At last night’s Fox News/Google debate, Stephen Hill, an openly gay soldier, asked Rick Santorum if during his presidency, he would reinstate “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the military policy that barred openly gay service members from serving.
Santorum’s response — he said he would and added gays get “preferential treatment” — was almost as shocking to many as the audience response. The crowd loudly booed the soldier and cheered Santorum.
People took to their keyboards this morning, weighing in their disapproval of Santorum and the crowd’s response to Hill.
Blogger “One Angry Queer,” Ian Finkenbinder, started a petition on Change.org, asking Santorum to publicly apologize to Stephen Hill. The petition currently has just over 1,000 signatures. GOProud, a gay rights group Republican group, issued a press release also demanding Santorum’s apology.
But Santorum was the clear winner of last night’s GOP debate, according to a NY Daily News poll being conducting on their site, though this may be an act of “trolling,” or pranking, by the Internet community to call more attention to Santorum’s controversial comments.
“It’s fun to watch each of these right wing screwballs fight over who is the most EXTREME right winger, the one most likely to lose” wrote “Skeeball” on the NY Daily News article and poll.
On YouTube, the Fox News video of the exchange is quickly gaining viewers. It now has more than 50,0000 views and more than 2,000 comments, mostly deriding Santorum.
In true YouTube fashion, the video has also been mirrored. There were no response videos to Santorum’s remarks at time of publication, but it is only a matter of time given the magnitude of outrage.
On Reddit, people created multiple threads on Santorum’s response across different subreddits. One Reddit thread even questioned if the cheering crowd response was actually added in by Fox News.
On Twitter, folks were equally outraged.
“Santorum says he would reinstate DADT, what’s next? Woman’s voting rights and slavery? Maybe we’ll go back to a feudalistic state?” wrote Sergey Poberezhny
Andrew Sullivan, writer and columnist at the Atlantic, tweeted this morning:
“Until the Florida GOP apologizes to that soldier, along with Santorum, we should not let up in protesting this disgrace.”
Hill was incidentally, the only soldier to ask a question at the GOP debate.