At a town hall event at Pizza Ranch in Waverly, Iowa, Michele Bachmann told supporters that all couples had the same rights to marry—so long as they were “marrying someone of the opposite sex.”
Posted to YouTube on Wednesday, the proclamation quickly spread on YouTube. Don’t let the view count—stuck at 301—fool you. That’s a bug, typically indicative of a clip accumulating views at an overwhelming rate, that the video-sharing site has grappled with more months,
Jane Schmidt, 16, a member of the local high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) asked Bachmann what she would do, if elected president, to protect the civil rights of gay couples. What ensued was an awkward exchange about marriage rights, all of which was captured online. The handful of students who had gathered at the casual town hall meeting continued to challenge Bachmann, saying that heterosexual couples were getting more rights than homosexual couples. The founder of the House Tea Party Caucus was unconvinced.
Despite the outrage the video has sparked, It’s unlikely that it will have any effect on the presidential race. Bachmann has fallen in the polls since her late summer bump, and the video didn’t reveal anything about her views that most informed voters didn’t already know.
However, it does prove that in the era of YouTube and Twitter, even small moments in even smaller towns can become big hits on the Internet.
Photo by Gage Skidmore