Alfred Edward Housman
A. E. Housman photographed by E.O. Hoppe.
Born	26 March 1859 (1859-03-26) Bromsgrove, Worcestershire
Died	30 April 1936 (1936-05-01) (aged 77) Cambridge
Pen name	A. E. Housman
Occupation	Classicist, Poet
Nationality	British
Alma mater	St John's College, Oxford
Genres	Lyric Poetry

Alfred Edward Housman ( /ˈhaʊsmən/; 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936), usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems were mostly written before 1900. Their wistful evocation of doomed youth in the English countryside, in spare language and distinctive imagery, appealed strongly to late Victorian and Edwardian taste, and to many early 20th century English composers (beginning with Arthur Somervell) both before and after the First World War. Through its song-setting the poetry became closely associated with that era, and with Shropshire itself.

Housman was counted one of the foremost classicists of his age, and has been ranked as one of the greatest scholars of all time.^{[1] [2]} He established his reputation publishing as a private scholar and, on the strength and quality of his work, was appointed Professor of Latin at University College London and later, at Cambridge. His editions of Juvenal, Manilius and Lucan are still considered authoritative.

Life[link]

The eldest of seven children, Housman was born at Valley House in Fockbury, a hamlet on the outskirts of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, to Sarah Jane (née Williams, married 17 Jun 1858 in Woodchester, Gloucester)^[3] and Edward Housman, and was baptized on 24 Apr 1859 at Christ Church, in Catshill.^[4][5][6] His mother died on his 12th birthday, and his father, a country solicitor, later remarried, to an elder cousin, Lucy, in 1873. Housman's brother Laurence Housman and sister Clemence Housman also became writers.

Housman was educated first at King Edward's School, Birmingham, then Bromsgrove School, where he acquired a strong academic grounding and won prizes for his poetry.^[6] In 1877, he won an open scholarship to St John's College, Oxford, where he studied classics.^[6] Although by nature rather withdrawn, Housman formed strong friendships with two roommates, Moses Jackson and A. W. Pollard. Jackson became the great love of Housman's life, though the latter's feelings were not reciprocated, as Jackson was heterosexual.^[7] Housman obtained a first in classical Moderations in 1879, but his immersion in textual analysis, particularly with Propertius, led him to neglect ancient history and philosophy, which formed part of the Greats curriculum, and thus he failed to obtain a degree.^[6] Though some explain Housman's unexpected failure in his final exams as a result of Jackson's rejection,^[8] most biographers adduce a variety of reasons, indifference to philosophy, overconfidence in his praeternatural gifts, a contempt for inexact learning, and enjoyment of idling away his time with Jackson, conjoined with news of his father's desperate illness as the more immediate and germane causes.^[9][10][11] The failure left him with a deep sense of humiliation, and a determination to vindicate his genius.

After Oxford, Jackson got a job as a clerk in the Patent Office in London and arranged a job there for Housman as well.^[6] They shared a flat with Jackson's brother Adalbert until 1885 when Housman moved to lodgings of his own. Moses Jackson moved to India in 1887. When Jackson returned briefly to England in 1889 to marry, Housman not only was not invited to the wedding but knew nothing about it until the couple had left the country. Adalbert Jackson died in 1892. Housman continued pursuing classical studies independently and published scholarly articles on such authors as Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles.^[6] He gradually acquired such a high reputation that in 1892 he was offered the professorship of Latin at University College London, which he accepted.^[6] Many years later, the UCL academic staff common room was dedicated to his memory as the Housman Room.

The pleasures Housman enjoyed included gastronomy, flying in aeroplanes, and frequent visits to France, where he read "books which were banned in Britain as pornographic".^[12] A fellow don described him as being "descended from a long line of maiden aunts".^[13]

Housman's grave at St. Laurence's Church in Ludlow. The cherry tree, on the right, was planted in his memory (see A Shropshire Lad, II).

