On The Tonight Show last night, Jay Leno challenged Bill O’Reilly about Rick Santorum’s comments on social issues: “He doesn’t like condoms, he doesn’t like birth control, I don’t understand this anti-gay thing. It doesn’t make any sense to me,” Leno said. O’Reilly responded by defending Santorum, saying that people should disregard the “dopey past comments” he has made because he’s “inexperienced”:

O’REILLY: I think people should define their religion and why they believe and what they believe if you’re running for president. I think they should do that, but I don’t think they should be saying, “Well, my religion is better than yours,” or anything like that. Look, Santorum is a guy is who is inexperienced in this arena. He got drawn into a few things. He’s made some past comments. Everybody has dopey past comments… so we have to cut him a little slack… He’d be wise to say, “Look, I said what I said, now let’s get into the economy,” and that’s where he should go.

In fact, O’Reilly seemed to think candidates’ histories should be disregarded entirely, suggesting also that Newt Gingrich’s conversion to Catholicism made him an entirely different person. Watch the interview:

(HT: Gawker.)

Howard Stern took a significant chunk of time on his radio show today to defend Ellen DeGeneres from the conservative group One Million Moms’ boycott of JC Penney. During the impassioned discussion, he admonished Republican presidential candidates for their anti-gay rhetoric and highlighted the portrayal of bullying in Rolling Stone’s article about Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin School District:

STERN: First of all, I’m proud of JC Penney for not buckling. You know, I am not the world’s biggest Ellen DeGeneres, but I’ll tell you what: I will defend her to the end. If JC Penney fires Ellen DeGeneres, I will call on all my listeners to boycott JC Penney and I will do everything I can for Ellen DeGeneres. I mean, I was so outraged.

This defense of the gay community is a must-listen (language NSFW):

Additionally, DeGeneres thanked Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly today for defending her on his show. Watch it:

(HTs: Joe.My.God. and SheWired.)

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly stuck up for Ellen DeGeneres last night in a segment about ‘One Million Moms’ proposed boycott of JC Penney, which has named the openly gay comic and talk show host their spokesperson. “If you remember with the McCarthy era, in the 50s and they were trying to hunt down communist sympathizers and not let them work and put them. What is the difference between McCarthy era communist blacklist in the 50s and the million moms saying, ‘Hey, JC Penney and all you other stores don’t you hire any gay people, don’t you dare.’ What is the difference?” O’Reilly asked:

O’Reilly’s guest Sandy Rios defended the boycott and explained that since DeGeneres has “chosen to act out her lesbian lifestyle and marry her partner…people that believe that marriage is between a man and woman and children should not be exposed to propagandized in homosexuality have a moral problem with that.” “It’s disturbing to them. They are trying to say to JC Penney please don’t do that,” she added.

JC Penney has said that it has no plans to break ties with DeGeneres and has issued a statement emphasizing, “we share the same values as Ellen.”

Surging GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum sought to distance himself from his anti-gay record and rhetoric, just one day after coming in a close second in the Iowa caucuses. During an appearance on Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly Wednesday night, the former Pennsylvania senator said that while he does support annulling all same-sex marriages through a federal constitutional amendment outlawing marriage equality, he is has spent little time discussing social issues and has instead focused on economic matters:

O’REILLY: To rescind — rescind it after a licenses already given. That’s a big deal.

SANTORUM: The federal government would have to pass a constitutional amendment and if the Constitution says that marriage is between a man and woman, then things that are inconsistent with that would not — would be inconsistent with the Constitution so –

O’REILLY: Would you be doing that if you were elected president? Would you be campaigning for a constitutional amendment in that way?

SANTORUM: I would — well, if you pass a constitutional amendment that says marriage –

O’REILLY: So would you — would that be — would that be in the forefront of your — of your administration?

SANTORUM: As you know, Bill, if you’ve been following me out on the trail, I haven’t been talking a lot about this. Although I strongly believe in it. What I’ve been talking about as I did last night on my acceptance speech where didn’t talk about this issue, I talked about the importance of getting this economy going and talked about my grandfather and coming here for freedom. And this is the fundamental issue in this campaign is whether government is going to be big and obtrusive and telling people how to manage their — their lives or — and are they going to support the basic values of faith and family that allow government to be limited and allow our economy to be strong. Those are the things I talked about and did across Iowa. I’ll be talking about those things here in New Hampshire.

Watch it:

Santorum may have failed to mention LGBT issues in every one of his 350 Iowa town halls, but as ThinkProgress has chronicled, he did spend ample time arguing that gay couples “destabilize” society and comparing same-sex relationships to inanimate objects like trees, basketballs, beer, and paper towels and even tried to blame the economic crisis on gay people. As Santorum explained back in August, religious people have a constitutional right to discriminate against gays: “We have a right the Constitution of religious liberty but now the courts have created a super-right that’s above a right that’s actually in the Constitution, and that’s of sexual liberty. And I think that’s a wrong, that’s a destructive element.”

Santorum also slipped in a coded reference to marriage in his Iowa acceptance speech Tuesday night, saying, “Those are the same people that President Obama talked about who cling to their guns and their Bibles. Thank God they do. They share our values about faith and family. They understand that when the family breaks down, the economy struggles.” In de-emphasizing the issue in New Hampshire, Santorum is acknowledging that Granite State voters are less driven by social issues than economic concerns — and that’s particularly true when it comes to the state’s own marriage equality law.