The
campaign for the neologism "santorum" started with a contest held in May 2003 by
Dan Savage, a sex columnist and
LGBT rights activist. Savage asked his readers to create a definition for the word "santorum" in response to then-U.S. Senator
Rick Santorum's views on homosexuality, and comments about
same sex marriage. In his comments, Santorum had stated that "In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be." Savage announced the winning entry, which
defined "santorum" as "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex". He created a web site,
spreadingsantorum.com(and
santorum.com), to promote the definition, which became a top internet search result displacing the Senator's official website on many
search engines, including
Google,
Yahoo! Search, and
Bing.