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.
So you heard that the gay wingnut group GOProud, which really doesn’t do jack in terms of advocating for things which will help the LGBT community, has been disinvited from the next CPAC. Last year’s slapfight involved hate groups like the American Family Association throwing temper tantrums, gathering up their pitchforks and going home, due to the presence of the gays.
Now pretend journalist Andrew Breitbart, who is on the GOProud board, has melodramatically decided to take his hidden cameras and video doctoring equipment and stay home from the next CPAC. So has another wingnut called Roger Simon.
This is all very important stuff!!
Breitbart, a prominent conservative blogger and member of GOProud’s advisory council, has announced he won’t attend CPAC if the group is excluded, and another right-wing commentator, Roger L. Simon, has joined him. Meanwhile, GOProud leaders met with ACU chairman Al Cardenas Wednesday, the day after antigay comments by Cardenas’s wife, Diana, were publicized on a Miami Herald blog.
Herald blogger Steve Rothaus quoted statements Diana Cardenas made on her Facebook page, including her assertion that homosexuality is “not nature’s way” and is comparable to a disability or an illness. She also said, “I always wondered why homosexuals are referred to as ‘gay,’ kind of an oxymoron? Nothing really ‘gay’ about them or their movement.”
Oh, Diana Cardenas…who are you, again?
In related news, American Family Association spokestroll Bryan Fischer commented on the situation on his radio show. Here are the words Bryan hath pooped:
“Homosexuality is not a conservative value.” GOProud – their agenda is to put open homosexuals in the military and promote gay marriage. So they are as relentless and as far left as you can get on the issues of human sexuality. And we said look if CPAC is going to treat that as a conservative position we’re not going to be a part of this thing.”
Well, DADT repeal has been certified already, Bryan, so that’s not really their “agenda.” And honestly, they’re not really strong advocates for marriage equality. You just don’t like them because they’re gay and that makes you feel uncomfortable, for some weird reason.
Bryan also said something stupid about the ban on gay men donating blood, a policy which medical experts recognize as outdated and unnecessary. But Bryan’s not a smart or an honest man, so he’ll keep barking up that tree until the policy is gone, and for a little while after.
Lastly, Tintin at Sadly, No! has a brief little smackdown of some wingnut from Red State called “Neil Stevens,” who is really glad GOProud won’t be at CPAC because he just wants one happy place where he doesn’t have to be scared by gays. Or something like that.
The Washington Blade’s Chris Johnson reports that GOProud, “a gay Republican group….has been barred from full participation at CPAC, an upcoming prominent national conservative convention.” (I sure bet they will miss the cruising at the event)
Well, at least they are not alone, the nutty and dangerous right wing group, the John Birch Society, was also dumped — which highlights what little regard the modern conservative movement has for the jesters at GOProud. (Given this decision, maybe they should rename themselves GOPout). A GOPout board member weighed in on the fiasco:
“For the last two years, GOProud has sought to support CPAC and keep the conservative movement united. Unfortunately, elements inside and outside of ACU have pushed their own narrow, divisive and sometimes personal agenda. They have done so at the expense of the conservative movement. GOProud has been and will continue to be an outspoken proponent of conservative values and conservative policy. This organization will continue to work to bring conservatives of all stripes together to save this country and defeat the left. Obviously, that work will no longer be done at CPAC, but it will be done.”
Defeat the left? You mean the good people keeping the entire country from treating LGBT Americans the way CPAC treats GOProud? God only knows what would happen to our families if GOProud ever accomplished its stated goals.
This group has always been as ridiculous as a clown raffle — and their current statement is just as absurd. In vain, they search to “bring conservatives of all stripes together” — which is useless when you are dealing with predatory leopards unwilling to change their anti-gay spots.
I truly wish we had a legitimate two-party system in America. I desperately want to find a silver lining and a legitimate reason to support Republicans. Without a normal two-party system, the LGBT movement has to keep placing all of its eggs in one basket — which gives us virtually no political leverage. We are only succeeding in this climate due to the moral high ground, which occasionally does move conservatives, as we recently saw in the New York marriage vote.
Unfortunately, the increasing insanity of the modern GOP gives one little hope. Anti-gay zealots continue to use the party as a platform. This weekend, for instance, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will hold a stadium prayer rally in Houston that can only be described as “Loonypalooza.” Virtually all of the GOP presidential candidates are kissing up to the extreme right and seem terrified by intransigent, tantrum-throwing Teabaggers that came within in a hair of crashing the world economy this week.
GOProud, it is time to stop the charade and become Democrats. Or, use the deep pockets of a few of your key donors to help start a new center-right political party that accepts LGBT people as actual human beings and believes in the reality-based community. To continue to allow yourselves to get used, humiliated and sacked by the teabaggers, is just embarrassing and does nothing to advance or further our movement.
It’s kinda funny since it was the geniuses at GOProud who invited Donald Trump to CPAC in the first place, but there you have it: one of the most annoying celebrities in all the world is against marriage equality. NOM is excited about this, because they have no standards.
So much for “conservatives don’t hate us, really!”:
GOProud, the advocacy organization for homosexuals that also portrays itself as “conservative,” reportedly will be left out of the annual summit for conservatives in the United States, the CPAC meetings, next year.
Its inclusion last year and this year by David Keene, the outgoing chief of the American Conservative Union, which sponsors the Conservative Political Action Conference, had prompted a long list of major players in the movement, including the Heritage Foundation, the Media Research Center, Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America, to boycott.
That left Al Cardenas, the new chairman, promising just days ago a “comprehensive vetting process on each CPAC participant.”
