Dan Savage

A syndicated sex-advice columnist shares his coming-to-terms with the public act of marriage and how it affects the gay community, in a memoir that describes the legal and personal ramifications stemming from his own efforts to pursue a faithful relationship.

Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family

The Commitment

Matthew Royal

Surprisingly clean and insightful, coming from Dan Savage. I was expecting a lot more profanity and explicit sexual references. This book is a serious discussion of marriage coming to us from the George W Bush years -- what it means to different people, what it means to have a "successful marriage," and why some groups keep changing the definitions in order to prevent same-sex ones.

The thought that sticks with me is that the success or failure of a marriage is determined by death. When one of the people in a marriage dies, others say they had a successful marriage, irrespective of the quality of the marriage. Even if they are depressed alcoholics, miserable about the way their lives turned out because of their spouse's decisions, so long as they don't escape alive, the marriage was a "success." 

Savage approaches marriage with a critical eye, but ends up embracing it, with some caveats. Ultimately he considers it a sign of taking adult responsibility, and a token of significant trust in your partner. I'm not sure his conclusion is novel, but his perspective is, and reading it helped as a sounding board for evaluating my own thoughts.

The Commitment Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family

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