Although Housman's early work and his sphere of responsibilities as professor included both Latin and Greek, he began to focus his energy on Latin poetry. When asked later why he had stopped writing about Greek poetry, he responded, "I found that I could not attain to excellence in both."^[14] In 1911, he took the Kennedy Professorship of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained for the rest of his life. Classics Professor G. P. Goold at University College, wrote of Housman's scholarly accomplishments: "The legacy of Housman's scholarship is a thing of permanent value; and that value consists less in obvious results, the establishment of general propositions about Latin and the removal of scribal mistakes, than in the shining example he provides of a wonderful mind at work.... He was and may remain the last great textual critic." ^[2] During 1903–1930, he published his critical edition of Manilius's Astronomicon in five volumes. He also edited works of Juvenal (1905) and Lucan (1926). Many colleagues were unnerved by his scathing critical attacks on those whom he found guilty of shoddy scholarship.^[6] In his paper "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism," (1921) Housman stated: "A textual critic engaged upon his business is not at all like Newton investigating the motion of the planets: he is much more like a dog hunting for fleas." He declared many of his contemporary scholars to be stupid, lazy, vain, or all three, proclaiming: "Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders, and brains, not pudding, in your head." ^[2][15] His younger colleague A. S. F. Gow quotes examples of these attacks, noting that they "were often savage in the extreme."^[16] Gow also relates how Housman intimidated his students, sometimes reducing them to tears. According to Gow, Housman could never remember his students' names, maintaining that "had he burdened his memory by the distinction between Miss Jones and Miss Robinson, he might have forgotten that between the second and fourth declension." One notable pupil was Enoch Powell.^[17] Housman found his true vocation in classical studies and treated poetry as a secondary activity. He did not speak about his poetry in public until 1933 when he gave a lecture, "The Name and Nature of Poetry", in which he argued that poetry should appeal to emotions rather than to the intellect.

Housman died aged 77, in Cambridge. His ashes are buried near St Laurence's Church, Ludlow, Shropshire.^[6] The University of Worcester has acknowledged Housman's local connection by naming a new building after him.

Poetry[link]

[edit] A Shropshire Lad

During his years in London, A. E. Housman completed A Shropshire Lad, a cycle of 63 poems.^[6] After several publishers had turned it down, he published it at his own expense in 1896. The volume surprised both his colleagues and students.^[6] At first selling slowly, it rapidly became a lasting success, and its appeal to English musicians had helped to make it widely known before World War I, when its themes struck a powerful chord with English readers.^[6] A Shropshire Lad has been in print continuously since May 1896.^[13]

The poems are pervaded by deep pessimism and preoccupation with death, without religious consolation.^[6] Housman wrote most of them while living in Highgate, London, before ever visiting that part of Shropshire (about thirty miles from his home), which he presented in an idealised pastoral light, as his 'land of lost content'.^[19] Housman himself acknowledged the influence of the songs of William Shakespeare, the Scottish Border ballads and Heinrich Heine, but specifically denied any influence of Greek and Latin classics in his poetry.

Later collections[link]

In the early 1920s, when Moses Jackson was dying in Canada, Housman wanted to assemble his best unpublished poems so that Jackson could read them before his death.^[6] These later poems, mostly written before 1910, show a greater variety of subject and form than those in A Shropshire Lad but lack the consistency of his previously published work. He published them as Last Poems (1922) because he felt his inspiration was exhausted and that he should not publish more in his lifetime. This proved true. After his death Housman's brother, Laurence, published further poems which appeared in More Poems (1936) and Collected Poems (1939). Housman also wrote a parodic Fragment of a Greek Tragedy, in English, and humorous poems published posthumously under the title Unkind to Unicorns.

