I feel badly for all innocent relatives and folks whose surname is Santorum who have been annoyed years now by this embarrassing sophomoric and depraved Internet stunt - including Rick himself.

@1,
Maybe you could get revenge by equating Dan's last name with something else? Perhaps redefine it to be: "mean, primitive person?"

@1: Yes, truly a shame that some people were annoyed. Sure, Rick Santorum wants to strip people of their civil rights and make them second class citizens, but he does not deserve to be annoyed! That would be the true crime: annoying a wealthy Christian male. They have things so bad, after all.

@3: Then tackle political adversaries, like Rick, using conventional means, e.g. protests at speaking engagements, editorials, blogs, financial contributions to opponents, etc. Maligning the Santorum family name does nothing help LGBT rights or same-sex marriage.

Dan, Stop fucking posting clips from Comedy Central unless you can turn off auto play.

@5 Maybe you could use a better browser. It doesn't autoplay on Win8 Chrome.

And, Dan, never stop posting clips! This one was a blast. And yes, some savage love readers are geniuses. But, then there are those like raindrop...

@6 Um, I am using Chrome on Windows 8. Thanks for playing.

@4 - First of all, it's a little late now. The Santorum meme has entered the zeitgeist. Secondly, yes, it does help. Anything legal and non-violent action that reduces that asshole's chances of making policy on *any* governmental level is to be encouraged. And it only works because his last name is uncommon and distinctive; there are maybe a hundred 'Santorum"'s in the US, probably less. And finally, the meme is likely to die when Rick Santorum dies.

Shorter #4: "A bigoted candidate for president I like was waylaid by an internet joke, and it is unfaaaaaaaair!!"

Talking about decency and "fairness" in politics is rich coming from you by the way. Remember when you were just yelling BHENGAZI! all over the place?

@4 If Rick Santorum doesn't get elected president then it does help LGBTers and every American. You can grab at your pearls and faint like a dowager if you wish but you can quit pretending that ridiculing politicians with crude humor is somehow a novel thing that Savage Love readers invented. It's an American tradition that goes back as far as apple pie.

Once again, Raindrop proves that he has about as many brain cells as... a raindrop!

Need I remind Raindrop (or anyone else) that Santorum is against non-procreative sex in general, meaning that, if he had his way, he would criminalize all homosexual sex acts and a great many heterosexual acts as well. He has also come out against contraception, saying that it's an enemy of a healthy stable society and saying that, as president, these were issues he would want to address. If you want a Sexual Gestapo in the White House, elect Ricky, but otherwise, I'd say it's bad news for everybody when Santorum runs. Here's the link, btw: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/04/22/…

@10 - Right, like that profane pornographic Andrew Jackson tweet. He tried to recall it but it was too late.

The effects of our actions are exponentially more potent nowadays.

@11: The homophobia of Rick Santorum is not related to my point. You're unable (or unwilling) to look at this from a macro perspective.

Rick Santorum has no more chance of being president than Bernie Sanders. Neither could in any likely scenario get enough party support to be anything but a sideshow. Although, to be fair, Sanders is far more extreme and unelectable than Mr. Santorum. Regardless, Mr. Santorum won't be running for office in Washington state so his views aren't really any concern of Savage. He currently holds no policy making office or job at any rate, so again, Savages attacks on his wife, children, parents and others who bear his name are vile in that sense as well.

So yeah, two things are true. First the vile and vulgar attacks on the man and his family, as opposed to his then policy positions, were the attacks of a degraded and depraved coward and bully. Or in the case of those perpetuating them, cowards and bullies. And if some tenuous half baked excuse for them ever existed for Mr. Santorum the policy maker and potential president, they do not now exist for Mr. Santorum private citizen. And of course no excuse exists or existed. If you are all so right, if the public is foursquare begind you, if you hold the moral high ground- why then you wouldn't need to stoop to playground bullying, would you?

But Savage is a cowardly sick bigoted and hate filled bully, so I suppose it's all he knows.

While it might seem reasonable to sympathize with those who bear the Santorum surname, couldn't the same be said for everyone named John? Let's face it, there are a hell of a lot more Johns in the world than Santorums and the neologism of John to mean toilet is used & known by a great many more people than those who've ever heard of Santorum...or santorum.

@16: Doesn't it just drive you crazy how much more successful and influential Dan Savage is than you cold ever hope to be? Doesn't it just burn your ass that Savage's viewpoint on culture is becoming the norm, and yours has all but been dropped from civil society?

Because you keep carrying on and lashing out like a small child who is desperately trying to convince himself of something. Stop being such a whiny little crybaby.

The bumper sticker needs an apostrophe in front of 16, instead of an open single quote.

@16: It's funny how you alternate between appealing for civility in discourse and accusing us of being insane columnist-worshiping barbarians trying to tear down civilization. It's always interesting to see whether we'll get Dr. Seattle or Mr. Blues.

@18: In other words, the annoyance and irritation of other Santorum surnamed people is acceptable collateral damage? Yes or No?

