National Coming out Day Special with Dan Savage - Brain food daily - Takepart tv

You could send a text. You could make a couple phone calls. You could play charades. One syllable. Sounds like...never mind. There are a thousand and one ways to come out, and we are celebrating them all with the one and only Dan Savage. It's National Coming Out Day everybody. That's today's BFD. It's October eleventh, and you know what that means. Happy Birthday Luke Perry. More importantly, today is National Coming Out Day. Since 1990, National Coming Out Day is about celebrating gay pride and supporting those who choose today to come out as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Here to help us celebrate is author and sex columnist, Dan Savage. Hi Dan. Hi. Thank you so much for joining us. My first question is, what was your coming out experience like? It was rocky, you know. It was also thirty years ago and things have hopefully changed a little bit for the better. I came out in 1981-ish, and we were very very Catholic, and it was kind of a rough summer, but I did something, you know not because I was a genius I did it right, but I did accidentally something right. I kind of stood my ground and made it clear to my family that they could have me or they could hate me, you know, hate gays, or have me in their lives, but they couldn't do both. And they came around really fast and have been very supportive ever since. What about other people who live within intolerant communities? Does that change the advice you might give someone? It's a really damaging message that a lot of young *** get from the gay movement. Coming out is the solution to all your problems Coming out, for a lot of *** young people, is the beginning of new problems and sometimes more drastic problems. So, a kid, as he's coming out, really needs to take a long hard look at his parents, where he lives, his peers, what kind of community he is in, what kind of support there is out there for him, in case it goes very badly. And for a lot of kids, it does go very badly and it may be a better plan to wait a year or two and come out than to come out too soon or to the wrong parents because the damage that can be done by a hostile family is hard to overestimate. Last week Tony Perkins, of the family research center threatened to sue you for things you said about his organization. I recently had my own run in with the whole Michelle Malkin, right wing blogosphere crowd, and it wasn't fun, but what are your thoughts on these far-right groups other than that it's the year 2012 and people should probably not be *** for things they believe in. Well, my thoughts are, if you've pissed off Michelle Malkin you're doing it right. They lay in waiting waiting to be pissed off, waiting to be outraged. This is what the internet did. It made organized communities out of a lot of lonely nut jobs in their basements, on the left and the right. I welcome their outrage because I think they're a bunch of ***. If I've done something to *** them off, I did my job that day. But, I guess, on the other hand, the internet can also be an effective tool for combatting all of this intolerance. Well, the internet is a tool. You can pick up a hammer and build something with it or you can pick up a hammer and knock holes in the wall, or beat somebody's brains out. It depends on how someone is using it. I think that the 'It Gets Better' project really proved that the internet could be a force for good. And there's a lot of support out there online, a lot of *** out there online too. There's a lot of *** everywhere you go. There were *** out there before the Internet came along. You just have to have a thick skin about it and not let that drag you down or destroy you. Do you think America is becoming more comfortable with sexuality overall? I don't think the country is becoming that much more comfortable with sexuality overall. I sat on the plane on my way to New York the other day with a middle-aged woman reading Fifty Shades of Gray, which is ***. If I had opened my laptop and started watching gay ***, she would have had a heart attack. When it comes to sex or pleasure or drugs or alcohol or anything we enjoy and we over-indulge, and then we get right with God by having regularly scheduled freak outs. Do you ever get really annoyed by heterosexual people asking you, sort of, wanting to know the ins and outs of homosexual sex? No, I love it when straight people ask me about ***. And my take is always we should answer those questions in the most explicit and expansive detail because the hangup a lot of straight people have about gay people is the sex. Then, they can see past it. Then, they can let sex go. and see you as a human being. It cures homophobia to rub straight people's noses in ***, which is my pastime. So, you're doing a show on TakePart TV called 'American Savage.' Can you tell us more about that? 'American Savage' is going to kind of be an online series of videos a little bit modeled on my blog, like blog posts. I'll be ranting about things I think are interesting, important, upsetting, angering, maddening, wonderful, awesome, awful and just running my mouth, which is what I do for a living, but I hope it will be fun. It will be different. Well, on that note, thank you so much Dan. It was really a pleasure. It was my pleasure. Really great. Thank you. And remember, you don't have to come out as gay to get involved. Head to ItGetsBetter.org to take Dan's pledge and speak up against hate and intolerance. Now, to celebrate, check out these user submitted videos of people sharing their own coming out stories. As I'm talking I'm realizing that I am coming out of the closet in front of almost everyone that I know. And then, all the sudden, the microphone kind of cuts a little bit and as I'm saying, I'm black and I'm a...cuts out. If you want to become the person you want to become, and being gay involves in it, then your first step is coming out and being gay and being comfortable with who you are, and letting everyone know who you want to be. And that's just how it goes. I was so dramatic. I was like, 'You know you have to sit down. I need to tell you something really serious, and I was like, couldn't say it and then, I finally was like, I'm gay.' And my best friend at the time was like, 'Blake, I know that. I've known that for a long time. I mean you listen to Cher and Barbara Streisand.' For BFD, I'm Jenny Mollen. Make sure you subscribe and I'll see you soon.