Dan Savage sat down for a lengthy interview by Playboy.
PLAYBOY: In your view, who are the most offensive homophobes now?
SAVAGE: Vladimir Putin and the president of Uganda. We expected the backlash here in the U.S., but the backlash is abroad. What is our responsibility to queer people in Uganda who are being brutalized because of the rapid success of the gay-rights movement in the West? In countries like Uganda, leaders have this easy way to assert their moral superiority: hating gay people in the same way shitty, fucked-up Christians in America do. Putin is very blunt about this. It’s how they prove their moral superiority to the West. They don’t have to take better care of their citizens, they don’t have to have a functioning democracy, they don’t have to have a decent environment, they don’t have to have a justice system that works. They just have to hate gay people really hard and they’re better than the United States, better than Canada, better than France. It’s exactly like the Christians. They don’t have to stop masturbating, stop having premarital sex, stop drinking, stop getting divorced and remarried. All they have to do to be good Christians is hate gay people. “I don’t have to keep my dick out of anybody; I just have to hate you and where you’re putting your dick.”
It’s shit like this that make me love Dan Savage fiercely. So frank and so true. Read the interview.
I typically agree with you on most things. I’m pro gay marriage. I really don’t like people who are actively anti-gay.
However
This: “…like the Christians. They don’t have to stop masturbating, stop having premarital sex, stop drinking, stop getting divorced and remarried. All they have to do to be good Christians is hate gay people” is nonsense. I’m actually about 100% sure that there is no such person on earth. Anyone claiming anything similar to that, is not remotely a “Christian”.
Making a caricature of 80% of the American public is not useful, helpful, or true.
Immediately above that, he said specified “shitty, fucked-up Christians” not all of them. Regardless, anyone who uses their religious bullshit to hate on gay people or their rights, regardless of how nice they are otherwise, need to have their bullshit called out. In my experience being raised by a bible school teaching Southern Baptist, there are more like he described than not. If Christians don’t like being characterized by their most vocal and intolerant subsets, they should do more to call that shit what it is: hate.