Rick Santorum, Republican presidential
candidate, wants Google to take down Dan Savage's “filth.”
The Pennsylvania Senator on Tuesday
told POLITICO
that he has contacted the search giant with regard to his “Google
problem.”
In 2003, Santorum spoke out against the
Supreme Court legalizing gay sex in the then-pending case of Lawrence
v. Texas: “And if the Supreme court says that you have the
right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to
bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest,
you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.
Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it
does.”
Savage responded to Santorum's likening
of gay unions to incest by running a contest to define the word
santorum and creating SpreadingSantorum.com, a website dedicated to
promoting the definition.
Santorum (san-TOR-um) n. 1. The frothy
mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of
anal sex.
The site has been so popular it often
ranks high on searches for Rick Santorum.
“I suspect if something was up there
like that about Joe Biden, they'd get rid of it,” Santorum said.
“If you're a responsible business, you don't let things like that
happen in your business that have an impact on the country.”
He added: “To have a business allow
that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or though
their system is something that they say they can't handle but I
suspect that's not true.”
(Related: Rick
Santorum chides Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry on gay marriage.)
A Google spokesperson advised Santorum
to “contact the webmaster of the page directly.”
“Once the webmaster takes the page
down from the web, it will be removed from Google's search results
through our usual crawling process,” the spokesperson added.
Savage has repeatedly fended off his
critics.
“And you have to love how Santorum is
out there mewling about being the victim here and about civility –
this from the man who compared people in stable, loving same-sex
relationships to dog fuckers and kiddie rapists, this from a man who
would make gay and straight sodomy illegal, ban gay marriage and any
other protections for same-sex couples, and prevent loving same-sex
couples from adopting children who need homes,” Savage
wrote on his Slog blog.
“And the Savage Love gang? All
we did was make a dirty joke at his expense.”
“There has been no effort to strip
Rick Santorum of his civil rights, no moves to nullify his marriage,
no one has suggested that his children be taken out of his home, no
one is trying to prevent him from having more children. No one has
compared Rick Santorum to a dog fucker or a pedophile.”