With little concern for the tame, academic tone of the conference, she began calling out pornographic myths — like that all women enjoy being on the receiving end of the adult industry’s celebrated “money shot.” “There’s an entire generation growing up that believes what you see in hardcore pornography is the way that you have sex,” she said, adding that this miseducation is only exacerbated by our “puritanical double-standards culture where people believe that a teen abstinence campaign will actually work, where parents are too embarrassed to have conversations about sex with their children and where educational institutions are terrified of being politically incorrect if they pick up those conversations.”

This week, the topic of porn’s impact was raised again in response to a survey reporting that young Italian men reported performance problems related to excessive porn viewing. [Ed. note: Some have called the survey's merit into question. See NSFW analysis here.] So, I decided to give Gallop a call — at her all-black Manhattan “bachelorette pad,” which was formerly the men’s locker room at the historic YMCA — to talk about smut-induced erectile dysfunction, the sex talks parents should be having with their kids and what she really means by “make love not porn.”

What are your thoughts about this survey’s claims about porn’s effect on young men?

When I talk about “Make Love Not Porn,” I always have to explain that the impact of porn as default, stand-in sex education is actually much more fundamental and insidiously ingrained than a lot of people have ever thought. So, in that context, this report doesn’t surprise me at all, because I observe in my own personal experience a number of things playing out that are very much in line with what the report talks about.

Can you elaborate a bit for those who haven’t seen your TED talk or read the e-book version of it?

I’m 51, I’m old enough to remember back in the day when the guys I slept with were extremely keen that I came, that I came first, that I came at least once, if not several times. These days, I don’t come and it’s not even remarked upon. Bear in mind that I date utterly lovely younger men – but this is simply what has been imprinted on them. Because 99.9 percent of all mainstream porn is made by men for men, the entire raison d’être of every single mainstream porn film is to get the man off. As a result, an entire generation of guys and girls is growing up believing that the be-all and end-all of sex is to get the man off.

It always amuses me when people talk about “watching porn” as if it’s like watching any other form of entertainment — because no one’s “watching” porn, they’re wanking. If you are watching several hours of porn per day and night and you are wanking consistently all the way through that, then men can get so sensitized to the way that they bring themselves off that they can no longer [come with a woman]. This is something that I’d observed myself and had corroborated by Dr. Ian Kerner, who runs the website “Good In Bed.” He calls this “idiosyncratic masturbatory syndrome” — a number of his patients struggle with the fact that they can’t come through normal intercourse.

It’s funny that porn is geared toward men, it’s made for them, and yet it can have this negative impact on them.

Yes, let me also say, “Make Love Not Porn” is a gender-equal proposition, because what is being imprinted on men is also being imprinted on women. I talk to 20-something guys who say to me, “My girlfriends are doing everything they see in porn and it’s getting in the way of the real connection.” Girls go into the experience having no idea how to really get fulfillment for themselves, having an enormously difficult time articulating that and believing that their focus has to be to get the man off otherwise they’re not good in bed.

The reason I say that what I’m combating is not porn but a lack of dialogue around it is because if you boiled my entire message down to one thing it would be purely and simply: Talk about it. We all get enormously vulnerable when we get naked. Sexual egos are very fragile and people find it bizarrely difficult to talk about sex with the people they’re having it with while they’re actually having it — because you’re terrified of hurting another person’s feelings or derailing the entire episode. At the same time, you do want to please your partner, so you seize the cues from anyplace you can and if the only cues you have are from porn, then those are the ones you’ll take.

Somewhere I read that you consider yourself not anti-porn but anti-bad porn. Is that right?

Well, I’m pro-porn generally. I don’t judge what is good and bad porn. The issue I’m tackling is not porn, it’s the complete lack of an open, healthy dialogue in our society around sex and porn. Most parents are way too embarrassed to teach their children about sex. Now, back in the day that meant having a conversation about the birds and the bees, about the sheer logistics of what happens. Today, the conversation a parent should have with their children is even less likely to happen, because today the conversation would have to be: “So, darling, I know you’re already online and I know you’ve probably already accessed a whole bunch of Internet porn sites. What I need to say to you is that, actually, a lot of women don’t like being choked and spat on and tied up and gang banged.” No parent is ever going to have that conversation. The need to create an open healthy dialogue around this is even greater now.