John Sparrow found statements in a letter written late in Housman's life which describe how his poems came into existence:

Poetry was for him ...'a morbid secretion', as the pearl is for the oyster. The desire, or the need, did not come upon him often, and it came usually when he was feeling ill or depressed; then whole lines and stanzas would present themselves to him without any effort, or any consciousness of composition on his part. Sometimes they wanted a little alteration, sometimes none; sometimes the lines needed in order to make a complete poem would come later, spontaneously or with 'a little coaxing'; sometimes he had to sit down and finish the poem with his head. That .... was a long and laborious process.^[20]

Sparrow himself adds, "How difficult it is to achieve a satisfactory analysis may be judged by considering the last poem in A Shropshire Lad. Of its four stanzas, Housman tells us that two were 'given' him ready made; one was coaxed forth from his subconsciousness an hour or two later; the remaining one took months of conscious composition. No one can tell for certain which was which."^[20]

[edit] De Amicitia (about friendship)

In 1942 Laurence Housman also deposited an essay entitled "A. E. Housman's 'De Amicitia'" in the British Library, with the proviso that it was not to be published for 25 years. The essay discussed A. E. Housman's homosexuality and his love for Jackson.^[21] Despite the conservative nature of the times, Housman, as distinct from the prudence of his public life, was quite open in his poetry, and especially his A Shropshire Lad, about his deeper sympathies. Poem 30 of that sequence, for instance, speaks of how "Fear contended with desire": "Others, I am not the first / have willed more mischief than they durst". In More Poems, he buries his love for Moses Jackson in the very act of commemorating it, as his feelings of love break his friendship, and must be carried silently to the grave:.^[22]

<poem> Because I liked you better Than suits a man to say It irked you, and I promised To throw the thought away.

To put the world between us We parted, stiff and dry; Goodbye, said you, forget me. I will, no fear, said I

If here, where clover whitens The dead man's knoll, you pass, And no tall flower to meet you Starts in the trefoiled grass,

Halt by the headstone naming The heart no longer stirred, And say the lad that loved you Was one that kept his word.^[23] </poem>

His poem, "Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?", written after the trial of Oscar Wilde, addressed more general social injustice towards homosexuality.^[24] In the poem the prisoner is suffering "for the colour of his hair", a natural, given attribute which, in a clearly coded reference to homosexuality, is reviled as "nameless and abominable" (recalling the legal phrase peccatum horribile, inter christianos non nominandum, "the horrible sin, not to be named amongst Christians").

Housman in other art forms[link]

Music and art song[link]

Housman's poetry, especially A Shropshire Lad, provided texts for a significant number of British, and in particular English, composers in the first half of the 20th century.^[2] The national, pastoral and traditional elements of his style resonated with similar trends in English music. The first was probably the cycle A Shropshire Lad set by Arthur Somervell in 1904, who had begun to develop the concept of the English song-cycle in his version of Tennyson's Maud a little previously. Ralph Vaughan Williams produced his most famous settings of six songs, the cycle On Wenlock Edge, for string quartet, tenor and piano (dedicated to Gervase Elwes) in 1909,^[25] and it became very popular after Elwes recorded it with the London String Quartet and Frederick B. Kiddle in 1917. Between 1909 and 1911 George Butterworth produced settings in two collections or cycles, as Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad, and Bredon Hill and other songs. He also wrote an orchestral tone poem on A Shropshire Lad (first performed at Leeds Festival under Arthur Nikisch in 1912).^[26]

Butterworth's death on the Somme in 1916 was considered a great loss to English music; Ivor Gurney, another most important setter of Housman (Ludlow and Teme, a work for voice and string quartet, and a song-cycle on Housman works, both of which won the Carnegie Award)^[27] experienced emotional breakdowns which were popularly (but wrongly) believed to have originated from shell-shock. Hence the fatalistic strain of the poems, and the earlier settings, foreshadowed responses to the universal bereavement of the First World War and became assimilated into them. This was reinforced when their foremost interpreter and performer, Gervase Elwes (who had initiated the music festivals at Brigg in Lincolnshire at which Percy Grainger and others had developed their collections of country music^[28]) died in a horrific accident in 1921. Elwes had been closely identified with English wartime morale, having given six benefit performances of The Dream of Gerontius on consecutive nights in 1916, and many concerts in France in 1917 for British soldiers.^[29]

