More celebrating around the dinner table with Alec Mapa and Jamie Hebert as they grill Christopher and Eric on who they’d each like to gay marry. Twan, Queen of the Stars, reads the signs before they read you. Relationship expert Miss JoNell Samms has a few things to say about spines and the women who don’t have them.








Christopher Rice: Welcome back to The Dinner Party Show. I'm Christopher Rice.



Eric Shaw Quinn: And I'm Eric Shaw Quinn.



Christopher Rice: And we are so excited about our next guest.



Eric Shaw Quinn: So excited.



Christopher Rice: If you've been anywhere near social media in the past few years, you've probably heard of the It Gets Better Project, a series of videos intended to prevent suicide among LGBT youth. That project was started by internationally syndicated relationship and sex advice columnist, Dan Savage, and his husband, Terry Miller. But for many years now, Dan Savage has been one of our most ferociously articulate and outspoken gay activists, known for his no-holds-barred responses to anti-gay public figures and politicians, wherever they may surface.



Eric Shaw Quinn: Well done.



Christopher Rice: Exactly. He also hosts the Savage Love Podcast, and he's currently on the road promoting his new book, a collection of his essays and columns entitled American Savage, which we currently have for sale on our website at thedinnerpartyshow.com.   Dan Savage joins us now on The Dinner Party Show. Welcome.



Dan Savage: Thank you so much for having me. Champagne and tea and cookies. I'm in heaven.



Eric Shaw Quinn: Welcome to The Dinner Party.



Christopher Rice: We really rolled out the red carpet.



Eric Shaw Quinn: Well, we try and have a nice dinner party when we invite guests over. You put on the dog a bit, right?



Dan Savage: Yeah, right. Absolutely.



Christopher Rice: Absolutely. We're also a little bit starstruck, I have to say.



Dan Savage: Oh, you're too easily starstruck if you're starstruck by me.



Eric Shaw Quinn: We're pretty excited.



Christopher Rice: We really are. And you know, we were talking at lunch about where we wanted to start this interview, and I guess we were curious about the moment for you when you went from being columnist in Seattle to gay activist on the national stage. Was there a moment that you could pick out?



Dan Savage: Well, I was a gay activist before I started writing Savage Love. I was in ACT UP, I was a gay activist at college and before college many, many years ago. And it occurred to me when I was writing this column when it turned into a real job because at first, it was just going to be a joke. I was going to write this joke sex advice column for six months or a year where I treated straight people and straight sex with the same contempt that straight advice columnists had always treated gay people and gay sex with.



Eric Shaw Quinn: Perfect.



Dan Savage: And I thought it would last six months or a year, this one-note joke, but straight people really liked being treated with contempt. It was a new experience for them.



Christopher Rice: Really?



Dan Savage: And so, the column took off…



Eric Shaw Quinn: Presaging the whole 50 Shades of Gray thing, right?



Dan Savage: Yeah, apparently.



Eric Shaw Quinn: Yeah.



Dan Savage: And eventually, it occurred to me that, "Oh, I have this much better platform now for the activism I want to do, because I've conned all these straight people into reading me." Because the column is almost always about straight sex and straight relationships. But then, if I pivot and I get on gay marriage, or I get on HIV, or I get on trans issues, or anything else, the straight people read out of habit because it's usually about them. So they'll just read these things that they would never read at any other time, and then every once in a while, I call them my flying monkeys.



Eric Shaw Quinn: Sneaky.



Dan Savage: I can call my readers out and say, "You should do this.