Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said he is "praying" for gay rights activist and syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage, who launched a campaign to redefine the former Pennsylvania senator's last name into a sexual neologism, in an interview with the website RealClearReligion published Monday.
When asked what he would say to Savage, he said, "I would tell him that I'm praying for him. He obviously has some serious issues. You look at someone like that who can say and do the things that he's doing and you just pray for him and hopefully he can find peace."
Savage responded to Santorum in a blog post on the website of The Stranger, a Seattle alt-weekly.
"The man who wants to get his hands on the nuclear football so he can micromanage your sex life [...] thinks I have issues," he wrote. "That's hilarious."
He added that Santorum seems to spend an "inordinate amount of time" thinking about other people's sex lives.
Savage targeted Santorum over his infamous comments in 2003 on homosexuality and "man on dog" sex. A website linking his name to a sexual neologism was created and rose to the top of search engine results. His presidential campaign has made the site fall somewhat in search results, but it still remains near the top of Google results for his name.