Rick Santorum Calls Florida Glitter Bombers 'Intolerant' [VIDEO]

Glitter bombing, a burgeoning form of protest in the U.S., is when activists, usually motivated by their target's opposition to gay rights, throw showers of glitter on them at public events.

Protesters accusing the former Pennsylvania senator of homophobia and opposing his stand against Occupy Wall Street doused him in glitter at an American Legion Hall in Lady Lake in Central Florida.

Santorum promptly took to Fox News to respond. Rather than claiming the protesters held misguided beliefs or acted inappropriately, Santorum said the LGBT and OWS activists were intolerant members of the radical left.

Occupy Tampa Launches Glitter Bomb

When the three Occupy Tampa protesters tossed their glitter bomb at the GOP primary candidate, deputies at the scene told the Tampa Bay Times one of them shouted stop the hate as he threw. As officers escorted the protesters from the hall, another shouted, Rick Santorum is a homophobe!

All three of the main demonstrators were later confirmed OWS supporters who'd come to protest Santorum's positions on gay rights.

This is hardly the first time protesters have gone after Rick Santorum for his stance on gay issues, from his opposition to gay marriage to his belief that gay parents should not be allowed to adopt children.

Sex and relationship advice columnist Dan Savage was so infuriated by the then-senator's positions that he launched a viral web campaign to redefine the Republican's last name as a neologism for a byproduct of anal sex, a humiliation Santorum still has trouble overcoming.

'This is about the radical left'

But on Fox News Wednesday night with Megyn Kelly, Rick Santorum asserted that it was not his own intolerance that was the problem: it was the protesters' in refusing to accept his controversial beliefs.

All the people who have done that so far, at least in events I've been involved in, have been part of the Occupy Wall Street folks, Santorum said, referencing earlier attacks by groups like Occupy Charleston who called him a hate monger and a bigot at a campaign event in South Carolina.

This is about the radical left, who of course, it is not about tolerance, Santorum asserted. It's about trying to shut down free speech, anybody who disagrees with them.

Look, I'm not intimidated by this kind of stuff, he continued. This is exactly what I'm fighting for, making sure all voices are heard and legitimately respected.

He also said that the protesters had never gone after him with a glitter bomb when he's been in his signature sweater vest, instead targeting him when he's wearing a suit. They haven't hit me yet, he said.

In fact, raw video footage of the Lady Lake incident show he was wearing a vest at the time, and photos from other events show the former senator getting a face full of glitter. To Santorum, however, those details don't seem to matter as much as his anger at what he perceived as being shouted down.

As far as I'm concerned, this just shows how intolerant they really are, the Republican candidate said.

Click here to watch raw footage of Rick Santorum being glitter bombed in Florida and South Carolina, and watch raw footage of a protester glitter-bombing Santorum outside a campaign event in Iowa.

Stop the hate! Taste the rainbow!