March 19, 2012

Santorum: ‘I’m Praying’ for Dan Savage Who ‘Has Serious Issues’

Rick Santorum and Dan Savage.Rick Santorum (left): <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/6236332889/sizes/m/in/photostream/">Gage Skidmore/Flickr; Dan Savage: <a href="http://nopsa.hiit.fi/pmg/viewer/images/photo_415372751_b8b08c1335_t.jpg">Google Images</a>

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RealClearReligion posted an interview with Rick Santorum on Monday in which the reporter asked the candidate about Dan Savage, the gay sex columnist who held a contest in 2003 to redefine the word “Santorum.” Savage started the contest after the Pennsylvania senator controversially said the “definition of marriage” never included “man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.” The winning redefinition in Savage’s contest for Santorum was, famously, “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.”

Savage’s redefinition took hold, so much so that his “Spreading Santorum” site quickly became one of the top three Google search results for Santorum’s name. It’s since dropped to the eighth result, but the GOP contender still has a major Google problem.

Asked what he’d say to Savage if the two met, Santorum replied:

I would tell him that I’m praying for him. He obviously has some serious issues. You look at someone like that who can say and do the things that he’s doing and you just pray for him and hopefully he can find peace.

I emailed Savage to see what he had to say about that. He wrote back:

Rick Santorum thinks that women who have been raped should be compelled—by force of law—to carry the babies of their rapists to term, he thinks birth control should be illegal, he wants to prosecute pornographers, etc., etc., basically the guy wants to be president so that he can micromanage the sex lives of all Americans…and I’m the one with issues? Because I made a dirty joke at his expense eight or nine years ago and it stuck? I’m the one with issues?

Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

Rick can pray for me. I’ll gay for him. And we can call it even.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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