This makes me think of the attempts, especially in the U.K., to protect children from pornography (which I’ve written about here). It’s funny, we’re not very willing to talk about sex, but we’re also attempting to censor this default resource for information on sex.

It’s such a wrongheaded move, Tracy, because the answer is not censorship. I completely concur that children should not be seeing these things, but anyone who sets out to try and protect children, block them and censor porn is on a hiding to nothing. The biological chemistry of human sexual desire has outlived all attempts to censor and repress it and always will. If anybody really wants to, the way to address this is to be open and healthy and talk about it — with children, with adults and in the media generally.

We’re seeped in porn and yet we’re not willing to talk about it. How do we begin that conversation?

Well, clearly, what I’m planning on doing is absolutely designed to stimulate that in a very interesting way. I believe in order at all to be effective you have to make the dialogue around this socially acceptable and socially sharable. I believe you have to take all of the dynamics that are out there in social media and apply them to sex, and that’s what I’m planning to do. Everything we’re talking about and everything this latest survey reports on is so endemic that we really have to tackle it in ways that are designed to be equally endemic within popular culture.

With “Make Love Not Porn,” I’m tackling the single biggest impact technology is currently having on the most fundamental aspect of human behavior, which is our sexuality. It actually informs everything about how we feel about ourselves, how we feel about other people, our relationships, our lives and our happiness.

So, I decided to call upon some experts in the fields of sex research and education to help devise a multiple-choice exam for grown-ups, one that incorporates the key knowledge they find most lacking in the real world — but without being a total snooze. After all, you’re busy adults, and some of you no doubt find it difficult enough to make time for actual sex. I hope this will be less a realization of your lingering college exam nightmares than a fun challenge and, by gosh, a learning experience.

Before we begin, allow me to introduce you to my co-quizmistress, Debby Herbenick. She’s a sex educator at the Kinsey Institute and associate director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion, and she was generous enough to let me pilfer questions from her books “Because It Feels Good” and the upcoming “Read My Lips: A Complete Guide to the Vagina and Vulva.” Carol Queen, Good Vibrations’ staff sexologist, and Heather Corinna, creator of the teen sex advice website Scarleteen, also offered some input from the sex-ed trenches. Thank you’s all around.

Now, (stylus) pencils out!

1) A paraphilia is:

a. A fetish for parachuting
b. An incurable sexually transmitted infection
c. A clinical category of sexual disorders
d. A word I just made up to sound smart

2) Abstinence-only education:

a. Delays first intercourse
b. Reduces rates of teen pregnancy
c. Reduces rates of STIs
d. All of the above
e. None of the above — and yet Congress has spent over $1.5 billion on it

3) What is the average duration of heterosexual intercourse?

a. Less than a minute
b. 13 minutes
c. 8 minutes
d. 25 minutes

4) Roughly how many women can orgasm from vaginal penetration alone?

a. 10 percent
b. 20 percent
c. 60 percent
d. All of them, they just haven’t met Mr. Right

5) Non-human animals have been observed doing all of the following EXCEPT:

a. Group sex
b. Same-sex sexual behavior
c. Making dildo-like objects
d. Oral sex
e. “Except” nothing — they’ve done all of the above and then some. Uncivilized animals.

6) What infection is NOT included in most STI screenings?

a. Chlamydia
b. Gonorrhea
c. Herpes
d. HIV

7) How many men have faked orgasm?

a. 10 percent
b. 25 percent
c. 40 percent
d. None — dudes can’t fake it and don’t have to

A woman may experience orgasm as a result of sensory information from which of the following nerves:

a. Pudendal nerve
b. Pelvic nerve
c. Hypogastric nerve
d. Vagus nerve
e. All of the above

9) Which is generally the most pleasure-prone part of a man’s penis?

a. The underside of the glans
b. The top side of the penile shaft
c. The head
d. It’s all the same

10) Which of the following is true about marital satisfaction?