Among other composers who set Housman songs were John Ireland (song cycle, Land of Lost Content), Michael Head (e.g. 'Ludlow Fair'), Graham Peel (a famous version of 'In Summertime on Bredon'), Ian Venables (Songs of Eternity and Sorrow), and the American Samuel Barber (e.g. 'With rue my heart is laden'). Gerald Finzi repeatedly began settings, though never finished any. Even composers not directly associated with the 'pastoral' tradition, such as Arnold Bax, Lennox Berkeley and Arthur Bliss, were attracted to Housman's poetry. A 1976 catalogue listed 400 musical settings of Housman's poems.^[30] Housman's poetry influenced British music in a way comparable to that of Walt Whitman in the music of Delius, Vaughan Williams and others: Housman's works provided song texts, Whitman's the texts for larger choral works. The contemporary New Zealand composer David Downes includes a setting of "March" on his CD The Rusted Wheel of Things.

Works titled after Housman[link]

Housman is the main character in the 1997 Tom Stoppard play The Invention of Love.^[31] Many titles for novels and films have been drawn from Housman's poetry. The line "There's this to say for blood and breath,/ they give a man a taste for death" supplies the title for Peter O'Donnell's 1969 Modesty Blaise thriller, A Taste for Death, also the inspiration for P. D. James' 1986 crime novel, A Taste for Death, the seventh in her Adam Dalgliesh series. The title of Nicholas Blake's 1949 detective novel Head of a Traveller is a quotation from Housman's parody Fragment of a Greek Tragedy. The last words of the poem "On Wenlock Edge" are used by Audrey R. Langer for the title of the 1989 novel Ashes Under Uricon. The Nobel Prize winning novelist Patrick White named his 1955 novel The Tree of Man after a line in A Shropshire Lad and Arthur C. Clarke's first novel, Against the Fall of Night, is taken from a work in Housman's More Poems. The 2009 novel Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy takes its title from Housman's poem "Reveille",^[32] and a line from Housman's poem XVI "How Clear, How Lovely Bright", was used for the title of the last Inspector Morse book The Remorseful Day by Colin Dexter. Blue Remembered Hills, a television play by Dennis Potter, takes its title from "Into My Heart an Air That Kills" from A Shropshire Lad,^[33] the cycle also providing the name for the James Bond film Die Another Day: "But since the man that runs away / Lives to die another day".

Works[link]

Poetry collections[link]

• A Shropshire Lad (1896)
• Last Poems: Henry Holt and Company (1922)
• A Shropshire Lad: Authorized Edition: Henry Holt and Company (1924)
• More Poems: Barclays Bank LTD. (1936)
• Collected Poems: Henry Holt and Company (1940)
• Collected Poems (1939); the poems included in this volume but not the three above are known as Additional Poems. The Penguin Edition of 1956 includes an Introduction by John Sparrow.
• Manuscript Poems: Eight Hundred Lines of Hitherto Un-collected Verse from the Author's Notebooks, ed. Tom Burns Haber (1955)
• Is My Team Ploughing
• Unkind to Unicorns: Selected Comic Verse, ed. J. Roy Birch (1995; 2nd ed. 1999)
• The Poems of A.E. Housman, ed. Archie Burnett (1997)

Classical scholarship[link]

• M. Manilii Astronomica (1903–1930; 2nd ed. 1937; 5 vols.)
• D. Iunii Iuuenalis Saturae: editorum in usum edidit (1905; 2nd ed. 1931)
• M. Annaei Lucani, Belli Ciuilis, Libri Decem: editorum in usum edidit (1926; 2nd ed. 1927)
• The Classical Papers of A. E. Housman, ed. J. Diggle and F. R. D. Goodyear (1972; 3 vols.)
• William White, "Housman's Latin Inscriptions", CJ (1955) 159 - 166

Published lectures[link]

These lectures are listed by date of delivery, with date of first publication given separately if different.

