Savage Love: Is there any tactful way to ask someone if they’re gay?

Contents:

• DAN SAVAGE: THE GAY MAN WHO TEACH STRAIGHT PEOPLE HOW TO HAVE SEX
• SAVAGE LOVE CLASSIC: IS HER SISSY BOY ACTUALLY GAY?
• SAVAGE LOVE: I AM A LONELY, AGG GAY MAN; WHAT SHOULD I DO?
• CAN A STRAIGHT GUY ETHILLY ACCEPT ORAL SEX OM HIS GAY BUDDY?

DAN SAVAGE: THE GAY MAN WHO TEACH STRAIGHT PEOPLE HOW TO HAVE SEX

" Savage talked about what he has been wrong about over the years, how wrg has changed and why he thks gay people give better sex advice than straight people. It was 1990 when we started talkg about the lumn and gay people didn't give sex advice to straight people.

And so the joke was I was gog to treat straight people wh the same ntempt that straight advice lumnists had always treated gay people who wrote them letters. I thk what my rears get and what a lot of straight people sort of tuively get is that your gay iends know a ltle b more about sex than you do, and maybe are a ltle better at than you are.

SAVAGE LOVE CLASSIC: IS HER SISSY BOY ACTUALLY GAY?

You n't be gay if you n't talk about difficult sexual issu, you know, you n't e out to your fay whout nontg a difficult sexual issue. That's why 's such a cliché for straight people to go to their gay iends wh their sex problems or sex qutns.

SAVAGE LOVE: I AM A LONELY, AGG GAY MAN; WHAT SHOULD I DO?

Dan Savage is famoly gay, one of the most famo gay Amerins, and I had no ia how eply many straight people related to him—even more, how much they loved him, how grateful they were for what he said, for what he wrote, for promot the nuclear fay un bee he believ that is a healthy mol for everybody: gay upl, straight upl, children.

After a rough adolcence, he expected to fd a ltle pany the theater partment llege, and he was a b perplexed, he rells, to be "the only gay guy the actg program. " Blamg straight people for closeted gay people do not make immediate sense, but remember that was the mid-1980s, gay men were fillg the graveyard, Ronald Reagan was dog nothg, and an out, proud gay inty was one possible munn agast the enemy. "After readg their letters for a uple years, I realized gay men and women were plic this too.

CAN A STRAIGHT GUY ETHILLY ACCEPT ORAL SEX OM HIS GAY BUDDY?

As I learned Seattle, he is one of the few men as borgly earnt on the pleasur of parentg as I am; he is adorg of his hband, Terry, and much of his ft work—his books, his This Amerin Life says—are hymns to close now, Dan Savage is our untry's sex doctor and s love doctor, s number-one gay and s cheerlear for straights, s theorist of gay marriage and of straight marriage. There is, therefore, nothg particularly gay about the work he do at the moment; he has transcend those tegori.

I uld never w the kd of acceptance as an thory on gay sex, or gay fai, that Savage has won among straights. Our very few openly gay actors nnot get st as straight leadg men—they may be tolerated, even loved, but they are still marked—but Savage has broken ee of the box.

"One should never unrtimate the simple radilism of an openly gay man givg straight people sex advice, " Andrew Sullivan told me. "To e out swgg like that, as an openly gay guy tellg straight people what to do bed, was more revolutnary than we now realize. How radil is is an excerpt om Dan Savage: The First Gay Celebry, by Mark Oppenheimer, an e-book that n be purchased here.

Remember: while there are lots of gay men out there who seem to be attracted to guys who look jt like them—bears who wanna be wh bears, twks who wanna be wh twks, gymbods who wanna be wh gymbods—there's no shortage of guys who are attracted to their oppos: bears to twks, twks to bears, gymbods to skny dus. Adam said that "apparently among themselv they wonred if they uld do a show wh a uple of homosexuals om San Francis. In that terview wh The Sneeze, Savage said that when the show first aired, he and Jamie would get lots of fan mail om gay admirers, some of que spicy.

Gay wrer Dan Savage has long been one of the most visible and outspoken voic on LGBTQ+ issu and sexualy. Image a cis, straight journalist who regularly wrote, spoke, and tweeted about LGBTQ+ issu, but only ever talked about "ex-gays" and people who went through a phase or experimented one time. But the problem is, Sgal thks he's not jt smarter than the average trans person, he thks he's smarter than trans people who have not only been livg as trans people for s, but are veterans of trans studi, issu, journalism, and do whe cis gay men (and whe cis lbians like Katie Herzog) thk that they get to be the experts on what is and what isn't transphobic?

"This is how I feel when Sgal, Savage, and other cis gay journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Josh Barro say that they're not transphobic or exprsg transphobia and expla why not to the trans people who are tellg them they Sgal, Savage, or any other cis person wants to be an expert on what is or isn't transphobia, they should jt bee trans for a ltle while. As a queer man of lor—I'm Asian—I feel wound whenever I am exposed to gay men New York Cy, Toronto, or any cy where whe gay men domate. Gay men, mostly wh and Asians, reject me bee of my race and no one adms to their sexual racism.

But is unfair for a gay Asian like myself to be nstantly margalized and rejected.