a. It generally decreases after you have a baby together
b. It all goes to hell after the baby’s born
c. It is usually not affected after a couple has a baby together

11) What percent of married adults are largely satisfied with their sexual partner?

a. 54 percent
b. 64 percent
c. 94 percent
d. 0 percent. Married couples don’t have sex

12) Which of the following can reduce the effectiveness of oral contraceptives?

a. Female orgasms
b. Antibiotics
c. Antidepressants
d. All of the above

13) Stop reading, Mom. Approximately what percent of heterosexual women and men in the U.S. have had anal sex?

a. 10 percent
b. 15 percent
c. Trick question! Only gay men have anal sex
d. 25 percent

14) How long does it usually take for symptoms of HIV to appear?

a. Two weeks
b. Six months
c. Two years
d. Over a decade

15) How many women and men feel preoccupied with their sexual performance?

a. 5 percent of women, 10 percent of men
b. 15 percent of women, 15 percent of men
c. 30 percent of women, 50 percent of men
d. 0 percent of women (all they have to do is lie there), 0 percent of men (what’s there to worry about?)

16) A person who has oral herpes (cold sores) can pass the herpes virus to a partner while performing oral sex on them.

a. True
b. False

17) Among young, healthy men who have difficulties getting or keeping an erection, the cause is most often related to:

a. Erectile dysfunction
b. Performance anxiety
c. Peyronie’s disease
d. Phimosis

18) Approximately what percent of couples have experienced sexual problems?

a. 10 to 20 percent
b. 32 to 40 percent
c. 57 to 70 percent
d. 78 to 95 percent

19) Which of the following lubricants can be used safely with latex condoms:

a. Silicone-based lubricants
b. Water-based lubricants
c. Oil-based lubricants
d. All of the above
e. A and B only

20) How many U.S. states grant same-sex marriage licenses?

a. 6
b. 4
c. 10
d. None

21) What is a “gender identity”?

a. It dictates whom a person is sexually attracted to
b. It is a person’s inner sense of maleness and/or femaleness
c. It is your biological sex
d. All of the above

22) Roughly how many men and women have never masturbated?

a. 2 percent of men and 25 percent of women
b. 10 percent of men and 20 percent of women
c. 1 percent of men and 15 percent of women
d. 5 percent of men and 11 percent of women

23) Which is the fastest-growing group of people with HIV in the U.S.?

a. Homosexuals
b. Men who have sex with men
c. African-American women
d. Gay Caucasian men

24) What is the most-visited porn site on the Internet?

a. LiveJasmin.com
b. YouPorn.com
c. XTube.com
d. Spankwire.com

25) Which acts as an abortifacient?

a. Plan B
b. RU-486
c. IUDs
d. All of the above

26) The HPV vaccine can reduce the risk of:

a. Genital warts
b. Cervical cancer
c. Anal cancer
d. All of the above

27) A woman’s virginity can be proven by:

a. An intact hymen
b. Bleeding during first intercourse
c. Both A and B
d. Nothing — it can’t be proven with physical evidence

Pencils down! Now, for the answer key:

1) c; 2) e; 3) c; 4) b; 5) e; 6) c; 7) b; e; 9) a; 10) a; 11) c; 12) b; 13) a; 14) d; 15) c; 16) a; 17) b; 18) d; 19) e; 20) a; 21) b; 22) d; 23) c; 24) a; 25) b; 26) d; 27) d

If you scored between:

18 and 27, you go to the head of the class. Email me and I just might send you a Certificate of Sexual Proficiency.

8 and 17, you’re probably Canadian.

Zero and seven, you likely landed on this page by Googling “free porn” — sorry to disappoint. (See: The answers to Question 24 above.)

The “unsettling” and “graphic” content? The dollies had genitals. Seriously, that was it. In both cases, children were being taught about the age-appropriate topics of basic human anatomy, where babies come from and healthy physical boundaries. I will admit that the images and video made my jaw drop — not out of horror but rather because they are so darned cute. Kids’ natural curiosity and wonderment is an awesome thing to behold — and it should come as something of a lesson, or at least a refreshing reminder, to adults. In that spirit of whimsy and giggly curiosity, we’ve collected images of sex ed toys from around the world — from Switzerland’s dismembered private part plushes to America’s infamous vulva puppet.

