By Andrew Harmon on Advocate.com

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s lightning-rod conservative views are the subject of a New Yorker piece published Monday in advance of Thursday’s Iowa debate and Saturday’s Ames Straw Poll, which some observers are expecting her to win.

The magazine’s Ryan Lizza writes in his profile of the GOP presidential candidate:

Her campaign is going to be a conversation about a set of beliefs more extreme than those of any American politician of her stature, including Sarah Palin, to whom she is inevitably compared. Bachmann said in 2004 that being gay is “personal enslavement,” and that, if same-sex marriage were legalized, “little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal and natural and that perhaps they should try it.” Speaking about gay-rights activists, that same year, she said, “It is our children that is the prize for this community.”

Lizza’s piece includes a recent exchange with Marcus Bachmann while on a leased campaign plane, where the owner of the controversial Bachmann & Associates asked the reporter what a “silver fox” was after a Newsweek article described him as such.

“Do you want me to tell you honestly?” Lizza asked.

“Oh, don’t tell me it’s something gay!” Bachmann replied. “Because I’ve been called that before.”

Read Lizza’s profile here.

Tags: Ames Straw Poll, Marcus Bachmann silver fox, Michele Bachmann New Yorker, Ryan Lizza Michele Bachmann story