Savage reacted strongly to United States Senator Rick Santorum's statements about homosexuality in an interview with the Associated Press published April 20, 2003. (See Santorum controversy for the details.) In the interview, Santorum describes gay sex as part of a class of deviant sexual behavior, including incest, polygamy, and bestiality, which he said threaten society and the family. Furthermore Santorum stated that he believed consenting adults do not have a Constitutional right to privacy with respect to sexual acts.
Savage was outraged by these statements. At the suggestion of a reader, Savage challenged his audience to come up with a sex-related definition for the word santorum as a satirical form of political protest for the express purpose of "memorializ[ing] the Santorum scandal […] by attaching his name to a sex act that would make his big, white teeth fall out of his big, empty head".
After Savage published several definitions suggested by readers, a vote was taken among the readers of his column. The winning definition: "the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex" was announced in the June 12, 2003 column.
Fans of Savage (among others) have made a concerted effort to make the newly coined term a part of the English language, setting up a web site[3] for the purpose and employing Google bombing to drive that site to the first result slot for a Google search on "santorum".
At its annual meeting in January 2005, the American Dialect Society selected "santorum" as the "Most Outrageous" word of the year 2004. The Economist magazine referenced "santorum" in a January 5, 2006 blurb about Rick Santorum. The Daily Show also referenced the term in its July 12, 2006 episode.