View the slide show

2. Anderson Cooper loves that Gerard Depardieu urination story:

Look, we all think it’s hysterical that French actor Gerard Depardieu loves to pee on people on airplanes. But Anderson Cooper really just can’t hold it together on live TV when talking about the incident.  Maybe he needs to go back to journalism school.

(Just kidding, only a robot wouldn’t laugh at this story.)

3. The history of the vibrator, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal:

I’ve always been fascinated that vibrators were created by doctors to cure women of erratic behavior because doctors’ hands were getting too tired. Of course, putting attractive people in the cast of this new film about the subject (aptly titled “Hysteria”) is kind of a stretch: Even in olden times it was a truth universally acknowledged, that a single Hugh Dancy in possession of a good vibrator must service half the women in England.

4. A four letter word for “innuendo during crosswords”:

As it turns out, whenever people ask for help in crossword puzzles in TV or movies, what they are really asking is for social acceptance … and love.

5. “7 Minutes in Heaven” with Hoda:

If you haven’t been checking out Mike O’Brien’s “7 Minutes in Heaven” series, they are pretty genius. It’s not “Between Two Ferns” or anything, and Mike here seems way more like Kenneth from “30 Rock” than a mean-spirited interviewer trying to “punk” celebrities, but he’s very good at being funny anyway! I think it’s his natural instinct to let these performers do whatever the hell they want during the segment, which in Hoda Kotb’s case is definitely drinking red wine and talking crap about Kathie Lee.

His was a blazing, rude voice bursting out in a ’90s culture still weirded out by reports of teens, gays and presidents actually having sex. Along the way, he dropped the “faggot” tag, created a wildly popular podcast, and coined irresistible expressions — from “GGG” (his advice that partners should be “good, giving and game”), to “pegging” and “diamondbacking” (go ahead, look them up) — that are as rudely hilarious as he is. He’s got a show slated for MTV, and he’s emerged as the leading voice not only on sex information but also sexual identity, and may well be the most effective gay rights spokesman around.

And the key is his showmanship. He and his husband, Terry Miller, drove the “It Gets Better” campaign  into the feel-good viral campaign of the YouTube era. But he’s also done well with his hilarious feel-bad campaigns, like his very successful neologism of the word “Santorum,” created in 2003 to shame then Sen. Rick Santorum for comparing homosexuality with bestiality and incest. “There’s no better way to memorialize the Santorum scandal than by attaching his name to a sex act that would make his big, white teeth fall out of his big, empty head,” Savage wrote readers, asking for submissions. A campaign was launched (just try searching the name), and this summer a frustrated Santorum, a GOP presidential candidate, finally was driven to denounce Savage by name on a radio show — a prankster’s purest victory. Savage also recently went after Marcus Bachmann, alleging — relying on nothing more than his trusty gaydar — that the “reparative therapist,” who sports a slight lisp, was probably gay (an idea picked up by “The Daily Show” and  criticized elsewhere).

It should be mentioned that Salon early on was home to a controversial Savage prank: In 2000, we sent him to Iowa to volunteer for the presidential campaign of Gary Bauer. In riveting gonzo style, a flu-addled Savage described being so infuriated by Bauer’s gay-baiting in the press that one night in Bauer HQ he began “licking doorknobs … the front door, office doors, even a bathroom door. When that was done, I started in on the staplers, phones and computer keyboards. Then I stood in the kitchen and licked the rims of all the clean coffee cups drying in the rack.” Conservatives and media mavens condemned both Savage and Salon. Iowa even went after Savage; he ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of fraudulent voting in a caucus, and was sentenced to some probation and community service and given a small fine.

I spoke to Savage last week about politics, President Obama and the latest prank he may well have in store for Rick Santorum.

There’s still a lot to be concerned about. But do you get giddy with the progress you’re seeing?

[Laughs.] Yeah, I actually am! You know, we’re winning.

