 2009), http://www.ppt.on.ca/teen_survey.asp.
46 As fascinated as we all are with spermatogenesis and how egg meets sperm: Zosia Bielski, “Teens Want to Learn About Healthy Sex, Not Just Sexual Health,” The Globe and Mail, June 2, 2009.
4. The GGG Spot
54 Savage, [for] all his experience, does not know what women are like: Maggie Gallagher, “Dan Savage Educates Your Children?,” NOM (blog), April 5, 2011, http://www.nomblog.com/7091/.
57 [Sexual activity] was related to self-reported satisfaction for both sexes: Pamela C. Regan et al., “Partner Preferences: What Characteristics Do Men and Women Desire in Their Short-Term Sexual and Long-Term Romantic Partners?,” Journal o
f Psychology & Human Sexuality 12 (2000).
59 Your letter is also eloquent counter-testimony to those who say loving partners should try to accommodate each other’s sexual kinks: Emily Yoffe, “Reign of Terror,” Dear Prudence, Slate, June 28, 2012, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/2012/06/dear_prudie_my_boss_pantsed_someone_at_work_should_i_tattle_.html.
63 Five years ago, sex columnist Dan Savage suggested that, when it comes to sex, we should all aim to be GGG: Debby Herbenick, “Science Proves it, Dan Savage Is Right,” Salon, September 11, 2012, http://www.salon.com/2012/09/12/science_proves_it_dan_savage_is_right.
63 The study Herbenick refers to was conducted by researchers at the University of Arizona and Hanover College: Tricia J. Burke and Valerie J. Young, “Sexual Transformations and Intimate Behaviors in Romantic Relationships,” Journal of Sex Research 49 (2012).
64 And this wasn’t the only study that seems to prove the GGG concept: A. Muise, E. A. Impett, A. Kogan, and S. Desmarais, “Keeping the Spark Alive: Being Motivated to Meet a Partner’s Sexual Needs Sustains Sexual Desire in Long-term Romantic Relationships,” Social Psychological and Personality Science (2012), http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/08/26/1948550612457185.abstract.
66 Underlying all of Savage’s principles, abbreviations, and maxims is a pragmatism: Benjamin J. Dueholm, “Rules of Misbehavior,” Washington Monthly, March/April 2011, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2011/1103.dueholm.html.
5. The Choicer Challenge
67 68 On a subsequent appearance on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, Cain reiterated his stand—he told Morgan that he believed being gay is a “personal choice”: On Top Magazine staff, “Herman Cain Tells Piers Morgan That Being Gay Is ‘Personal Choice,’” On Top Magazine, October 20, 2011, http://www.ontopmag.com/article.aspx?id=9844.