Dear David,

Gee.

I'm sorry about pissing you off by, you know, sharing my opinions and shit like that. But I'm not sorry about cranking up the haters. Yeah, the haters are worked up about Mark Oppenheimer's piece in The New York Times Magazine. Haters gonna hate, as the kids say (or were recently saying), but it's not like Maggie Gallagher is going to sign off on our full civil equality if we just behave.

We're fighting for equal rights, sistergirlfriend, not a very special right to a bullshit double standard. Gay people don't have to be on our best behaviors, as defined by you or Maggie or the Pope, to be entitled to our civil rights. They're called rights, David, and not treats or trophies, for a reason: we don't have to earn or win them. They're already ours, technically, even if they're not yet recognized.

And for the zillionth time: straight people don't have to be married to be monogamous or monogamous to be married. Non-monogamy isn't for everybody, of course, but monogamy isn't for everybody either. And considering the fact that male couples are much less likely to be strictly monogamous*, David, you're not doing the struggle for marriage equality any favors when you embrace the hypocritical arguments of those who oppose marriage equality, i.e. that non-monogamous couples don't deserve the right to wed (but only non-monogamous gay couples; straight couples can do whatever the fuck they want), the choices made by married gays should come in for higher scrutiny than those made by married straights, etc.

Finally, David, I never claimed to speak for you or "the vast majority of same-sex couples who hope to one day be able to be married." (You don't seem to have a problem speaking for them though!) But a majority of the male same-sex couples out there who hope to marry one day are now or one day will be in non-monogamous relationships. We can either legitimize the gays-aren't-monogamous-enough-for-marriage argument by attempting to hide the truth about our relationships, David, or we can neutralize it by pointing out—two zillion times, if necessary—that monogamy isn't a defining characteristic of marriage for straights and it shouldn't be for us either. (People have had a lot to say about the lying, dishonest failed monogamists Bill Clinton, David Vitter, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but no one has ever claimed that these men weren't really married.)

And I've never been unfaithful to my husband. Not once.

La la la,

Dan Savage

* Straight couples are more likely to be monogamous than gay couples, and lesbian couples are more likely to be monogamous than gay or straight couples. Wanna protect marriage from people who are bad at monogamy? Don't let men marry.