Anyone who wants evidence that we haven’t won yet just needs to look at the Republican field. You know, we live in a two-party system, and for one party, the only thing they can seem to agree on is hating gay people. They hate us like they hate evolution. Unfortunately, they just can’t wish us away, any more than they could wish evolution away. It’s not a done deal and it’s not sewn up. But they’re now fighting a rear-guard action, while we’re advancing on all fronts.

The heartening thing, even if we are cursed with a President Santorum, which is not going to happen, or President Perry or Bachmann, is what we’ve seen over the past 20 years, under Democrats, there’s been some progress. There’s been great progress since the Democrats got the wake-up call in November of last year, on gay issues, legislatively. But there’s not a lot of regress under Republicans. They seem to shrug and live with it, with gay progress, once it’s achieved.

And yet, increasingly, there seem to be many Republicans who no longer think of it as an issue, who are even willing to lead on it.

Really? Wait, wait, wait. So many? I thought it was three.

[Laughs] OK. Maybe a few more than that, at least in New York.

I think if there are so few that if you fucked them all at once it wasn’t an orgy, but a four-way, you can’t call that a lot.

But even a Michele Bachmann — who has genuinely shocking views about homosexuality — she has to completely muzzle herself on the campaign trail.

Yeah, I mean we’ve been seeing that for 18 years. I think back to Colin Powell, when “don’t ask, don’t tell” passed, before he gave testimony in the Senate in favor of it, had to clear his throat and say that gay and lesbian Americans were good and loyal and brave and true, just like other Americans. But not fit to serve. He had to pass a compliment before he stuck a knife in us.

You’re seeing this sort of — you can’t engage in the kind of vicious demagoguery when everybody loves Ellen. And, more important, 75 percent of Americans have a relative who’s out. So they’re having to — depending on which audience they’re playing to — really  moderate their anti-gay bigotry. You’re not talking about the gay boogey-monster anymore. You’re  talking about Neil Patrick Harris. And you’re talking about my gay nephew. And you’re talking about my lesbian co-worker — who aren’t these monsters. Which is why they’ve had to craft these photo-negative arguments, compared to their previous arguments, where they acknowledge that gay people are contributing members of society — which even Santorum does now — but that marriage needs to be reserved for [straight people].

And it’s hilarious! But I think their anti-gay hatred is just as toxic. They’re just trying to dress it up. What we’re seeing is the Southern strategy, and dog whistles on race, which we’ve been seeing since Nixon. We’re going to get  dog whistles about sexual orientation for 50 years.

One of the things I like about your podcast so much is you do spend a lot of time talking to people outside urban elite areas — you spent a lot of time last year talking about Constance McMillen, for example – where life for gays hasn’t evolved that quickly.

One of the things that was a wake-up call for me last year before the “It Gets Better” campaign — why we launched it, my husband and I — was when I was sort of unaware how bad it was getting out there. You know, in the Greensburg, Indianas, and the Topachakees, Californias, where Constance McMillen was. What I didn’t realize before those suicides opened my eyes, was that as it was getting better in New York or San Francisco or Seattle, it was getting worse out in the sticks, out in mega-church land. Because those of us who are out and urban and fully integrated into our work lives and families, our existence has made it impossible for queer 14-year-olds to fly under the radar in a Greensburg.

When I was a kid, and I was odd, the default assumption was that I was odd, not that I was gay. Now when a kid is odd in a Greensburg, gay or straight, the default assumption is gay. Because my job requires me to be in constant communication with people all over the country who are writing in to “Savage Love,” calling the podcast, I think I’m a little more conscious of what’s going on out there in the boonies — but even I didn’t see that. And that’s a bitter pill for those of us my age to swallow. Us out there leading our lives and being successful have actually kind of made it worse for 14-year-old gay kids in Greensburg, Ind.

Well, made it worse, but that’s part of progress, right?

Absolutely. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t have lived this way, or we shouldn’t have come out. And the people who are most responsible for making it worse are of course anti-gay politicians and anti-gay preachers, and parents, teachers and peers who are persecuting these kids. But we’ve created a kind of hyper-awareness about sexuality and sexual orientation that has let to hyper-scrutiny about those things, in places where people weren’t on the lookout for it before. Everybody’s on the lookout for it now.

