Students Jeer Santorum on New Hampshire Blitz CONCORD, N.H. - As Rick Santorum sprinted Thursday through New Hampshire, a state with fewer social conservatives than Iowa, his views on social issues like same-sex marriage were quickly challenged. A midday event in front of a gathering of college students here turned into a testy exchange in which Mr. Santorum compared allowing gay couples to marry to polygamy, apparently equating the two as equally undesirable. The students booed Mr. Santorum during the 10-minute exchange and loudly booed when he left the room. The students were part of College Convention 2012, a forum organized by New England College and open to students from all over the state, regardless of political party. Mr. Santorum, a Republican former senator from Pennsylvania, has generated criticism in the past for his views on social issues. In 2003, he argued that the Supreme Court should not overturn state bans on homosexual sex, saying that could create a precedent allowing bigamy, polygamy and incest. "In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality," Mr. Santorum said in a 2003 interview with an Associated Press reporter. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. In an interview with CNN's John King on Thursday, Mr. Santorum defended his 2003 comments, saying: "I said it's not those things. I didn't connect them. I specifically excluded them. The exchanges about social issues came as Mr. Santorum campaigned across New Hampshire on Thursday, telling voters that they needed a candidate with "core convictions." After his near-victory in Iowa on Tuesday, Mr. Santorum drew a crush of reporters and large, curious crowds as he visited a Rotary Club meeting, held several town-hall-style meetings and slowly fought his way through a vintage-looking diner during lunchtime. As he shook hands in a crowd that would have been unimaginable just weeks ago, Mr. Santorum was repeatedly approached for his autograph by eager residents, most of whom said they had first heard of the former Pennsylvania senator in the last several days. "You are the first political candidate I've ever come out to meet in my entire life," Anne Grant said to Mr. Santorum at the Tilt'n Diner here. At the Merrimack Valley Railroad, an event space, Mr. Santorum spent more than an hour answering questions from curious voters unfamiliar with a candidate who still trails far behind Mitt Romney in local polls. Mr. Santorum offered a mix of personal biography (his coal-miner grandfather "smoked everything all day long - pipes, cigars, cigarettes. Now, with more than two dozen cameras and scores of reporters at each of his events, Mr. Santorum pleaded with voters not to listen to conventional wisdom. "Trust your head, your heart, your gut as to who should be the next nominee of the Republican Party," Mr. Santorum said.