He said he wanted to make certain that longtime supporters of the conservative movement, such as those at the Heritage Foundation, are brought “back into the fold.”
Now a source has confirmed that a board vote has been taken that will realign plans for those who participate next year to exclude homosexual advocacy, although details had not been released.
[...]
According to a blogger at the FrumForum, Cardenas had warned it was “going to be difficult” to work with GOProud going forward.
He had cited the “behavior and attitude” of the homosexuality advocates, in light of the description by their leader, Chris Barron, of ACU Foundation chairman Cleta Mitchell as “a nasty bigot.”
Barron later apologized, saying he reached his breaking point because of “unfair and untrue attacks” on him, his friends, his organization and others.
“I shouldn’t have used the language that I did to describe Cleta Mitchell,” he said.
Oh hell, it’s probably one of the only completely accurate things Barron has said in the past year, at least about politics.
Now, granted, this is WingNutDaily, and as such should be treated as “unconfirmed reporting,” but there you have it.
Roy Edroso compiled his favorite twenty-five quotes from CPAC for Esquire, and my goodness, this is really all you need to know about what appeals to a large portion of the citizenry. For instance:
22. “I refer to the debt — the new red menace. This time consisting of ink.” – Mitch Daniels.
21. “[Obama's reelection] would subject the country to what might be a fatal last dose of statism.” – Mitch Daniels.
And, on the subject of marriage equality and the like:
17. “Our liberties, which have made us great, are now destroying us.” – Rev. Michel Faulkner, at the CPAC “Traditional Marriage and Society” panel.
Weep for the stupid. One more, from the queen of the morons, then click over and read the rest:
3. “That is [liberalism's] goal — to destroy the family… [liberals] just made up this gay marriage thing… gays are natural conservatives.” – Ann Coulter.
What’s frightening is that gay conservatives actually think she’s onto something. Stupid liberal gays, wanting to be treated with dignity and equality, rather than just being offered a seat at the table and a semi-promise that nobody will punch them.
So there! If ever there was an “ex-liberal” pundit I’ve suspected that the Religious Right actually may have created in a secret dungeon, it’s Star Parker. Because she says things like this:
I became a conservative in church. I thought I was doing okay in my previous life — scamming the welfare system, going to the beach, soaking in my welfare-subsidized hot tub, treating sex as a hobby, and abortion as birth control.
You see, she was one of those “welfare queen” Rush Limbaugh is always talking about, scaring the old white ladies so! And to be fair, Star did have four abortions, so she knows what she’s talking about. [No, she doesn't.] Anyway, she would like to explain why she did not go to CPAC now:
Yes, the reason I declined was the inclusion of GOProud, a group identifying itself as representing “gay conservatives and their allies,” as a sponsor of the event.
[...]
The founder and chairman of GOProud removed any doubt on my part that not participating was the correct decision by dismissing these groups as “losers,” “clowns,” and “not relevant.”
For once, yes, GOProud actually said something to imply that perhaps they are deserving of dignity and shouldn’t be a doormat for the rest of the conservative movement.
I, of course, have been accused of being worse than a clown.
WORSE THAN A CLOWN? There is nothing worse than a clown.
The idea of “gay conservative” is an oxymoron.
“Gay” is everything that “conservative” is not.
[...]
It’s a worldview that is man-centered rather than God-centered. It is a worldview that rejects eternal truths passed on from the beginning of time. Although the worldview that “gay conservatives” choose to invent may diverge from the worldview of liberals, their common ground is they make it all up.
Ah, it’s the old “we’re smart because we believe our interpretation of things in an old faith book, without any corroborating evidence, you’re stupid” approach. It’s adorable because it’s so mindblowingly stupid.
Conservatives believe that there are objective and eternal truths, not of the product of any individual human mind, that are transmitted through the generations.
Like Old Wives’ Tales!
“Gay” is liberal, not conservative, regardless of what their stand may be on government spending or taxes.
Okay, got it. Gays not conservatives because gays don’t believe in old wives’ tales, and I used to be a welfare queen, so I’m an expert.
What’s awesome about the crop of yahoos who have taken over the Republican Party is that as we get further into the 2012 campaign, the infighting is going to be absolutely hilarious.
The other day, Rick Santorum suggested that Sarah Palin couldn’t go to CPAC because she’s too busy being a mommy, and also because she’d rather be doing things that involve her making money [rawr!], and now Sarah Palin has replied, and for once, she used words in the correct order!
Because I certainly am not. Head thee over to his place for some good stuff.
But here’s his summary of one “Carrie Lukacs” character, a wingnut anti-feminist author:
She’s in favor of people getting married, staying married, and having children.
And she’s gathered a panel of other scolds, one of whom — an excitable Harlem conservative, bless him (Update: He’s Michel Faulkner, author of Restoring the American Dream) –hollers THANK YOU FOR CARING ABOUT MARRIAGE! His great line (really, how can you top it?) is “Our liberties, which have made us great, are now destroying us.” See, “we are beginning to destroy ourselves” with non-traditional marriage. “We must stand for traditional marriage on the grounds that it is good for our society… one man and one woman… if we do not, we will indeed destroy ourselves.”
I wonder how the GOProud guys are liking this.
They’re fine, Roy. They don’t like being gay very much.
Also:
New black preacher up now, saying the GOP shouldn’t give up on black people because a lot of them hate gay people and abortion too, and thus can be tempted — don’t “try to sell the whole farm” of horrific Republican ideas to them, just dangle a fetus. Stands strongly against Heather Has Two Mommies and has said “Don’t throw us under the bus” five times, which helps get the crowd on his side.
Oh, Edroso, you won my heart months ago, but this just solidifies it.