It’s going to be hell on that kid from Greensburg before it gets better.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s going to be, unfortunately.

So, Obama. A lot of gay supporters of him obviously feel the same larger disenfranchisement with him that a lot of people on the left feel — maybe even more acutely, because he’s waffled on his language about gay marriage, now claiming that he’s “evolving” on the issue. How do you feel about him?

Well, I think my feelings began to evolve after the midterms in 2010. I think the Democrats saw the writing on the wall, with the percentage of the gay vote going to Republicans [doubling] to 30 percent; donations from gays — gay groups, gay orgs, gay people — to Democrats plummeting; that they realized they could no longer just fob us off with speeches and the occasional appearance with the Human Rights Campaign — that they had to deliver. It wasn’t until after that, that we got “don’t ask, don’t tell” [effectively ended], that they stopped the DOMA appeal. Anyone that argues that this was the plan all along, to pass the DADT repeal at the 11th hour in a lame duck session, a hail-mary pass thrown by Joe fucking Lieberman, is an apologist and an idiot. But we got those things because we began to push back and play hardball.

The gay vote isn’t just gays — my dad … well, my Dad will vote for jackasses … but my siblings won’t vote for anti-gay politicians — the gay vote is our families, our extended families. And the gay vote is bigger than the Jewish vote. It’s bigger than the Miami-Cuban vote. And Jews and Miami Cubans get everything they want. Tremendously powerful blocs. And it was after the November 2010 midterms that we suddenly, in the eyes of the Democrats, overnight morphed into Jewish Miami-Cuban cocksuckers who couldn’t be taken for granted anymore. And they had to give some winners.

So how do I feel about the Obama administration? I’m really very pleased with what’s been delivered. I am not an idiot, and I’m not a Pollyanna sort of kumbaya type. I don’t doubt we wouldn’t have seen these things, that these things would not have been delivered, if we didn’t make it clear there would be a price to pay if they weren’t. Obama “isn’t there yet” on same-sex marriage — if you believe him. And, frankly, I don’t. I don’t think somebody who was for same-sex marriage in ’96 is against it in 2011. And I agree with Tracy Baim, the editor of Windy City Times, who did the interviews with Obama back in the ’90s when he was running for state Senate in Illinois, that we’re not going to listen to what he says anymore, because it’s too aggravating. We’re going to watch what he does. And he’s doing the right stuff.

Not on every front, for LGBT — the gay guy whose partner is being deported. I’ve been screaming about this for two, three years. Janet Napolitano issued a directive saying we’re not going to enforce the Widow’s Penalty anymore, which is where somebody who is not a U.S. citizen — a foreign national marries a foreign citizen — emigrates to America and then their partner dies within a year — they’re supposed to be deported.

It’s a shocking policy.

I guess it’s to disincentivize murdering your new American husband, at least for 12 months. And they don’t enforce it, and it’s the law. She literally said at the time, we’re going to stop enforcement while Congress works on a solution. And we know how Congress smiles on immigrants.

So when’s that solution coming? The same argument, we could suspend enforcement of the deportation of legal spouses of same-sex couples, under the same logic — but we don’t. That’s a failure of the Obama administration. And, the administration says, we have to follow the law. Well, Janet doesn’t, apparently. She has more power and authority than the president, her boss, to address this injustice?

So there are things that are frustrating and galling, still. But DADT, dropping the DOMA appeal, all the little fixes around the edges that they’ve done. All that adds up to something that has to be rewarded. The LGBT movement, I think, doesn’t do itself any favors if we convince our ostensible allies in the Democratic Party that we’re never satisfied. We won’t be fully satisfied until we have full civil equality, but these developments are satisfying and there has to be a payback. It’s a political process.

You were invited to a White House reception, but you wore an “evolve already” button, jabbing Obama for his “evolving” comments. But you support his political pragmatism.