• Introductory Lecture (1892)
• "Swinburne" (1910; published 1969)
• Cambridge Inaugural Lecture (1911; published 1969 as "The Confines of Criticism")
• "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism" (1921; published 1922)
• "The Name and Nature of Poetry" (1933)

Prose collections[link]

Selected Prose, edited by John Carter, Cambridge University Press, 1961

Collected letters[link]

• The Letters of A. E. Housman, ed. Henry Maas (1971)
• The Letters of A. E. Housman, ed. Archie Burnett (2007)

Footnotes[link]

Sources[link]

• Critchley, Julian, 'Homage to a lonely lad', Weekend Telegraph (UK), 23 April 1988.
• Cunningham, Valentine ed., The Victorians: An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)
• Gow, A. S. F., A. E. Housman: A Sketch Together with a List of his Writings and Indexes to his Classical Papers (Cambridge 1936)
• Graves, Richard Perceval, A.E. Housman: The Scholar-Poet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 155
• Housman, Laurence, A. E .H.: Some Poems, Some Letters and a Personal Memoir by his Brother (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937)
• Page, Norman, ‘Housman, Alfred Edward (1859–1936)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
• Palmer, Christopher and Stephen Banfield, 'A. E. Housman', The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 2001)
• Shaw, Robin, "Housman's Places" (The Housman Society, 1995)
• Summers, Claude J. ed., The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1995)

Further reading[link]

• Brink, C. O. Lutterworth.com, English Classical Scholarship: Historical Reflections on Bentley, Porson and Housman, James Clarke & Co (2009), ISBN 978-0-227-17299-5.
• C. Efrati, The road of danger, guilt, and shame: the lonely way of A. E. Housman (Associated University Presse, 2002) ISBN 0-8386-3906-2
• Philip Gardner ed., A. E. Housman: The Critical Heritage, a collection of reviews and essays on Housman’s poetry (London: Routledge 1992)
• Holden, A. W. and J. R. Birch, A. E Housman - A Reassessment (Palgrave Macmillan, London 1999)

See also[link]

• The Invention of Love

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: A. E. Housman

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Alfred Edward Housman

• Profile and poems at Poets.org
• Profile and poems at Poetry Foundation
• London Review of Books review of "The Letters of A.E. Housman" 5 July 2007
• BBC Profile 24 June 2009
• "Star man": An article in the TLS by Robert Douglas Fairhurst, 20 June 2007
• "Lost Horizon: The sad and savage wit of A. E. Housman" New Yorker article (5 pages) by Anthony Lane 19 February 2001
• The Housman Society

Works[link]

• Works by Alfred Edward Housman at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about A. E. Housman in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Works by A. E. Housman on Open Library at the Internet Archive
• Free Housman audio readings at Librivox

Arthur Housman (October 10, 1889–April 8, 1942) was an American actor in films during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Career[link]

Initially as a leading man, Housman later became known as Hollywood's most familiar comic drunkard in films of the 1930s, usually playing cameo parts in features but with better opportunities in short films. His best remembered roles were in several Laurel and Hardy films, notably Scram, Our Relations and (in the title role) The Live Ghost. He also played a frustrated timekeeper in the Three Stooges' film Punch Drunks.

Death[link]

Housman's "drunk" act was continued off-screen as well, as he apparently had a drinking problem in real life, and died of pneumonia at age 52.

Selected filmography[link]

• It May Be You (1915)
• The Simp and the Sophomores (1915)
• Back to the Woods (1918)
• Brown of Harvard (1918)
• The Flapper (1920)
• The Bat (1926)
• Sunrise (1927)
• Queen of the Night Clubs (1929)
• Fast Company (1929)
• Scram (1932)
• No More Orchids (1932)
• Movie Crazy (1932)
• Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934)
• The Live Ghost (1934)
• Punch Drunks (1934)
• The Fixer Uppers (1935)
• Our Relations (1936)
• Youth Takes a Fling (1938)
• The Flying Deuces (1939)
• Go West (1940)
• Billy The Kid (1941)

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Arthur Housman at the Internet Movie Database
• Arthur Housman at Find a Grave

This article about a United States film actor or actress born in the 1880s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Dan Savage
Dan Savage in 2005
Born	Daniel Keenan Savage (1964-10-07) October 7, 1964 (age 47) Chicago, Illinois
Other names	Keenan Hollahan
Education	B.A., Theater, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign[1]
Occupation	Author, media pundit, journalist, newspaper editor and sex advice columnist
Spouse	Terry Miller
Children	D.J.

