Rick Santorum pities the man who glitter-bombed him during a campaign stop in Iowa last week, he told a radio host today.
"I feel sorry for that man that he felt like he was compelled he had to do that," Santorum said, according to The Huffington Post's report on the interview. "Like I do, what I'm supposed to do, is you know, according to our faith, is to pray for them, and I hope people work that out."
Glitter-bombing has spread as a way to protest antigay views, with Santorum and others left covered in handfuls of sparkly paper bits. But the practice got a heated response from the radio show's conservative host, Jan Mickelson.
"When I saw that guy do that to you, I just wish I had been there," Mickelson told Santorum, according to The Huffington Post. He didn't explain what he'd have done but did call out "the gay lobby" for Google-bombing Santorum. Results on the search engine surface an alternate definition of the candidate's last name that has been propagated by activists, starting with Dan Savage, who was outraged by the candidate's comparison of gay sex to bestiality and pedophilia.
"I'm not encouraging people to do this, but if you ever want to see hate, just enter Rick Santorum's name on the Internet," Mickelson said. "If there ever was an example of seething, satanic, wicked hatred directed toward a decent person, it's that."
The glitter-bombing comes in response to a long history of antigay statements, including Santorum's most recent pronouncement that, if elected president, he would seek to invalidate the marriages of thousands of same-sex couples who had already wed.