Right. Which means, I went to the president’s reception. I didn’t leap over the rope line to meet him. I’m going to write him a check. I’m going to wear an “evolve already” button, and participate in this kabuki nonsense around his position on gay marriage. What we know about evolution now is there are leaps in evolution. I believe the president will experience an evolutionary leap in January of 2013, win or lose the election. I think we’re going to see a lot of evolution then. And that’s, it’s insulting when somebody says your relationship, your marriage isn’t as important or valid, and your family doesn’t deserve the same protections as everybody else, for political reasons. But we’ve got to play the game. We have to win the argument. And we are — we are playing the game and winning the argument.

You see the polls on marriage equality moving in our favor. Unfortunately, you know, some people say therefore the president should come out in favor of marriage equality. Fifty-one, 52 percent of Americans aren’t for marriage equality in every state. And the overwhelming support for marriage equality in California and New York, and blue states, isn’t going to add up to a victory. I’ve actually written and think that if the president came out for marriage equality now, I don’t think Republicans who are for marriage equality are going to vote for him on that basis, but I do think Democrats who oppose it will vote against him, for that reason. So politically, I don’t think it’s unwise for the president to evolve at the pace he’s evolving right now. But I don’t believe him.

It does feel like there’s this inexorable pull toward gay marriage, ultimately, in every state. That the die is cast.

Remember when abortion was legal in all 50 states? And now, effectively, it’s disappeared from some states.

Everything can be turned back.

Yeah. It’s a little like skirmishes you see with gay marriage are going to play out nationally in really fascinating ways. You have states like Louisiana, that have refused to issue birth certificates for children who were legally adopted by same-sex couples. And they’re violating the law. And you’ve got to sue them at every step.

Were you surprised when Rick Santorum started invoking you? It’s so amazing.

Oh my god. I think, you know, it’s hilarious that all these years later, he’s having to jump down in the gutter with me. Republicans run on victimology. Sarah Palin is a victim, and now Bachmann is a victim, because Newsweek made her look crazy, because she’s never looked crazy in a photo before. And I’m persecuting Rick Santorum, and his own children can’t Google his name. I think it’s hilarious. There’s a reason they used to lock up editorial cartoonists in the 19th century. Because someone who is powerful, or lusts for power, you can really harm him by making him ridiculous. And my readers and I really succeed in making him ridiculous. And Rick Santorum himself ran that ball the last five yards into the touchdown zone when he sent out that [fundraising support] letter to all his supporters. So any of his supporters who had not yet heard about the neologism — and he didn’t spell out exactly what it was — anyone who read his letter who were curious what it might be all ran to their computers and Googled his name.

[Laughs.] And it fills me with delight! What’s funny is, people said: “Oh, ‘It Gets Better’ is anti-bullying, and here you are bullying Rick Santorum.”

Do people really say that?

Oh, abso-fucking-lutely. Oh my god.

That’s amazing.

There’s a difference between taking a piss out of a powerful politician and mocking him, and bullying a 14-year-old kid to death in a rural area. And, Rick Santorum, who wants to reinstate “don’t ask, don’t tell”; have a federal anti-gay marriage amendment; prevent me from going to my partner’s bedside in a medical emergency, which is what that boils down to, when you get down to actual marriage; impoverish my husband and child, should I die, because I’m the sole income in our family; destroy my family. He would prevent me from adopting, if he could, and take our kid out of our home, if he could. He would literally destroy my family. I made a dirty joke at his expense, and I’m the monster.

Now,  you’re issuing “a new definition of Rick,” if he doesn’t lay off gay people during this campaign.

[Laughs.] Well, that was just a joke. It looks like I might have to follow through on it now.

Ricks across the world, watch out.

I get all the credit for “The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.” But it was actually a Savage Love reader that suggested that definition [of "Santorum"] and readers voted from a field of 10 and picked that one. And a reader actually sent in a great definition for “Rick,” that turns “Rick Santorum” into a sentence, that I might actually put in the column next week. So I won’t say exactly what the new definition of “Rick” is, but it’s coming.

OK, we’ll look for that. If you suddenly had a change of heart — or actually, if he did — and you wanted to stop the Santorum campaign,  do you think you really could at this point?

I don’t know. I offered, if Rick Santorum made a $10 million donation to Freedom to Marry, to pull down SpreadingSantorum.com, in the interest of civility, and penance for him. But I’m not sure that would do it.