Dan Savage Takes An Axe to Sexual 'Identity'

The sexual identity police on the Left can be very choosy about how sexual tendencies can be defined on the LGBT meter. Dan Savage’s latest column includes a letter with a man claiming “I am a 30-year-old straight man who has always known that he is a poly. The woman I love is not a poly,” he complained. She wants him to be monogamous and “betray his sexual identity,” or split.

“You are not ‘a poly,’” Savage insisted in reply:

Poly is not a sexual identity...it's not a sexual orientation. It's not something you are, it's something you do. There's no such thing as a person who is "a poly," just as there's no such thing as a person who is "a monogamous." Polyamorous and monogamous are adjectives, not nouns.

There are only people—gay, straight, bi—and some people are in monogamous relationships, some are in open relationships, some are in polyamorous relationships, some are in monogamish relationships, some are in four-star-general relationships. These are relationship models... not sexual identities.

This seems a little bit arbitrary in the world of Anything Goes, doesn't it? You may behave however you want sexually in Savage World, but the political dictionary is strictly maintained.