Salt Lake Weekly Fires Dan Savage for Utah Boycott

[kpete]

Source: The Village Voice

Salt Lake Weekly Fires Dan Savage for Utah Boycott; Voice Protests
Posted by Roy Edroso at 11:46 AM, November 13, 2008

People outraged at Mormon support of California's anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 have started boycotting Utah, home of Prop-8-financing Mormons. Now Utahns are striking back: The Salt Lake City Weekly is dropping sex columnist and fierce Prop-8 opponent Dan Savage.

The Weekly is mad that the popular syndicated author has flipped off the Beehive State and announced he and his boyfriend won't be vacationing there ("Fuck you, Utah -- we’re going to big, blue Colorado").

The Weekly says "all Utahns aren’t to blame," points out that noxious gay-hater James Dobson runs his Focus on the Family Forum in Colorado, and says Savage should, for the good of his cause, spend more rather than less time in Utah -- "Imagine Martin Luther King Jr. not marching in Selma" -- before announcing that "If you're a fan of Savage's column, you won't find it on our Website any longer... there's no point in us playing in his sandbox by sending him a regular check."

Runnin' Scared and the Voice are astonished that the paper would defenestrate Savage on the basis of his views -- especially when those views are entirely predictable from the tenor of his previous work. (Did they actually expect Savage to be gentle about a major gay-rights issue?) We can't think of another alt-weekly that would do such a thing and, till this happened, never expected it of the Weekly. The Voice retains the services of Nat Hentoff, an out-and-proud abortion rights opponent, even though nearly everyone on our editorial staff is ferociously pro-choice. And though Runnin' Scared itself has advocated arboricide and rodenticide, we have not been dismissed to spare the feelings of our tree-hugging, PETA-supporting readers, management or advertisers. That will come later, when they see our expense reports.

Read more: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2008/11/salt_lake_weekl.php

[Ian David]

1. Dan Savage was published in Salt Lake City?

If they fire him, he'll lose BOTH members of his Utah audience.

[sofa king]

3. People can read in Salt Lake City?

Had to take the shot.

[David__77]

5. I like Salt Lake Weekly.

There are plenty of progressives in SLC. I like the place personally. My former partner and I spend a lot of time there, and the I really liked the gay people I met (more than the ones here in CA!). So I'm sympathetic to some extent with the whole "don't blame all Utahns" thing. But really, they should understand. They're living in the belly of the beast.

[customerserviceguy]

7. I used to live in Utah for a few months in 2005

and SLC is OK. It's the suburbs of that city that you really need to focus on, while Utah as a whole is 70% Mormon, those suburbs are more like 95%. You rarely saw a Lutheran or Catholic church in them, although those two denominations could be found in SLC itself.

[TlalocW]

2. That's a faulty thought experiment - "Imagine MLK Jr. not marching in Selma"

If the GLBT community decided to not boycott Utah, that would be like the Black community in the 1960s not boycotting the bus company over their treatment of Rosa Parks.

TlalocW

[Unvanguard]

8. No, it would be more like boycotting the entire South.

Company boycotts are targeted. This one is indiscriminate.

(Defensible, yes. But broad enough to make me a little uncomfortable.)

[ogneopasno]

4. Hardly a "firing" -- dude writes out of Washington. What a dumb headline.

[GentryDixon]

6. SLC Weekly not to blame

I personally know the president and founder of the Salt Lake City Weekly. He and his wife are respected members of the Greek Community of Salt Lake and the progressive movement of Utah. He has long been a thorn in the side of the Church. I agree with his analogy of the misplaced logic for boycotting the state. Good on you, John. I live in Utah, and I supported the anti-Prop 8 movement, so I don't appreciate being painted with the broad brush Mr. Savage used.

[Pastiche423]

9. Then move