On Friday's edition of HBO's Real
Time with Bill Maher, sex advice columnist Dan Savage took on
presidential hopefuls Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and former
Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.
Savage is the man behind the
mega-successful It
Gets Better Project, which includes video contributions with a
positive message to gay teens from everyday folks, rock stars
(including Adam Lambert), Fortune 500 companies (like Google and
Apple), politicians (including President Barack Obama and UK Prime
Minister David Cameron) and professional sports teams (such as
Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox).
Despite his fondness for helping LGBT
teens, Savage remains, at heart, an in-your-face sex advice columnist
and gay rights activist, as he reminded everyone during Friday's
appearance.
On the topic of recent allegations that
the Christian counseling center run by Michele Bachmann's husband,
Marcus, seeks to “cure” gay people, Savage said: “You can't
pray away the gay, but you can torture a conflicted closet case to
death.”
And when comic Marc Maron said he hopes
Mr. Bachmann “takes all that rage that comes from repression and
denial into the bedroom with her … and I hope he fucks her angrily,
because that's how I would,” Savage took a swipe at Santorum: “I
sometimes think about fucking the shit out of Rick Santorum … I'm
up for whipping up some santorum in Santorum.” (The video is
embedded in the right panel of this page.)
Savage
was referring to the new definition of “santorum” which he helped
coin.