Dan Savage

About

Dan Savage is an American advice columnist and LGBT activist, best known for starting the It Gets Better project.

Online History

Savage Love

The Stranger^[5] began publishing Savage's weekly sex and relationship column, Savage Love, on February 18th, 1999. As of October 2014, Savage has written over 900 columns.

Santorum

Santorum is a term that has been popularly defined as "byproduct of anal sex." It was first conceived and coined by Savage and his readers in an effort to publicly shame the former Republic senator Rick Santorum for the anti-gay remarks he made during an interview with the Associated Press in April 2003. The term still remains as the top result for Santorum's name on several search engines, including Google, Bing and Yahoo, as of September 2011. In an interview with the Associated Press^[1] on April 7th, 2003, Republican senator Rick Santorum expressed his belief that American consenting adults do not have a constitutional right to privacy with respect to sexual acts. He also added that consensual gay intercourse could be government-regulated, similar to how states restrict other sexual acts like adultery, polygamy, child molestation, incest and bestiality in protecting the values of society and the American family.

Upon its publication on April 20th, 2003, Senator Santorum's interview response drew harsh criticisms from the press, civil rights groups and other Democrats, mainly for his unsavory comparison of homosexuality to incest, polygamy and adultery.

One of the staunchest critics of Santorum's remarks was Dan Savage, who took one of his readers' suggestion and organized an open contest on his syndicated blog column "Savage Love"^[2] for people to come up with an unflattering definition for the Republican senator's family name "Santorum." By May 29th, Savage reported that he had received over 3,000 suggestions for the definition of the word. On June 12th, he announced the winning bid, defined as following:

santorum (san-TOR-um) n.
1. The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter
that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.

It Gets Better

It Gets Better Project project is a social media campaign launched by Savage in an effort to prevent suicide among LGBT youth by encouraging gay adults to spread the message that their lives will improve. Since its foundation in September 2010, the project has grown into an international movement with more than 50,000 video messages and 50 million views. The project was founded by Savage in response to the suicides of Billy Lucas and other teenagers like Raymond Chase, Tyler Clementi, Ryan Halligan, Asher Brown, and Seth Walsh who were bullied for their homosexual orientation or suspected to be gay. The project was formally announced on September 21st, 2010 in a YouTube^[1] video titled "It Gets Better: Dan and Terry" featuring Savage himself and his partner Terry Miller.

In the video, Savage and Miller reaches out to teenagers who have ever been bullied for their sexual orientation and tell them that although life may seem difficult now, things will get better in the future as they grow older. The video was positively received within the YouTube community, accumulating one million views and over 200 video responses the first week of the campaign.

Social Media Presence

As of October 2014, Savage's Twitter account^[2] has gained over 200,000 followers and his Facebook page^[3] has gained over 240,000 likes. He has also gained over 30,000 Instagram^[4] followers.

Personal Life

Savage married Terry Miller in 2005.^[6] The couple have a son, born in 1998.

Search Interest

External References