@23: Yes, duh. According to the US Census, there are 119 people with the surname Santorum in this country. You have to find one who has been harmed by the neologism before you can claim there is collateral damage at all.

I know you can't stand it when people ask you to do this, but prove your assertion.

@24: The number of people doesn't matter. Hence you're asking me to prove something that has nothing to do with my point.

@25: To me, it's unethical to disperse the target of the protest to other people whose only association is a common surname.

Sucks to be one of innocent Quislings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quisling

@29: To me ethics is binary, to you it seems to be analog.

Hee hee! People like Raindrop and Seattleblueballs are so funny. And so, so antiquated. They're going the way of the dinosaurs. But not with dignity, like the dinosaurs.

@21: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. The bumpersticker's apostrophe is pointing the wrong way! I'm glad to see I'm not the only preefrooding nitpicker around here.

@33: Then let me explain it for you. Either something is ethical or it is not (1 = Ethical, 0 = Unethical (or visa versa - it doesn't matter). That's binary. My reference to analog pertains to the miss-guided notation that you can dial the ends-justify-the-means and morality-is-relative levels so that they accommodate your prevailing narrative of self-pity and victim-hood.

@36: There are absolutes in life, believe it or not. Ethics is one of them. Parties can certainly disagree as to what is ethical. Nevertheless ethics are, indeed, black and white. It is unethical to incorporate blameless individuals and malign a family name for the transgressions of only one member of that family, its it not?

@26: You said there were damages, I asked you what damages. But once again, you can not back up anything you say, and so you have to claim rhetorical "victory" by bravely refusing to prove anything.

@10 is correct. Politics never was for the faint hearted. "Ma,ma, where's my Pa? He's in the White House, ha ha ha!"

@38: Let's be clear. You want me to prove that maligning a family name is damaging? By what form factors do you want such proof? How could you validate such quantifications?

You can certainly assert that ethics are binary, Raindrop, but I doubt you could demonstrate such. Moreover, if you concede that parties can disagree as to what is ethical, you are essentially taking a relativist position, unless you go on to assert that some Platonic notion of Ideal Form(s) or (G/g)od(s) of some form or fashion act as arbiter of right and wrong.

Of you really need someone to elucidate Theodore's question--that is, of we offer benefit of the doubt in assuming you're not being deliberately obtuse--I, for one, am not sure that satirically associating a name with a body product for the sake of a vulgar punchline amounts to maligning a family name, at least not by any meaningful metric.

@41:

--I, for one, am not sure that satirically associating a name with a body product for the sake of a vulgar punchline amounts to maligning a family name, at least not by any meaningful metric.

Because your last name is not Santurm, your statement here is meaningless.

@35 Please do the world a favor (and destroy your worldview in the process) and go do some research on philosophy before you dig a deeper hole to bury yourself in. Agreed upon public ethics CAN indeed be binary but usually isn't. Personal ethics are the one that are ALWAYS binary because I simply cannot act in ways that violate them. You can't either. Even an outright sociopath has his (or her) own ethical system that he can not violate. Interestingly enough, ALL personal ethics allow you to lie to people that don't exactly share your ethics. At last count that is over 7 billion people that your personal ethics allows you to lie to. Whether or not you actually lie to everyone is up to you on a case by case basis. And let us not get into the expediency over-ride in your personal ethics. Altho that does fit in with your ability to lie to everyone who doesn't have the same personal ethics you have. (i.e. everyone else on earth).

Basically I am saying you should leave ethics out of this discussion. They don't mean a thing in this context. My personal ethics are most certainly not your ethics. I think mine are superior to yours but everyone thinks that theirs is superior to everyone else's. Think about it.

There are many, many names that are under certain circumstances used in a way that can be unpleasant or embarrassing to the name-holder. Johnson, a very much more common name than Santorum, for example, is also a slang word for penis. Does that mean that if one uses the term "johnson" in its familiar slang variant, that one has done some moral damage to all with that name? How about Peter or Willy? Sorry, but name jokes in a sexual or scatalogical vein are as old as the species. Satire directed at the famous is also as old as at least the written word. So I don't see the Santorum definition (note the spelling, raindrop!) as maligning all with that name in some morally repugnant way. Lots of people have to put up with their names being a punchline in some way, and they shrug it off because really, what is the choice?

@45: True, my saying it is unethical and others saying it isn't - is a stalemate in the sense you describe. But that doesn't mean that it's not a matter of ethics in the first place.

Oops 46 refers to 44.

@1 No you don't. Seriously. I don't think you care about anyone but yourself. Sure, you can hand-wring your worries over those 'poor, poor, people' who are maligned somehow someway by something that some gay people do. But seriously, I've been reading your words for years now, and you have never, ever, given me the impression that you care about or have any empathy for anyone besides yourself.

I actually know someone with the name Santorum. He's a decent, non-bigoted human being with a sense of humor. He thinks the whole thing is hilarious.

Oh raindrop. Such a sensitive soul.
Hope he does run. That bumper sticker is great. I want one.