Well. We were going to have a wedding graduate today, but now we’re not, thanks to an email that Robin sent me titled “Reason 912 that we love Dan Savage.” (I don’t have a link for Robin, since she hasn’t sent me her wedding graduate post yet, achem. But I met her at the first APW meetup, and she was my buddy during the second APW meetup when everyone was staring at me in a good way, and I was really nervous, and she’s totally awesome.) So. Here we go.
I’ve never gone on the record about why I advocate for marriage equality as hard as I do. Every so often someone will say something to me along the lines of, “It’s so great that you do this for other people,” or “you’re so selfless,” or “It’s not your fight,” and that couldn’t be further from the truth.
David and I grew up in a really deeply conservative, and very poor, part of Southern California. We’ve been known to call it “the part of The Bible Belt that’s in California,” and people always laugh, but it’s not actually a joke. We were theatre kids in High School, and we both happened to be from very tolerant, socially active families. That was really rare.
Sometime around our Junior year, our friends started coming out, one by one. Our dear friend, Jacob, would give you a number when he came out to you, “You’re the XX person I’ve told!” I was three. David was five. After Jacob came out, I know both David and I had long heart-to-hearts with him about hell. As in, he thought he was going to hell for sure, we knew he was not. I can’t quite explain how heartbreaking it is, at 16 years old, to sit knee to knee, cross-legged with your friend and look them in the eye and have to tell them, “You are an amazing, loving, creative, hilarious person. I don’t care what your parents told you, I don’t care what anyone is telling you. You are not going to hell. Not only are you not going to hell, but GOD LOVES YOU, and I am not joking around.” Read More…