Maggie Gallagher Denounces Dan Savage

Maggie Gallagher puts her hooves to the NOM blog today to declare that Dan Savage's sexual ethic of valuing honesty over fidelity is going to be a disaster for the viewers of his upcoming MTV show.

There was a thoughtful analysis of [Savage's] sexual ethics in the Washington Monthly recently, for folks who want to get a taste of what he writes. The essay, by a Lutheran Minister, ends by pointing out where Savage ethics lead. A young man, in love with his girlfriend, with whom he has had a rather open and satisfying sexual relationship, but is tempted by more "sexual variety" asks how he can ask for that without ruining his relationship, which he values. Savage, who for all his experience, does not know what women are like, advises him to tell her openly and honestly what he wants, because otherwise the young man will just cheat on her.

The Lutheran minister, wiser in the ways of men and women, suggests that this young man is going to get pretty lonely looking for another woman able to give him all this young woman does--and who doesn't mind his playing around on the side. The possibility of taming one's sexual desire for the sake of another, or of a vow, is not in the Savage moral imagination. Libido will have out, and honesty about that is the best policy. He brings, in other words, the best of gay sexual ethics and experience to a straight audience, with potentially disastrous results.

Sexual ethics lectures from the woman who bore a child out of wedlock. Yup.