"With friends like Dan".

Many of you have read Dan Savage's column "Savage Love" published in alternative weeklies throughout the U.S. Dan offers hard-hitting sex advice to his readers and has done so for many years. While most of his advice is well-researched and thought out, some of his other advice leaves one wondering if they've suddenly picked up a copy of the Weekly Standard. While liberal in his sex advice, Savage often swings to the right in other areas, such as foreign policy. Here is a profile of the Dan Savage both admired by the left and hated by the right:
gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/people/030600pe.htm

But for the real Dan Savage, check out his latest column in The Stranger, the Seattle alternative weekly.
www.thestranger.com/current/feature2.html

(A rebuttal to Dan is made by author David Ehrenstein here:
fablog.ehrensteinland.com/archives/000018.shtml)

Not only does Savage blasts "leftists" for opposing the US invasion of Iraq, and subsequent murder of thousands of innocent civilians, he also supported the "liberation" of Afghanistan, all the while bashing the anti-war left more fiercely than anything his supposed arch-nemesis, Ann Coulter, has ever done:
www.thestranger.com/2002-07-04/ex3.html

Savage routinely denigrates and dehumanizes Coulter in his weekly Savage Love column, but can you guess which one of them said this?:

1. "While the left was running around (like some perverse photo negative of Jerry Falwell) arguing about just how much responsibility we deserved for the attacks, the rest of the country was coming to grips with the fact that we were at war with 'Islamo-fascists,' as Hitchens dubbed bin Laden and his followers in Afghanistan and all over the world."

2. "I love to hang out with right wingers."
www.punchlinemag.com/ContentDisplay.php4

3. "The AIDS crisis ended in 1996. What we're facing now is a stupidity crisis among some gay men and a cowardice crisis among AIDS organizations (which are largely staffed by gay men). Isn't it ironic that AIDS organizations are silent (what does silence equal again?) while a sub-group of gay men re-create the communal septic tank culture of the late 1970s?"

4. "Were the hard-core gay lefties who set up and are now trying to take down Andrew Sullivan paying attention during the Clinton impeachment?"
www.poynter.org/medianews/sullivan.htm

Give up? That's right. They're all quotes from Dan Savage -- super progressive, liberal, compassionate gay man.

Where did he get these ideas? Well, it could be from hangin' with his best buddy -- the one, the only, "no fats, no fems" gay neo-con Andrew Sullivan aka "RawMuscleGlutes".
www.andrewsullivan.com

The same conservative, "personal responsibility" Sullivan who constantly harps on how stuck in the 70's San Francisco is with our sexual culture, but yet was caught soliciting bareback sex with other HIV positive men, thus spreading possible drug resistant strains of HIV.
208.55.252.197/feature.html
www.geocities.com/dcjarviks/Idler/vIIIn113.html

Of course, overweight queens like me would never get a date with Andrew as "fats and fems" need not apply. Besides, fats and fems never have been welcome in the fascist culture Sullivan and Savage seek to create.

Ironically, people like Sullivan were excoriated by his own friend Dan, urging us not to even care for these "bug chasers".
www.thestranger.com/2002-09-19/feature2.html

And then he goes on to defend the very activity he supposedly abhors!
www.panix.com/~sethbook/shepard/010604.html
www.poynter.org/medianews/sullivan.htm

You make up your mind about Savage. I personally have a hard time reading his column knowing that my patronage goes to someone who advocates for the murder of innocent civilians and scorns the dead and dying, whether in Afghanistan or on the streets of San Francisco. This guy belongs with all of the other David Brocks, Nora Vincents, and Camile Paglias of the world; lapping at the feet of their masters who oppress us all.

Kevin Weaver
San Francisco