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52 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Refocusing Our Sights On the Bill of RIghts, November 5, 2002
In Skipping `Toward Gomorrah, nationally syndicated sex advice columnist, Dan Savage brings us an intelligent and reasoned voice of counterbalance to the many current (and extremely conservative) voices that cry out for Americans to "change their wicked ways and return to 'right living.'"
In Skipping, Savage takes the creative route of investigating the Seven Deadly Sins as a lens through which to examine the U.S. Bill of Rights. His "sinning" is far from the real thing in my estimation and his experiences provide for some of the most entertaining illustrations of his points.
Savage does an outstanding job of serving as a voice of counterbalance to the doomsayers among a rather large current crop of "conservatives" who tell us that society is going to "hell in a handbasket", and who set out to limit the rights of others and to define acceptable behavior for all "good" people. While anyone can invite others to a point of view, these neo-conservatives walk all over the Bill of Rights and insist that "good and right living" is defined on their terms and within their definitions of right and good and acceptable, and should be mandatory for all Americans. Those extremes I can live without!
While often hysterically funny in the reading, the content of Skippingh Toward Gomorrah is, at its very heart, a soberingly serious discussion of the intentions of our founding fathers of our country. Savage brings a refreshingly honest voice to countering fundamentalists who -- n the name of morality, decency and all that is supposedly American, feel free to trample all over the Bill of Rights.
Savage accurately argues the dangers of any kind of extremism. At its worst, it is a cancer fermenting within individuals and groups that seems to allow them to presume the right to act in reckless ways in the effort to "control others" beliefs and behavior for the "good of all American people".
The most frightening realization that Savage very plainly articulates is the fact that Americans too easily allow extreme positions to go unchallenged. In a democratic nation where we have voice and vote, we are far too often docile, polite or silent (or absent from the polls) in facing down messages that challenge the foundations of our democracy. We fail to challenge those who tell us how to live, or to defend the foundational principles of our Constitution.
From Jimmy Swaggert to Dr. Laura Slessinger to William Bennett, to Patrick Buchanan, to Robert Bork, we are inundated with non-negotiable voices for "right moral living". Savage, quite accurately, lets us know that when any individual, or group, tells us that theirs is the "only correct view," they become dangerous.
Skipping Toward Gomorrah is a book to be taken seriously. Dan Savage provides us with a thought provoking and insightful books that ask us to question how easily we allow ourselves to be taken in by those who want to run our lives. He urges our greater personal decision-making and participation in the dialogue of the nation. He smartly cautions us on the importance of being unselective on the voices we are willing to listen to in contemporary politics, religion and in the media.
Highly recommended. Savage is an excellent contemporary voice of reason!
Daniel J. Maloney
Saint Paul, Minnesota USA
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40 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Funny 'Gomorrah' States Case for Live and Let Live, October 16, 2002
By A Customer
"Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America" feels like one part travelogue and one part memoir, pieces stitched together with an attack on the "virtuecrats" of the American far right. William Bennett, Robert Bork, Pat Buchanan, Dr. Laura, Jerry Falwell and Bill O'Reilly all take their turn on the chopping block as author Dan Savage traverses the country in search of hot spots where he hopes to commit each of the seven deadly sins. And he nearly succeeds. In one of the book's funniest episodes, Savage calls a prayer line that he found advertised on a Christian cable network, only to be informed that as a gay man who cannot marry, he is doomed to a life of fornication and shall never rise to adulterer status (he is reassured that "fire is fire" and he's bound for hell right alongside the adulterers). "Skipping Towards Gomorrah" is funny. Parts of it are laugh-out-loud funny, but as one would expect from Dan Savage - author of "The Kid," regular contributor to "This American Life," and editor and sex columnist for The Stranger - this book is not for the prudish. It's replete with four-letter words and anatomical descriptions that will make Mom blush, although Savage's forays uncover interesting and entirely unexpected snippets of American culture. Hoping to indulge himself in a little "Falwell-style" gluttony, Savage attends a conference sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) in San Francisco. He soon realizes that the meeting is little more than a thinly-veiled meat market. BBWs (big, beautiful women) attend primarily to try and attract an FA (fat admirer). In Las Vegas, Savage attends the annual Lifestyles Organization (LSO) convention which hosts a weekend of frolicking for more than 3,000, mostly suburban, "playcouples." He calculates that with many such groups across the country, there are more people involved in organized swinging than the entire gay male population, underlining the irony that while swinging is ignored by conservatives as a fossil from the '70s, gay marriage is blasted as an irreproachable threat to the American family. Savage begins each chapter by detailing the historical legacy of one of the seven deadly sins - greed, lust, sloth, gluttony, envy, pride and anger - pulling references from the likes of Dante and Saint Jerome on gluttony and Peraldus, a 13th-century Dominican friar, on envy. He ends each chapter with ruminations on the appeal of the sin. We gamble not because we are greedy, but because our lives are too safe and predictable. We need sloth because of increasingly hectic schedules. Savage does pull a few surprises. He points out that Osama bin Laden and Jerry Falwell harbor similar ideologies. They both hate liberated women, sexual freedom, secular culture and fundamental human rights. But then he goes on to unconditionally support the war on Afghanistan. In the chapter on pride, he offers a strong argument against gay pride, claiming that the gay community has moved far enough forward that simply being out is no longer challenging enough to merit full-fledged pride for most. In the chapter on anger, he begins with a long and eloquent gun rant, only to blow a hole the size of Texas in his argument by admitting that he intends to take up shooting, having discovered in the Lone Star State that, lo and behold, he's a natural shot. "Skipping Towards Gomorrah" conveys the strong impression that it was not written for kindred spirits but for those it attacks. Savage seems to hope that his words will reach - and irritate - his nemeses. He admits to having devoured their books, and his title itself is a play on "Slouching Towards Gomorrah" by Robert Bork. But ultimately, one has to wonder what all the fuss is about. If Bork, Bennett and Buchanan on one side, and Savage and his friends on the other, agreed to simply ignore each other, this country could be a far more quiet and peaceful place. At heart, "Skipping Towards Gomorrah" asks for just that: the freedom to live life as one see fits without having someone else's concept of morality get in the way.
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
About more than just sinning, January 8, 2004
This review is from: Skipping Towards Gomorrah (Paperback)
The title and introduction for this book suggest that Savage will love every minute of his sinning spree. But it turns out that this book 'reads' like seven episodes of 'South Park', where after bizarre and funny events, one of the kids turns around, says "I've learned something today," and goes on to give out the episode's moral. Savage explores his whole opinion of the sin he's indulging in, for and against. In a sense, he's much more honest and 'moral' than the virtuecrats he rails against- he's bothered to learn something about the sins and sinners he comments on. The book is not drop-dead funny the way his sex-advice column is, but you will laugh. You will also see Savage condemn the desire for us to justify doing something that gives us pleasure in other terms, as if just giving us pleasure is not reason enough for people to do things that make them happy. The main message in this book is definitely: If it feels good and you aren't hurting anyone else, do it. The secondary message in this book is definitely: If it doesn't affect you, then mind your own business. While it's not mind-blowing literature, Savage does have some great insights on why we need to ignore the virtuecrats and live our lives in our own ways. This book is for anyone sick of hearing how there's only way to live well.
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