Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly lashed out against the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to overturn California’s Proposition 8. “California voters, basically just two judges said, ‘you know what?’ We don’t really care about you!” O’Reilly exclaimed. “What do you want really doesn’t matter because we say this is unconstitutional to deny gays the right to marry.”

Former RNC chairman Michael Steele, for one, believes laws concerning gay marriage should be discussed and decided at a local level. Panelist John Heilemann then asked Steele what he thought about the fact that, at one point, local standards held that it was unacceptable for black men to marry white women. Steele rejected the comparison.

Lately, GOP leading lights Sarah Palin and former Sen. Rick Santorum have taken up the conservative pastime of hiding their anti-gay politics behind the lie that their views mirror those of President Obama. At today’s White House briefing, Metro Weekly‘s Chris Geidner and I tried to get Press Secretary Jay Carney to put some daylight between the President and Santorum on the issue of marriage equality, and while he defended President Obama’s overall record on LGBT issues, Carney was mum on marriage.

Earlier this year, Senator Amy Koch was one of the many Republicans campaigning for a Constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage so as to protect the holy sanctity of marriage. This week, Koch apologized for cheating on her husband. There is clearly only one possible explanation; that all those marrying gays ruined Koch’s marriage. What jerks. Fortunately the gay community of Minnesota has been thoughtful enough to apologize.

According to trend aggregator BuzzFeed editor Matt Stopera, allegedly President Barack Obama sent a letter of congratulations to a gay couple, wishing them “the very best” as they embarked on their “journey together” and hoping their “bond (grew) stronger with each passing year.” The couple, who were married over the summer, were surprised by their letter of support.

A lesbian mom named Amy took some time during a Troy, Michigan council meeting to introduce Mayor Janice Daniels to her family. Daniels, you may recall, recently found herself at the center of a protest calling for her resignation because, over the summer, she had written a Facebook update stating that “I think I am going to throw away my I Love New York carrying bag now that queers can get married there.”

While in New Hampshire today, GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney found himself having to explain to a gay veteran why it is, exactly, that he wants to repeal his marriage. Vietnam vet Bob Garon sat beside Romney and asked the former governor of Massachusetts clarify his views on same-sex marriage in New Hampshire. Romney replied that he supports the repeal of the state’s 2010 law allowing gay couples to marry, adding that he believes marriage should be between a man and a woman.

Earlier today, President Obama released a memorandum directing “all agencies engaged abroad to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons.”

GOP former frontrunner Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) quickly released a statement denouncing the President’s action, complete with trademark Perry lies, and a doubling-down on his own zero foreign aid budget.

As it turns out, there’s a Troy, Michigan native among our flock here at Abrams Media. Geekosystem’s Max Eddy hails from the very city whose mayor, Janice Daniels, currently finds herself inspiring a protest demanding her immediate resignation.

Troy, Michigan’s Mayor Janice Daniels is facing calls to resign following a comment she posted to her Facebook page over the summer.

CNN posted an iReport Thursday from a Michele Bachmann town hall in Iowa, where the Presidential candidate was questioned on gay marriage by a teenager, Jane Schmidt, who runs the Gay-Straight Alliance at her high school. She asked Bachmann what she would do to support the LBGT community.

In case you missed Saturday Night Live over the weekend because you were out or sleeping or watching paint dry instead, we’ll get you up to speed: Last Saturday’s show included a sketch featuring GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, who is not exactly the biggest advocate for same-sex marriage, or for homosexuality in general, tuning in to “Marriott TV’s GOP debate” from a gay bar.

How does Santorum feel about that?

2012 Republican race “Ideas Guy” Newt Gingrich isn’t too worried about same-sex marriage. This he told a crowd in Iowa yesterday, slamming the practice– longtime accepted law in Iowa– as a “temporary aberration that will dissipate,” in its place resurfacing heterosexual marriage as the standard. Gingrich was speaking at an event where he was explicitly asked on the issue, but his answer given his own history and the history of the state in which he gave it, may be among his most unwise.

Rep. Michele Bachmann made her late-night debut as a Presidential candidate last night, and given her hardline conservative stances on social issues, it was no surprise that she and Tonight Show host Jay Leno butted heads on a few issues– albeit in much milder conversation than many are accustomed to see with her. Of particular note was Rep. Bachmann’s exchange with the host over same-sex marriage, who seemed to find sincerely problematic the position that such marriage endangers the American family.

Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern (R-84) recently defended remarks she made in 2008 that homosexuality was a bigger threat than terrorism or Islam…by explaining that homosexuality is more dangerous than terrorist attacks. While Kern’s explanation is even more outrageous than her original remarks, it does have one thing going for it. It’s the perfect basis [...]

GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum got into a heated discussion with a student at Penn State recently over the issue of same-sex parents and their impact on the development of their children.

Santorum, upset over being called a “bigot” by CNN’s Piers Morgan, pointed to the Bible and Roman Catholic teaching to bolster his beliefs regarding same-sex marriage and parenting, asking how 2,000 years of moral theology could be considered bigotry. And he was worried, he said, about the implications of allowing gay marriage and gay parents:

This has profound consequence to the entire ecology, moral ecology, of America. It will undermine the family. It will destroy faith in America. And does anybody go out there and make the argument as to why this is a good thing, because it will happen. Make the argument why this is right. I don’t hear those arguments.

“There are plenty of arguments,” replied one student, who doesn’t appear on camera.

GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum continued to obsess over paper products (with a name like Santorum, can you blame him?) at a campaign stop in Spartanburg, SC, and accused the gay community of going on a “jihad” against him over the issue of gay marriage, in much the same way that Evander Holyfield‘s ear once went on a jihad against Mike Tyson‘s teeth. Poor Santorum can’t catch a break, though, as every table in the joint offered a visual rejoinder to his napkin/paper towel analogy.

Piers Morgan‘s show hasn’t even aired yet, and he is already guaranteed to win the most interest tonight, as former Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell walked out on his program, offended that she was asked a question on her views on same-sex marriage. Morgan visited Anderson Cooper to give a bit on insight on the moment, which he found “a bit extraordinary” and argued it made O’Donnell look “like she has something to hide.

Marriage Equality USA‘s Ned Flaherty put together a neat, easy to scan chart detailing how candidates (Republicans who have announced that they are in the race as well as Barack Obama) feel about certain issues relating to marriage equality and other issues concerning the gay community.

On every single one of her Sunday morning show appearances, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was confronted by her positions on the economy and her opposition to the Obama administration’s policies, but David Gregory may have been the only host to bring up Bachmann’s past statements regarding homosexuality and gay marriage.

To Rick Santorum, gay and straight marriage are as different as paper towels and napkins, according to an analogy he employed at a campaign stop in Iowa. In his “Rewrite” segment tonight, Lawrence O’Donnell found this comparison to be “the American politician at his worst,” trying to relate to real Americans who probably, like O’Donnell, use napkins and paper towels interchangeably all the time.

During a Senate hearing on the repeal of The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Minnesota Senator Al Franken (D) addressed written testimony by Tom Minnery, the executive director of Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink, where, according to his professional bio, he acts “as a steady voice articulating the conservative Christian viewpoint on family, marriage and religious civil liberties issues. His views and influence have helped to shape public policy at both the national and state levels.”

Senator Franken seemed to feel Minnery was not being completely honest or forthright regarding certain aspects of his testimony or, perhaps, that he was interpreting certain terms incorrectly or in a biased manner.

With the news of New York’s new law permitting same-sex couples to marry, the statistics on who is getting married in states that had previously done the same are now coming to the fore, and it turns out men are simply marrying less, no matter what their orientation. On this morning’s Red Eye, Greg Gutfeld and company took a guess at what the statistics meant and purveyed some advice on how to avoid getting gay-married.

On Sunday morning’s Reliable Sources, a debate over the media’s treatment of New York’s recently passed Marriage Equality Act, between conservative radio host Dennis Prager and AmericaBlog’s John Aravosis quickly devolved into a series of tangents and interruptions that missed the entire point of host Howard Kurtz‘s question. Kurtz wondered if there was anything wrong with the news media’s “relentlessly positive” coverage of the law’s passage.

After last Friday’s historic gay marriage vote, one of the most forceful media narratives was the contrast between the leadership styles of Andrew Cuomo and Barack Obama. So it was only a matter of time before people started speculating on Cuomo’s national aspirations.