In the current primary season, we saw the process push Michelle Bachmann, who has always been seen as a Tea Party fringe figure with politically toxic views, into the spotlight for a short surge. This gave her a bigger platform to attack the LGBT community with talk of "ex-gay conversion therapy" and spreading her dangerous rhetoric of fringe social conservatism into the mainstream of America. We now also see the GOP primary giving Rick Santorum, and his well known bigoted views of LGBT people, new political life. Santorum is beyond simply being "conservative." He has compared gay people to pedophiles, polygamists, and even "man on dog" sex. With the spotlight the GOP primary process continues to give him, he is reaching wider audiences with his incendiary and offensive views against LGBT equality. We shouldn't be surprised to see either radical bigot with a new show on Fox News sometime soon, giving them a greater position of power and influence to spout their insanity.
But perhaps the most insidious effect of the GOP primary, and why we should all be paying close attention to it, is the inevitable push of the eventual nominee further right to even more socially conservative extremes. We've already seen Mitt Romney, the presumptive nominee, lurch further right than ever (although to be fair, nailing down just a single view from the mercurial Romney on any issue is nearly impossible). Romney, out of the necessity to combat the "moderate Massachusetts Governor" attacks from his GOP rivals, has been driven to the fringe of anti-gay conservatism. He supports reinstitution of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", has vowed to defend the odious "Defense of Marriage Act" from court challenges, and even questioned the rights of gay people to adopt. Romney has also recently been touting his support for a Federal Marriage Amendment defining marriage as "one man and one woman" in the U.S. constitution while campaigning in South Carolina, a truly radical view even among conservatives.