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![]() Dan Savage, beloved sex columnist and author, is back and ready to rumble with the conservative right with his new book Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America. Savage was sick and tired of hearing "scolds"—such as Robert Bork and William Bennett—call people un-American for pursuing happiness however they saw fit, so Savage set out to defend "sin" and "sinners" while also indulging in a bit of sin himself. The results are funny, surprising, caustic and thoughtful, taking on everything from the greed of gambling to the legalization of marijuana to Savage's absolute intolerance for the "gay is good" message that we hear at gay pride parades. Skipping Towards Gomorrah has everything we've come to love and expect from Savage: wit, intelligence, controversial viewpoints, and a thorough lashing for those he disagrees with. He also comes out about his own pot smoking, hires not one but two prostitutes, wins and loses money, tries to fit in at a fat acceptance conference, fires a gun and much more. For each of the seven deadly sins; greed, pride, sloth, lust, gluttony, envy, and anger (for those who need a refresher course), Savage followed people who "practice" each sin while also trying and usually succeeding in committing the sins on his own. Eros Guide spoke with Savage about the nature of sin, the proper way to enjoy drugs, and why the concept of Gay Pride should be retired once and for all. Eros Guide: How did you go about determining which activity you'd follow for each sin, and what are some of the options for sins that you didn't pursue? It seems like you'd have had a lot of choices. Dan Savage: I did have a lot of choices, that's the reason I chose the seven deadly sins as an organizational conceit. Because if you set out to write a comprehensive book about sin in America, you would never stop writing, it'd be like the Encyclopedia Americana and it'd be 45 volumes. So by choosing these broad and general sin categories or genres, I was able to pick one representative thing that symbolized each. And I tried to pick kind of unexpected ones, and not to take the obvious approach. For sloth, I did pot, but I didn't argue about the racist drug war, I wrote about how pot makes it possible for us to be so overworked. But it was really kind of arbitrary; I chose things that I wanted to do (laughs). I wanted to commit adultery and I wanted to smoke pot and I wanted to learn how to gamble, but I chose a couple of things that I didn't want to do, like shoot; I'm not really into guns. And I wish I could say I really pondered all my options and concluded that swinging was the best thing to illustrate adultery, but I was always interested in the representative sin that I chose, and this was a way to go out there and hang out with people committing them and commit them myself on someone else's dime. ![]() DS: People considered themselves sinners in the way that I write about them as sinners, which is "sinners" in quotes and italics and your eyes rolling when you say it. I don't think there's anything necessarily sinful about any of the pursuits of happiness that I wrote about, but these people are called sinners by conservatives and scolds. But it doesn't matter what you're doing, it matters how you're doing it. You can have a really sinful monogamous heterosexual marriage, if it's abusive or emotionally abusive, it's sinful. And you can have a really ethical, moral, non-sinful adulterous or non-monogamous heterosexual marriage if you're going about it with your partner's consent or permission or in their presence, as the swingers I profiled do. EG: Sort of along the same lines, you wrote that since a lot of sinners don't often stand up for themselves that was your role with the book, to stand up for people committing these sins in the face of attacks from social conservatives. And I wanted to know if it was ever frustrating for you that, say, the swinger couple weren't out, or that maybe some of the people were not as sinful as you might have expected? DS: I do wish more people would come out about their pleasurable pursuits and the things that make them happy that other people disapprove of, if only to prove that, for instance, not everyone who smokes pot (which I come out about in the book) is a dreadlocked, Nader-voting nitwit. The crazy thing about sin in America and about trying to divide Americans into the "good" Americans and the "bad" Americans based on these sins is that eventually everybody falls into the "bad American" pile. Because here you have socially conservative observant Jews living in the suburbs of Chicago and raising a family and going to temple, and they're swingers. I'm sure with Robert Bork and William Bennett, there's something Robert Bork likes to do that William Bennett wouldn't approve of, if they were open about it. And again, if we were all appropriately open about it—I'm not comfortable with people who over share. I don't need to know that the person sitting next to me on the airplane is a swinger. If we were all more open with people… it's appropriate to be open with friends, family about the things that we do, it wouldn't be so easy for right-wingers to be demagogues about people who are just doing what they're supposed to do if they're Americans, which is have fun and pursue happiness and drive religious fanatics of all persuasions insane. EG: You write that you're harkening back to the Constitution and the "pursuit of happiness." Do you think sinning and "pursuing happiness" is necessarily the same thing? Is it possible to commit a sin and not have a good time doing it, and does it matter if you're enjoying it or not? DS: I think that sin and pursuing happiness are not necessarily the same thing (regarding "sin"). As I say in the book, being a monogamous married man makes Bill Bennett really happy, and that's great for Bill Bennett, but that's not going to make everyone happy. And just because it makes Bill Bennett happy, doesn't mean that the rest of us should be compelled to live as Bill Bennett does. Are there people who are not monogamous or using drugs or who are gluttonous who are miserable? Yes, absolutely, and they should knock it off! I don't think people should do things that make them miserable. And if being an in-shape, sober, monogamous heterosexual makes you miserable, don't do it. And if being an in-shape, sober, monogamous heterosexual makes you happy, do it; that's basically what I'm saying. Provided, I think, that people generally will be happy with their occasional sinful pursuits if they do them in moderation. I think moderation is the key. ![]() EG: And that kind of negates the happiness factor. DS: It definitely negates the happiness factor. That's the problem with people who have no sense of moderation. I was challenged by another interviewer on this point; I call for restraint so often in the book that I could hardly be described as a sinner myself or a libertine. And I pointed out that common sense is not a conservative plot. You can be a sinner with some common sense, or a lefty or a liberal with common sense; it's not something that they have a patent on. The more restrained and moderate you are in your "sinful" pursuits of happiness, the longer you'll be alive to pursue those sinful pursuits! EG: About the social conservatives, or "scolds" as you call them, like William Bennett and Robert Bork. You said that you were inspired to write the book and defend the sins that you wrote about because they're attacking them. You also wrote about how popular they've become in popular culture. When I read that I was struck by it, maybe I live in a really liberal world, or I don't know anyone who's taking their moral cues from these people. I was wondering, are you sincerely worried about people following their advice or is it more that you were just pissed off by the messages that they're saying? DS: I was upset about them never being challenged; the vast majority of people ignore them, and yet, they're never told that. That's not said. EG: But do you think that matters if people are ignoring them? DS: I do think it matters, because I think it's gone to their heads. EG: That they're not challenged? DS: That they're not challenged. They do think that they're right and everyone else is wrong and that they're good Americans and not even that people who don't live the way they live are bad Americans, but that they aren't real Americans, which is offensive. How can you tell somebody whose is pursuing happiness that they're somehow not American when that was the very first promise that America made? EG: It was just surprising to me because they seem like caricatures to me, so I think that's why a lot of people do ignore them. It's not wrong to challenge them, but… DS: They don't seem like caricatures to me, not when they have the White House, they had both houses of Congress for a year, and they may have both houses again next month. We have a conservative born-again Christian president who's gonna pour money into religious institutions and private religious schools. And debates around public policy are completely dictated by these people. I think that a lot of people may live in Logan's Run lefty bubbles where they think everyone agrees with them. But I guess I'm kind of a masochist because I read the Wall Street Journal every day, and I read the National Review and the Weekly Standard, and you see things that are in those papers and magazines being enacted by our elected officials constantly. So I do think that they're in charge and they have to be challenged. EG: Besides pot smoking and perhaps the male prostitute you hired, I think all of your other sins were legal ones. Do you see a connection between the idea or act of "sinning" and its legal status, or are they totally separate? DS: They're totally separate. There are certain things that are "sinful" that could never be made illegal, like gluttony. So you can be sinful without breaking the law, but it's hard to break a law without being sinful, I think. EG: Your harshest words seem to be reserved for Jake and Kevin, the L.A. gay couple who attend a pride parade, and for pride parades in general. You seem pretty solid in your anti-gay pride stance, so I was wondering why you picked that as a sin to follow, and if going to the parade changed your views about it at all or solidified them? DS: I wasn't hard on Jake and Kevin. I actually like Jake and Kevin. I thought they were really sweet and it was very nice of them to take me in, a complete stranger, and let me hang out at their house and go to the pride parade with them. My problem is with the dishonesty of the pride parade and that's what I write about. I do think pride is idiotic and counter-productive as an organizing metaphor for gays and lesbians. As an annual rallying cry it's played out and it's dead and it speaks to a gay experience 40 years ago, and so much has changed for us and I just don't think it's relevant any more. And not only is it no longer relevant—it's backfiring. It's so out of step with our lives and the way we lead them, that we look ridiculous marching under that banner, and it hands people who don't like gays and lesbians a stick to beat us with. Like the Bill O'Reilly quotes, "Don't run down the street in high heels and a bra and then tell me it's about liberation and politics," when you¹re acting like a jackass in public. I think that it's fine to act like a jackass in public, and I say that.
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