Daniel Keenan "Dan" Savage (born October 7, 1964)^[2] is an American author, media pundit, journalist and newspaper editor.^[3][4] Savage writes the internationally syndicated relationship and sex advice column Savage Love. Its tone is frank in its discussion of sexuality, often humorous, and hostile to social conservatives and Rick Santorum's views on homosexuality. Savage has clashed with cultural conservatives on the right, and the gay establishment, on the left. He has also worked as a theater director, both under his real name and under the name Keenan Hollahan, using his middle name and his grandmother's maiden name.^[5] In 2010, Savage and his husband Terry Miller began the It Gets Better Project to help prevent suicide among LGBT youth.

Personal life[link]

Dan Savage was born to William and Judy Savage in Chicago, Illinois.^[6] He is of Irish ancestry.^[7] The third of four children,^[6] Savage was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended Quigley Preparatory Seminary North, which he has described as "a Catholic high school in Chicago for boys thinking of becoming priests."^[8] Though Savage has stated that he is now "a wishy-washy agnostic" and an atheist,^[9] he has said that he still considers himself "culturally Catholic."^[8][10]

Savage attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied theater and history.^[6] As a theater director, Savage (working under the name "Keenan Hollahan") was a founder of Seattle's Greek Active Theater.^[10] Much of the group's work has been queer recontextualizations of classic works, such as a tragicomic Macbeth with both the title character and Lady Macbeth played by performers of the opposite sex. In March 2001, he directed his own Egguus at Consolidated Works, a parody of Peter Shaffer's 1973 play Equus which exchanged a fixation on horses for a fixation on chickens. Savage has not directed, produced, or performed in any productions since a 2003 production of Letters from the Earth, also at Consolidated Works, his trimmed version of Mark Twain's The Diary of Adam and Eve, which received scathing reviews, including one from his own paper, "My Boss's Show Stinks".^[11]

Savage and his husband, Terry, have one adopted son, D.J.,^[12] and were married in Vancouver, BC in 2005.^[13][14]

Savage Love[link]

In 1991, Savage was living in Madison, Wisconsin, and working as a manager at a local video store that specialized in independent film titles.^[6] There, Savage befriended Tim Keck, co-founder of The Onion, who announced that he was moving to Seattle to help start an alternative weekly newspaper titled The Stranger.^[6] Savage "made the offhand comment that forever altered [his] life: 'Make sure your paper has an advice column—everybody claims to hate 'em, but everybody seems to read 'em'."^[15] Savage typed up a sample column, and to Savage's surprise Keck offered him the job.^[16][17]

Savage stated in a February 2006 interview in The Onion's A.V. Club (which publishes his column) that he began the column with the express purpose of providing mocking advice to heterosexuals, since most straight advice columnists were "clueless" when responding to letters from gay people.^[16] Savage wanted to call the column "Hey Faggot!" in an effort to reclaim a hate word. His editors at the time refused his choice of column name, but for the first several years of the column, he attached "Hey Faggot!" at the beginning of each printed letter as a salutation."^[18] In his February 25, 1999 column, Savage announced that he was retiring the phrase, claiming that the reclamation was successful.^[18]

He has written in a number of columns about "straight rights" concerns, such as the HPV vaccine and the morning-after pill, stating in his November 9, 2005, column that "[t]he right-wingers and the fundies and the sex-phobes don't just have it in for the queers. They're coming for your asses too."

Media appearances[link]

Dan Savage speaking at Illinois Wesleyan University, 2007

In addition to maintaining his weekly column and authoring four books, Savage has been involved in several other projects.

From 1994 until 1997, he had a weekly three-hour call-in show called Savage Love Live on Seattle's KCMU (now KEXP). From 1998 to 2000, he ran the biweekly advice column Dear Dan on the news website abcnews.com.

He is now the editorial director of the weekly Seattle newspaper The Stranger, a promotion from his former position as The Stranger's editor-in-chief.^[19] Savage currently stars in Savage U on MTV, contributes frequently to This American Life and Out magazine, and acts as a "Real Time Real Reporter" on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. He has also made multiple appearances on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 discussing LGBT political issues such as same-sex marriage and Don't Ask Don't Tell.

