When older generations think of ABC TV sitcoms, "The Brady Bunch" or "Happy Days" might come to mind.
Now, long removed from the days of Richie Cunningham and Alice the housekeeper, the legacy network is celebrating the life of one of the nation's most provocative homosexual activists.
A feature by the Hollywood Reporter about the new series noted Dan Savage's sex and relationship column and his founding of the LGBT activist group "It Gets Better."
But missing was any mention of Savage's many episodes of vulgar and bizarre attacks on Christians and others of opposing views, such as presidential candidates Gary Bauer, Sen. Rick Santorum and Gov. Sarah Palin.
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Savage infamously has admitted that while suffering from the flu, he volunteered for Bauer's 2000 campaign, licked doorknobs and other objects at a campaign office, and handed Bauer a saliva-coated pen with the intent of passing on the virus to the candidate and his supporters.
When Santorum made a reference to bestiality in a discussion of homosexuality, Savage formed the website “Santorum.com” to create a “Google bomb” to smear the senator, using his name as the definition of a byproduct of anal sex. And he sent a tweet expressing his wish that Palin be stricken with cancer.
The Hollywood Reporter said the new ABC show is "a semi-autobiographical, single-camera comedy" that will follow Savage's younger years and his family's experience after his decision to "come out of the closet."
"What seems like the end of their idyllic life turns out to be the beginning of a bright new chapter when everyone stops pretending to be perfect and actually starts being real," the Hollywood Reporter says of the show, which Savage will executive-produce with Brian Pines and Dan McDermott.
The Reporter noted the Savage comedy comes as NBC is set to launch in March its Ellen DeGeneres-produced comedy "One Big Happy" about a single "gay" woman who expands her family with the help of her "straight" best friend.
'Malicious' plan
In his 2000 column, “Stalking Gary Bauer,” Savage wrote of his fury over Bauer’s stance on homosexuality and described his own “malicious" – "even a little mean-spirited" plan – to volunteer at Bauer’s Iowa campaign headquarters and infect him and his co-workers.
Savage said he offered Bauer the pen and a photo of the baby boy he and his homosexual partner had legally adopted.
“I talked his mother out of aborting him,” Savage said, calling Bauer his hero.
He went further, however. When Bauer staff members were away from the office, wrote Savage, he started "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,” in case his pen-plan didn’t work.
Savage then voted in the Iowa caucus after illegally completing a voter registration form that falsely listed a hotel as his residence.
In a 2011 New York Times magazine cover story, Savage expressed a wish to rape Santorum and bragged about “Google-bombing” to redefine his name.
When Americans for Truth founder Peter LaBarbera, an opponent of "gay"-rights activism, asked Savage to take down the Santorum website, Savage responded, “I’m asking Peter LaBarbera to go f--k himself.”
Savage told the Daily Pennsylvanian in 2006 that Carl Romanelli, a U.S. Senate candidate he didn’t like, “should be dragged behind a pickup truck until there’s nothing left but the rope.” In the same interview, he said Romanelli "should go f--k himself.”
Savage also said on HBO that he “wished all Republicans were f---ing dead.”
When Savage debuted an MTV show in 2012, WND columnist Matt Barber wrote that Savage "lectures teens in high schools and colleges around the country on the benefits of 'non-monogamy,' the occasional 'three-way' tryst and any other disease-spreading sexual impulse that might cross their impressionable, hormone-charged young minds (and many they can’t yet imagine)."
In 2012, as WND reported, Savage told a group of high school journalism students, “We can learn to ignore the bullsh-- in the Bible about gay people,” then taunted the teens who stood and walked out of the room as he ranted.
“It’s funny to someone who is on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible how pansya--ed people react when you push back,” he said.
Some of the girls left in tears.
Savage's group “It Gets Better” claims it helps homosexual teens survive bullying, but as Fox News reported, some of the students "felt like the anti-bullying activist was in fact the bully.”
“It took a real dark, hostile turn, certainly, as I saw it,” teacher Rick Tuttle told CNN. “It became very hostile toward Christianity, to the point that many students did walk out, including some of my students.
“They felt that they were attacked … a very pointed, direct attack on one particular group of students. It’s amazing that we go to an anti-bullying speech and one group of students is picked on in particular, with harsh, profane language.”
'Obama likes my message'
Savage has touted the White House website's listing of his "It Get's Better" project as proof that President Obama supports his message.
“That meant,” Savage said in a video, “the president of the United States was telling queer kids, ‘There’s something wrong with your parents, there’s something wrong with your preachers, there’s something wrong with your teachers, and f--- those people!’”
In the video, he blasts followers of Jesus as “spiritually abused," wishes Republicans would die and refers to politically conservative Christians as “pieces of s---.”
In a 2012 lecture series at Winona State University in Minnesota, he accused Family Research Council President Tony Perkins and other Christians of wanting homosexuals dead.
"Tony Perkins tells the parents of queer kids to do what he damn well knows drives those kids to suicide," he said.
“Every dead gay kid’s a victory for the Family Research Council,” he said. “They argue the gay lifestyle is sick and sinful and dangerous and point to suicides … [then they] do everything in their power to make sure that suicide rate does not come down.
“Tony Perkins sits on a pile of dead gay kids every day when he goes to work.”
He accused Christians of hatred.
“Isn’t it enough God’s going to roast me on a spit in hell for all eternity … You don’t believe that is going to actually happen [so] you want to persecute me now … just in case. Can you just trust that Jesus hates me as much as you say?”
In a May 2013 tweet, Savage wished cancer on Sarah Palin when she used chewing tobacco as a stunt in her address at the National Rifle Association convention.
"Woke up to Sarah Palin’s voice. She’s taken up chewing tobacco now cuz LIBRULS or Bloomberg or something. Now seeing upside of oral cancers."