"What the moaners and groaners at the Republican National Convention, Fox News, and on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal refuse to accept is that freedom isn’t a one-way street. It’s not even a two-way street. Freedom is space, weightlessness, room to maneuver, to go your own way. It’s people blasting off in all directions. We should agree to disagree about certain things like say, drug use or premarital sex, and, when necessary, establish reasonable rules to prevent people from slamming into each other—such as laws against assault, rape, and murder, laws that set an age of consent for sexual activity, laws against drinking and driving. Beyond these simple rules, however, the freedom to pursue happiness must be regarded just as Thomas Jefferson described it—an inalienable right, God-given—or all our rhetoric about freedom is meaningless."

Dan Savage. Skipping Towards Gomorrah, p. 12.