The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family by Dan Savage

read by Paul Michael Garcia

Published in 2005, The Commitment is a snapshot of a time in our country’s life as well as famed sex-and-relationship-advice columnist Dan Savage’s life. A decade before June 26, 2015, when the United States Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage and legalized it everywhere, there was still a lot of very contentious debate on the topic—not least among those most directly affected by it.

For example, there was Dan Savage, his boyfriend Terry Miller, and their son, DJ, aged 6 at the time. None of them wanted Dan and Terry to get married. At least, Terry doesn’t want to get married; not because he isn’t committed to Dan and their son, but because he doesn’t want to “act straight.” He’d rather they get matching “property of” tattoos. 

And DJ is against it because, in his six-year-old worldview, boys don’t marry each other. (Never mind quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.) Plus he doesn’t want to be there when his dads say mushy things to each other and kiss in front of everyone. But he wants cake. If there’s going to be a wedding, he’s definitely going to want some cake.

But Dan isn’t sure. Marriage does seem pointless when there’s no legally-binding aspect of it and you’re an atheist. On the other hand, his Catholic mom would be beyond thrilled. Plus he’s already planning a ten-year anniversary party—the anniversary of his and Terry’s first date—and he wants everyone in the family to travel to Seattle for it, and to take it as seriously as they take other major family events. And it’s not like he’s going to be leaving Terry.

So he sets out, in his somewhat contrarian way, to explore the issue. He takes his little family to a summer camp for kids with queer families, so DJ can see that other kids *do* have parents with matching genders. The following summer, he brings his whole family along—mom, siblings-and-partners, everyone. He has conversations with them about why they have or have not chosen to marry and/or have kids, he has debates with Terry about the drawbacks and virtues of marriage and tattoos and how best to plan for their anniversary party.

The most interesting conversations he has, to me, are the ones he has with his older brother, Bill. I realized while listening to Dan recounting them just how much his philosophies on life, sex, and relationships are informed by Bill’s. In fact, many of Dan’s most regularly-repeated nuggets of wisdom come directly from the conversations about marriage that he had with Bill that summer.

In case you’re not already a Dan Savage fan and don’t already know how the story ends, I won’t spoil it for you. Whether you’re already one of his readers or listeners or not, though, I do  highly recommend this book. It’s an interesting and very personal and journey through what the politics of DOMA and the religious right put families through, and it’s told with clarity, frankness, and (sometimes self-deprecating) humor. It’s no longer ripped-from-the-headlines current, but it’s an important piece of (recent) LGBTQ+ history and a moving story.