Another claim that you expect readers to believe on the basis of your polling of your gay and lesbian friends? The circle of friends that you said elsewhere who are all active, gay “marriage” supporting homosexuals except you?
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It’s not just my circle of LGB friends. It’s also on the basis of the many, many people I’ve met throughout gay festivals, gay support groups, on dates [before I was Catholic], etc. It’s further buffered by the experiences of my poly friends, who endlessly complained to me that they couldn’t find anyone who would date them for any length of time, because everyone was so “uptight” about monogamy in the LGBT community.
Further, as I have stated before, you send a confusing message, for instance in your support of Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better,” the program he launched to supposedly stem teen suicide. While that may be the short term goal, you know that DS is promoting embrace of homosexuality by conflicted teens with same sex attraction. You only need to read a small sample of DS’s advice and writings, and hear him in one speech (he keeps getting invited in LGB circles and featured by gay friendly media). Sure, as they listen to his shameless idolatry of gay sex, the only way to handle homosexual feelings and any associated conflict with the inclination is to act on it. He unabashedly said to Bill Maher and other guests that he will keep on “inseminating his husband,” with whom he brags he has been for twenty years in a “monogamish” relationship, touting the “virtue” of his / their agreed upon infidelity. At the same time proudly saying he and his husband are raising a son they have adopted sixteen years ago. His utter disrespect and hatred of Christianity, Catholicism and the Pope as regards the proscription of active homosexuality and position against gay “marriage” and parenting are not in dispute. How do you reconcile all of these?
Because the “It Gets Better” project, albeit started by him, is not run by him. Anyone who has a Youtube account (or any other social media service) can upload an “It Gets Better” video with whatever message they want to send, as long as it is anti-suicide, of course. I do not support Dan Savage, but I do support the project as it is community-based, not Dan Savage-based.
If Dan Savage does not speak for you and others, have you made efforts in expressing that to LGB sites as you seem to be doing in correcting so called misimpression here at CAF.
Well, this answer is going to be rather long-winded. Contrary to public ideas of the gay community, it is not one, solid community. It is really two communities (gay men and lesbians, with bisexuals flocking wherever they feel most comfortable, usually with their own gender). The reason for this is because, unlike straight people, there really is no pressing reason for genders to mix. And with the low degree of shared interests between the gay male community and the lesbian community, you don’t really see a lot of intermixing outside of support groups, festivals, or other big Pride events.
So, this may seem like it’s irrelevant to Dan Savage, but it’s not. Lesbians tend to only really care about lesbian speakers in the community, not gay male speakers, and I’d imagine (though I have literally no idea) that gay men don’t care at all about lesbian speakers. I don’t mean to say we are rude to them or anything, we just don’t exactly have much interest, as we don’t get gay men. Lesbians are naturally going to care more about Naya Rivera, Ellen Page, and Ellen DeGeneres than any gay male idol, even one like Neil Patrick Harris. Anyways, my point is, if I went onto a lesbian website and talked about Dan Savage being an idiot, people would be like “Who cares? I don’t pay attention to him anyway.” And I’m not exactly expected on a gay male site anymore than a gay man would be on a lesbian site, so any comments I made on a gay male site would seem like proselytizing, and thus would be countereffective.
What I am saying is that it is possible gay men enjoy reading Savage’s articles (although I find the majority of his readership/attendees are actually straight women, especially if you watch his Youtube videos…). I wouldn’t know how gay men enjoy spending their time, as a lesbian. However, his comments about “monogamish” relationships in the gay community are completely unsubstantiated. For the first part, that has not, would not, and will not ever be a thing in the lesbian community. And from my experience with the
roommates of my gay male friends (of which I’ve known quite a substantial number), while they have a relatively high amount of sex with their boyfriends, there isn’t any form of outside arrangement. Either way, it doesn’t make any sense to associate Savage with the majority of a community that is made up of more lesbians than gay men in the first place, let alone taking into account the fact that he is a sexual activist that has reason to make things look more sexually “free” and “open” in the community than they are.
I suppose I could try to convince gay people to be more vocal in their opposition to him, as opposed to certain, under-the-radar opposition (like my university’s LGBT group’s blacklisting of him for anti-Catholic remarks), but the main problem is the same problem I find in trying to convince Catholics to oppose radical fundamentalists’ hate speech. People are so convinced that this is a zero sum
war that they refuse to publicly decry any person deemed to be a potential ally, no matter how egregious their conduct. And this for sure happens on both sides of the marriage debate. Gay people are more content quietly ignoring him than giving the “opposition” a talking point that there’s huge discordance in the community.
