Meet The 17-Year-Old Who Tangled With Santorum On Gay Marriage

College kids are not Santorum’s crowd.

Image by Rosie Gray

CONCORD, N.H. — Rick Santorum faced a tough crowd at a town hall meeting in Concord tonight. Largely composed of college and high-school age students, the crowd disapproved of Santorum’s conservative positions — especially 17-year-old Rhiannon Pyle from Newburyport Mass., whose question on gay marriage proved difficult for Santorum to answer.

Pyle, here in New Hampshire with her civics class, said that she “wasn’t really planning” to ask Santorum anything, though she wanted to get a chance to talk to him.

“When I got that opportunity I was like, I got this,” she said. She asked Santorum to explain “how you justify your belief based on these morals you have about all men being created equal when two men who want to marry the person that they love —”

Santorum interrupted the question with one of his own: “What about three men?”

Pyle wishes she’d pushed harder on the apparent conflict with Santorum’s belief that all men are created equal and his stance on gay marriage. “I wish he’d answered about that because he just kind of like didn’t even answer that part of it.”

The comparison to polygamy was “obviously not valid,” she said. It’s like apples and oranges.” She is “not a fan” of Santorum’s.

Others in the crowd agreed. Santorum’s reception at this town hall wasn’t nearly as warm as at other events he’s held in the past two days. Max Orloff, 24, told BuzzFeed that “that guy is full of bullshit.”

He “danced around the issue repeatedly,” Orloff said.

Rachel Lagodka, 50, said that Santorum “said he was being rational but what he actually did was commit a logical fallacy.”