Podcast[link]

The Savage Lovecast is a weekly audio podcast based on Savage's column Savage Love, available via iTunes and at the Stranger's website for free download. It features Savage doing a call-in version of his sex advice column. It is routinely rated as the top podcast in the iTunes "Health" category.^[20]

Opinions and points of view[link]

It Gets Better Project[link]

Dan Savage speaking at Google about the It Gets Better Project

On September 21, 2010, Savage started the It Gets Better Project in light of the suicide of 15-year-old Billy Lucas, who was bullied for his perceived sexual orientation. The project encourages adults, both LGBT and otherwise, to submit videos assuring gay teenagers that life can improve after bullying in early life.^[21] As of January 3, 2011, the project had over 5,000 user created testimonials.^[22]

Political advocacy[link]

Dan Savage at the 5th Avenue High School Musical Theatre Awards, 2006

Savage has written about his interest in political matters. His political leanings are primarily liberal, with pronounced contrarian and libertarian streaks.^[23] For example, he wrote that in 2000, suffering from the flu while on an assignment for salon.com to cover the Iowa caucuses,^[24] he was so angered by televised remarks in opposition to same-sex marriage by conservative Republican presidential hopeful Gary Bauer that he abandoned his original plan "to follow one of the loopy conservative Christian candidates around — Bauer or Alan Keyes — and write something insightful and humanizing about him, his campaign, and his supporters."^[25] Instead, he volunteered for the Bauer campaign with the intent to infect the candidate with his flu. He wrote that he licked doorknobs and other objects in the campaign office, and handed Bauer a saliva-coated pen, hoping to pass the virus on to Bauer and his supporters (though he later said that much of the article had been fictitious). He also registered and participated in the caucus, which was illegal, as Savage was not an Iowa resident. He was charged and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of fraudulent voting in a caucus, and was sentenced to a year's probation, 50 hours of community service, and a $750 fine.^{[26][27][28][29]}

Savage frequently mentions political issues in his column, particularly issues that affect family planning, birth control, and sexuality. He often encourages readers to get involved and/or voice a positive or negative opinion about a politician or public official.

After Rick Santorum, then a United States senator from Pennsylvania, made comments to a reporter comparing homosexual sex to bestiality and incest in 2003, Savage assailed Santorum in his column. Later, he sponsored a contest that led to the term santorum being used to refer to "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes a byproduct of anal sex".^[30] Savage set up a website to spread the definition.^[31] In 2010, Savage offered to remove his website if Rick Santorum would agree to donate US$5 million to a gay rights group.^[32][33] The organization, Freedom to Marry, advocates on behalf of same-sex marriage in the United States.^[33][34] Savage told Mother Jones in 2010, "If Rick Santorum wants to make a $5 million donation to [the gay marriage group] Freedom to Marry, I will take it down. Interest starts accruing now."^[35] Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, responded in a statement to Metro Weekly: "Support for Freedom to Marry's national campaign would be welcome—and a good way for Rick Santorum to start cleaning up the discriminatory mess he and his companions have made."^[36]

Savage continued the tradition in 2009 by having his readers vote to define saddlebacking as "the phenomenon of Christian teens engaging in unprotected anal sex in order to preserve their virginities",^[37] as a protest against the vocal support given to California Proposition 8 by Rick Warren (pastor of Saddleback Church), and President Barack Obama's invitation to Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. When Savage vowed to boycott Utah due to strong Mormon support for Proposition 8 ("Fuck you, Utah – we’re going to big, blue Colorado"), the Salt Lake City Weekly dropped Savage's column: "all Utahns aren’t to blame."^[38]

Savage strongly supported the war in Iraq in the pages of The Stranger in October 2002.^[39] By the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003, however, he had somewhat softened his argument.^[40]

Savage has also been a vocal opponent of state legislation proscribing the sale of sex toys. After an exposé by Kandiss Crone from WLBT (Jackson, Mississippi) precipitated the arrest and fining of an adult video store owner, Savage suggested that readers send any sex toys that they needed to dispose of to Crone.^[41][42]

