Love, love, love this. So well said! Thank you for the distilling of Savage Love.

" It was a time when too many people were still dying because the US government had refused to study sex or talk about sex in frank ways. Homophobia, bigotry, and silence around sex and HIV/AIDS had pushed people (especially gay and bisexual men) to the margins. Lucky for us all, they pushed back."

What a pile of steaming horseshit.

Homosexuals were not dying from AIDS "because the US government had refused to study sex or talk about sex in frank ways."

Homosexuals were dying from AIDS because they were engaging in unhealthy dangerous behavior that gave them the disease.

It wasn't a lack of knowledge that allowed AIDS to spread.
Reagan made the most enlightened comment about AIDS ever;
"when it comes to preventing AIDS, don't medicine and morality teach the same lessons?''

Long before Gaëtan Dugas crawled into the bed of his 2000th sexual partner society knew how to prevent the disease.

Unfortunately, the homosexual community wasn't up to hearing " talk about sex in frank ways".

What advice does the CDC give about preventing STIs?
The same thing religious traditions had been teaching for 3000 years.
One would almost think Moses was an Public Health epidemiologist.

Self-serving fairy tales don't do anyone any good.
Frank honest talk does.
Can you handle The Truth, yet?

Thank you, Debbie Herbenick, for brilliantly articulating what many of us feel about Dan Savage, his wisdom, depth, and humor. I quote him often in my workshops and have had the pleasure of being his podcast guest a few times. He is the voice we need to hear.