At the National Conservative Student Conference, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum accused Boston Mayor Tom Menino and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel of “intolerance and bigotry” for saying fast food restaurant Chick-fil-A was not welcome in their cities because of the company president’s condemnation of gay marriage.

“How would they have reacted had the mayor in the adjoining town said they aren’t going to allow Starbucks in because Starbucks — as a company — promoted same-sex marriage?” said Santorum in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller. “Chick-fil-A as a company has done nothing of the kind.”

Chick-fil-A, as a company, does donate millions of dollars to organizations that oppose same-sex marriage through its charitable WinShape Foundation.

The former GOP presidential candidate added: “Chick-fil-A as a company is a restaurant that serves everybody and treats people equally — and very well — and hires people equally and is a model company for this country. And yet you see this kind of intolerance and bigotry on part of Rahm Emanuel and Mayor Menino. And even some of their fellow folks on the left realize they’ve gone too far.”

“This is the kind of intolerance you’re seeing and it’s very unfortunate, but it’s the beginning of something that think I you’re going to see a lot more of as this issue — these issues fundamentally changing the basic moral foundation of our country continues to spread there’s going to be an intolerance for any dissent to that change,” Santorum said.

Santorum also told TheDC he found it curious that Chick-fil-A’s mayoral critics didn’t bash President Barack Obama when he publicly held the same position as Chick-fil-A’s leadership. Until three months ago, Obama said he opposed legalizing same-sex marriage.

“For four years President Obama maintained — almost four years — maintained a position of being against same-sex marriage,” noted Santorum. “I don’t recall Mayor Menino banning him from the city of Boston because of that or Rahm Emanuel refusing to work for him and campaign for him as a result of that, and I think maybe one of the reasons was because they didn’t believe he actually felt that way anyway.

“And so what we saw was this charade over that. President Obama on a whole variety of fronts has tried to conceal his true ideas from the American public by either not telling the truth about what he really thinks to outright misleading them.” (SEE ALSO: Sole NH Chick-fil-A franchisee to sponsor gay pride festival)

The former senator was speaking to a group of over 300 high school and college students brought to Washington, D.C., by the Young America’s Foundation.

Follow Grae on Twitter