Rick Santorum was a public figure, his name is fair game.
Sure, "fair game", whatever, how can you "censor" a grassroots parody/mockery like this? Part of the game was, it wasn't actually stoppable in any meaningful fashion.
It seems rude, unethical, puerile even, to do this name-calling and dragging through the mud, if you will, and it was perpetrated/spearheaded, so to speak, by a journalist whose morals and platform encouraged that sort of tactic.
I don't think "censorship" was a solution to that incident, and since Mr. Santorum was a politician then "fair game" is a meaningless circumscription.
But perhaps the whole episode should reflect more on the character of the originator, rather than the target?
Dan Savage would howl with laughter at the notion of being called a journalist. The morals and platform of the target did most of the work.
It's nevertheless true that Savage didn't need to be a "journalist": he enjoyed a bully pulpit, a sizable cadre of fervent followers, and a powerful platform to launch his activist projects, and in the modern climate, a lot more sympathetic in mass media circles than Santorum's socially-conservative views and policies.