Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has labeled Dan Savage's comments on 'Bill Maher' filth.

On Friday's edition of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, Savage, a sex advice columnist, took broad swipes at Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Santorum, the two most anti-gay candidates in the GOP 2012 presidential field.

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, often called Santorum's Google problem because even after nearly eight years it continues to rank high on the search engine's results. The definition links Santorum to anal sex.

Santorum appeared Monday on WOR radio's Steve Malzberg show.

“It's filth,” Santorum said of Savage's jokes. “It's, you know, this man has gone out there and tried to destroy my integrity. I mean, you've heard the whole issue of the Google issue. That's Dan Savage. You know, it's the lowest debasement of public discourse. It's offensive beyond, you know, anything that any public figure in America should tolerate, and the mainstream media laughs about it. They kid about it. They write about it. They say, 'Oh, Santorum has a Google problem.'”

The former Pennsylvania senator added that Savage was out to “intimidate” him.

“[T]his is about intimidation,” he said. “To ultimately see this is about intimidating anybody who stands up against them. You stand up against them, they will intimidate you, they will use vile things, and the media will applaud them, and you will be ostracized in society. That's their objective.”

Santorum neglected to mention he started the feud in 2003 when he likened gay unions to “man on dog.”