"The campaign for the neologism "santorum" started with a contest held in May 2003 by Dan Savage, a columnist and LGBT rights activist. Savage asked his readers to create a definition for the word "santorum"[1][2] in response to then-U.S. Senator Rick Santorum's views on homosexuality, and comments about same sex marriage.
On July 4, 2012, several members of MicCheckWallSt, a subsidiary group of Seattle's larger Occupy Wall Street that formed in December, 2011, anonymously checked into a room at the historic Roosevelt Hotel in Downtown Seattle.