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Posted February 9th, 2012 by John M. Becker
 Truth Wins Out placed an admittedly provocative full-page ad in today’s edition of Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, headlined “Newt Gingrich: Talks Like a Preacher, Lives Like a Porn Star.” In it, we admonish Gingrich for his stunning hypocrisy on the issue of marriage equality, taking him to task for the way that he, a serial adulterer with multiple marriages, works tirelessly to prevent same-sex couples from marrying because of a professed belief that marriage is “sacred.”
This ad was strategically timed to coincide with the start of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC. The annual conference, which began today and culminates on Saturday with a closely-watched straw poll, is the nation’s largest gathering of conservatives and has become a place of pilgrimage for right-wing celebrities, bloggers, pundits, elected officials, and presidential candidates. The speaker’s list for this year’s conference reads like the roster of a conservative Dream Team: Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Michele Bachmann, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Tony Perkins, Ann Coulter, Herman Cain, John Boehner, and GOP presidential wannabes Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich.
It also comes in the midst of a white-hot week for the freedom to marry movement — a week in which the House and Senate in Washington state passed a marriage equality bill, a similar bill was introduced in the Illinois Assembly, and California’s Proposition 8 was ruled unconstitutional in a federal appellate court. And it’s only Thursday!
While TWO’s ad is already receiving a lot of attention from LGBT media, our organization is also hearing from critics who wonder why we decided to focus on Gingrich at all, since his presidential campaign has deflated so rapidly in recent weeks. “He’s yesterday’s news,” one activist wrote. “Slamming Newt is pointless — he doesn’t have a chance of becoming the nominee.”
Those who make these arguments miss the point entirely. Truth Wins Out is not trying to influence the outcome of the presidential election. We’re leaving that to organizations like the Stonewall Democrats, the Log Cabin Republicans, and the Human Rights Campaign. (Besides, one newspaper ad can’t even compete in the brave new political world of Super PACs.) TWO launched the ad because we believe that when the LGBT community is attacked, we should fight back. It doesn’t matter what political party, if any, a person belongs to – we sharply criticized then-Senator Barack Obama when his campaign invited the outspokenly homophobic and self-proclamed “ex-gay” singer Donnie McClurkin to join him on the trail in South Carolina, to name just one example. Regardless of a person’s politics, if they attack or degrade LGBT people, we must respond.
Posted February 8th, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2012
Contact: Wayne Besen, Executive Director
Phone: 917-691-5118
E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org
Truth Wins Out to Slam Newt Gingrich for Hypocrisy on Marriage Equality in Thursday Roll Call Ad
WASHINGTON – Truth Wins Out is placing a provocative full-page ad in the Capitol Hill publication Roll Call on Thursday admonishing Newt Gingrich for his stunning hypocrisy on the issue of marriage equality. The ad’s headline reads, “Newt Gingrich: Talks Like a Preacher, Lives Like a Porn Star.” It takes the anti-gay presidential candidate to task for his adulterous affairs and serial marriages and includes an original cartoon dubbed “The Marriage-Go-Round.”
TWO’s hard-hitting ad comes one day before Newt Gingrich speaks at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington. The ad ends by saying, “On behalf of loving, life-long same sex couples: Newt, you are a spectacular hypocrite. Shame on you!”
“It takes breathtaking chutzpah for Newt Gingrich to deny loving, committed same-sex couples the benefits of marriage that he has enjoyed three times,” said Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen. “The bizarre embrace of Gingrich by CPAC proves that modern conservatism is not ‘pro-family,’ it is simply anti-gay.”
The ad comes in the same week that Proposition 8, California’s voter-approved repeal of marriage equality, was again ruled unconstitutional in a federal appeals court. While polls show that a majority of Americans support marriage equality, GOP presidential candidates, including Gingrich, appeal to their base by promoting intolerance and discrimination:
“With today’s decision on marriage by the Ninth Circuit, and the likely appeal to the Supreme Court, more and more Americans are being exposed to the radical overreach of federal judges and their continued assault on the Judeo-Christian foundations of the United States,” Gingrich said in a statement about the ruling.
“The idea for this ad came on the day of my own marriage,” said TWO’s Besen. “As we were getting dressed to go to city hall, I heard Gingrich on television preening and prattling about the sanctity of marriage. At that moment, I decided that we had to stand up and speak out against such blatant demagoguery and brazen hypocrisy.”
“Newt Gingrich must be blind not to see the glaring dissonance between his belief that he should have whatever kinds of marriages – open or otherwise — that he wants, and his stated conviction that LGBT Americans shouldn’t be allowed to marry at all,” said John Becker, TWO’s Director of Communications. “Loving, committed same-sex couples like my husband and me simply seek to exercise once the same freedom to marry that Mr. Gingrich has so liberally availed himself of.”
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
** TWO thanks our own Bruce Garrett for the amazing cartoon he drew for our ad.
Posted January 3rd, 2010 by Wayne Besen
 Social conservatives are apoplectic because the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is allowing the LGBT organization GOProud to co-sponsor the annual Washington event. Once again, the self-righteous morality police are doing everything in their power to undermine the Republican Party and shrink the already shrunken tent.
Mark Barna reports in The Gazette that GOProud supports gay rights and marriage, but still considers itself a conservative Republican group because it is for smaller government, lower taxes and strong national defense. Still, this is not enough for anti-gay organizations that demand party purity.
“We’re fully engaged in making our objection known, both to the CPAC committee and to the parent organization, the American Conservative Union,” said Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy for Focus Action, the political arm of Focus on the Family. Minnery did not say if Focus Action would pull out of CPAC if GOProud remained a co-sponsor.
Gary Glenn, president of the faith-based American Family Association of Michigan, said GOProud’ inclusion is a mockery. “It does damage when CPAC gives its seal of approval of a group exploring a hard-left agenda,” Glenn said.
Kevin Roberts is executive director of Catholic Families for America, a CPAC co-sponsor. He told Barna that he will make his displeasure known over the inclusion of the gay-rights group during his CPAC speech. “I will be speaking on traditional values (during my speech),” Roberts said.
I don’t suppose Roberts’ speech will include chastising priests for sexually molesting children and how the Catholic Church covered up such heinous crimes. After the church spent billions of dollars paying off victims, I’m really in no mood to hear some Catholic ideologue lecture me on traditional values. Roberts and others of his ilk have no moral authority to discuss such topics. He can do us all a favor and save his breath.
Formed in April, GOProud has 2,000 members who believe fiscal conservatism can exist alongside gay rights activism. Jimmy LaSalvia formed the Washington. D.C.-based group after learning that 1.3 million gays voted for Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.
Whatever one thinks of LGBT Republicans, it is good to see GOProud stand up for itself and demand a place at the Republican table. In doing so, it may just save the party from destroying itself by kowtowing to an intolerant group of narrow-minded zealots. If the GOP were smart, it would embrace diversity and tell the fundamentalists that they are part of a broader coalition and that they do not own the party. Only by widening the circle of supporters (gays, city dwellers, immigrants, African Americans, young people) will the Republican Party remain viable in the future.
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