Google to Santorum: We Won't Change the Double Meaning

Google shut down a request from arch-conservative presidential candidate Rick Santorum after he asked the Internet search engine to help him with his "name problem," i.e. when you search "Santorum" on Google, a description of an unfortunate sexual side effect appears.

Columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage named the mix of lubricant and fecal matter, caused by anal sex, "Santorum." It quickly caught on, with bloggers linking mentions of the candidate's name to the alternate definition, and is now it's the first description appearing on Google whenever someone searches for "Santorum." The antigay Santorum has long complained about the issue and told Politico that he recently brought it to Google's attention.

"I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they'd get rid of it," Santorum told Politico. "If you're a responsible business, you don't let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country."

But Google said it's not their responsibility to fix Santorum's problem; he needs to go to each individual webmaster that has used "Santorum" to describe the sexual substance and ask them to remove it. Google says it merely culls those descriptions.

A spokesperson for the company told Politico it does not "remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content and violations of our webmaster guidelines."