Personal opinions[link]

Dan Savage discussing sex education with his brother, Northwestern University Senior Lecturer in English, Bill Savage (2010)

• Savage initially supported the Iraq war and advocated military action against other Middle Eastern states, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, saying, "Islamo-fascism is a regional problem, like European fascism – and the Middle East [has] to be remade just as Europe was remade." One week before the war began, Savage spoke against it, citing the inability of President George W. Bush to form a convincing case and sway the UN and NATO allies.^[40] By 2005 he deemed the situation "hopeless" and advocated an immediate troop withdrawal.^[43]
• He describes his view toward family as "conservative", and his husband, Terry Miller, is a "stay-at-home dad" for the couple's adopted son. He has, however, expressed skepticism of "simplistic" views of monogamy.^[44]
• In response to a letter asking "Is the AIDS crisis over?" Savage, in his October 22, 1997 column, answered simply, "Yes." Several weeks of columns were devoted in whole or in part to discussion of the issue.^[45][46]
• He opposes the tactics of the War on Drugs, and opposes the prohibition of certain controlled substances.^[47]

Views on outing[link]

Savage stated in a column that he favors outing in some cases, specifically mentioning anti-gay activist Tyler Whitney. However, in the same column he noted that "I recently talked someone out of outing a public figure. A Savage Love reader was contemplating outing an innocuous celebrity back in April. I advised him against it because, as I wrote to him privately, outing is brutal and it should be reserved for brutes."^[48]

Local issues[link]

Savage's editorship of The Stranger has established him as a voice in local Seattle politics. His most high-profile commentary has been as an outspoken critic of the Teen Dance Ordinance and other crackdowns on all-ages events.

Savage argues that closing down supervised all-ages dance venues drives teens to boredom and reckless activities: "Places like Ground Zero and the Kirkland Teen Center are invaluable from a law enforcement point of view. They keep kids out of, say, 7-Eleven parking lots or the homes of friends whose parents are away."^[49]

Controversies[link]

In a 2006 interview with the Daily Pennsylvanian, Savage stated that then-Green Party Senate candidate Carl Romanelli, whom Savage claimed was partially funded by state Republicans for a spoiler effect against Democrat Bob Casey, "should be dragged behind a pickup truck until there's nothing left but the rope". In the same interview, he stated, "Mr. Romanelli should go fuck himself."^[50] Immediately after the interview, Savage wrote, "I regret using that truck metaphor, and didn't mean it literally, and it was in poor taste, and I regret it."^[51]

On HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher July 15, 2011, during a panel discussion of the debt limit increase negotiations between the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama, Savage said in a stand-alone remark, "I wish the Republicans were all fucking dead."^[52] He apologized for his remarks on his blog later the same night saying in part, "I don't feel that way. My dad is a Republican. (Well, he says he's an independent, but he hasn't voted for a Democrat since JFK. My dad is a Republican.)"^[53]

Savage has been glitter bombed three times, twice in 2011 and once in 2012, by protesters who alleged that Savage is transphobic, among other accusations.^{[54][55][56][57]} A 2012 Feminist Wire piece argued that the "... the popularity of the [It Gets Better] campaign and its legitimacy depend on the very subtle exclusion of non-white and non-bourgeois bodies".^[58]

Savage came under scrutiny for an April 13, 2012 speech encouraging high school students to, "learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people", prompting some students to leave the auditorium. Savage apologized on April 29 for calling the walkout "a pansy-assed move", saying, "I wasn't calling the handful of students who left pansies (2,800+ students, most of them Christian, stayed and listened), just the walkout itself." Savage stood by the central point of his speech.^[59][60][61]

Works[link]

In addition to his advice column, Savage has written four books, edited one book, and authored various op-ed pieces in The New York Times.

Awards[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Dan Savage

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Dan Savage

• Savage U – Savage's MTV show
• Savage Love – Savage's weekly sex advice column
  • Savage's podcasts
• It Gets Better Project
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Dan Savage at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Dan Savage in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Interview with Kittenpants.org