Santorum’s People Toss Young Women out of Barnes & Noble, Trooper Threatens Them with Prison

Matthew Rothschild
August 19, 2005

On the evening of August 10, Hannah Shaffer of Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, decided to go to the nearby Barnes & Noble outside of Wilmington. She wanted to see Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who was promoting his book, “It Takes a Family.”

The event was billed as a “book signing and discussion,” Shaffer says.

But discussion was the last thing that the Senator’s people wanted.

Shaffer, her friends, and two other young women were booted out of the store and threatened with imprisonment even before they had a chance to say a word to Santorum, as Al Mascitti first noted in the Delaware News Journal.

Shaffer, 18, thought Santorum’s public appearance might be a good occasion to ask him a few questions.

“He is my Senator,” she says, and she wanted to challenge him on his notorious claim that legalizing gay marriage was akin to legalizing incest and bestiality.

“So I contacted a few of my left-leaning friends, and they said they’d really like to be there because they felt the same way,” she says.