Thursday, January 19, 2012

Wading in Sex/Combat

from Washington Monthly

Wading deep into the free-fire zone of modern sexuality, he has codified a remarkably systematic—and influential—set of ethics where traditional norms have fallen away.

Bejnjamin J. Dueholm offers a terrifically incisive critique of sex advice columnist Dan Savage. The author of Savage Love has saved more marriages then any priest in America, argues Dueholm, not because he has dispensed with old sexual mores, but because he has helped codify new ones. The climax of the piece is Dueholm's comparison of Savage's more liberated world with the deregulated, hyperconsumerist contemporary marketplace.

And I really liked being stopped dead in my tracks by the image of the openly gay columnist bravely immersing himself in a kind of violent sexual swamp.