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.
I agree with Focus on the Family co-founder James Dobson when he objects to Callista Gingrich becoming the First Lady because, “she was a mistress for eight years,” and share the view of right wing blowhard Jason Molotov Mitchell when he says that, “Newt and Callista are the last role models we want our sons and daughters looking up to.”
Both Dobson and Mitchell are odious human beings who peddle hate and traffic in lies – but at least they appear to be true social conservatives. The unassailable fact is that if you support or plan to vote for Newt Gingrich you do not stand for traditional family values. Indeed, the free-loving morality of Gingrich and his wife mirrors the distorted stereotypes they often unfairly project onto hippies and liberals.
Will someone in the Republican Party please tell me how this scheming, cheating couple that made a mockery of family values is remotely conservative? They had a secretive, sleazy affair that they hid for years until they could no longer conceal it. The hanky-panky was occurring even as Gingrich boisterously and brazenly skewered President Bill Clinton over his affair with Monica Lewisnsky.
Thanks to Gingrich’s effective dressing down of CNN’s John King and his general bludgeoning of the mainstream media, reporters have been somewhat cowed and a tad reluctant to say the obvious: Callista is a shameless home wrecker and Newt is a philandering hypocrite who talks like a preacher and lives like a porn star. Here are a few inconvenient facts:
Newt fell in love with his high school geometry teacher, Jackie, and married her. (If it had been a gay relationship or a Democrat, no doubt Gingrich would have called the relationship pedophilia)
Jackie, Gingrich’s first wife, claims that while she was recovering from cancer surgery in 1980, Newt came to the hospital to discuss divorcing her so he could marry his mistress, Marianne.
In 2011, Gingrich justified his affairs by claiming they were “partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country.” (Just imagine how passionate about America he will feel if elected president!)
In 2012, his second wife, Marianne, who suffered from Multiple Sclerosis, claimed that when she found out about the affair with Callista, Newt gave her an ultimatum that she must share him in an “open marriage.” When she declined, he divorced her.
The truth is, Newt Gingrich treats women like used cars, trading them in for newer models when something goes wrong under the hood or the new car smell dissipates. He is a totally despicable person who has poor character, is ethically challenged, and displays essentially no integrity or personal responsibility – yet hoards of born-again Christians seem to love him.
“I came at it completely believing that evangelical women would not even consider him,” Penn Nance of Concerned Women for America told The New Yorker. “I’ve been surprised by their willingness to listen and forgive.”
It is time to drop all pretenses by pretending there is a pro-family movement in America. These two-faced scoundrels are not “pro-family” they are simply anti-gay. The only time these holier-than-thou charlatans give a damn about family values is when they slam democrats like John Edwards or to bash homosexuals. When Edwards cheated on his sick wife and lied about it he was ruined and reduced to a pariah. Gingrich engaged in the exact same behavior and instead of becoming a pariah he might become president.
To cover their putrid past, the couple is trying to hide behind religion with Callista claiming that “When Newt became a Catholic, it was one of the happiest moments of my life.” However, there are many of us who have been around long enough to remember Gingrich preaching and preening about his Christian values back when he was Speaker of the House. His sense of piety was so grandiose that he once declared himself the “definer of civilization.”
Which civilization, the orgies of ancient Greece?
Generally, I tend to not give a damn about the personal lives of politicians, as long as they do their jobs. But it is galling and appalling that Gingrich would wife swap and bed hop while denying me the right to marry. In a recent New Hampshire presidential debate Gingrich said he opposed marriage equality for LGBT couples and justified his discriminatory position by invoking the “sacrament” of marriage.
This self-righteous hypocrite wouldn’t know a sacrament from Sacramento.
Even more disturbing, in The New Yorker we learn that Callista’s longtime friend, Karen Olson, is a lesbian. Newt’s sister, Candace, is also a lesbian. With normal people, learning that friends and family members are gay changes their hearts and inevitably leads them to support equal rights. However, Newt and Callista seem more than willing to throw their “loved ones” under the bus to help his political aspirations.
If social conservatives do not stand up and smack down Gingrich’s candidacy, it is fair to say that there is no such thing as the Religious Right — just a bunch of self-righteous scolds who don’t know the difference between right and wrong.
Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign was rocked last week when his second ex-wife, Marianne, revealed to ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross that in 1999, the former Speaker confessed a six-year affair with a staffer and asked her for an open marriage so his relationship with his mistress could continue:
“I said to him, ‘Newt, we’ve been married a long time,’ and he said — ‘but you want me all to yourself. Callista doesn’t care what I do’ … he was asking to have an open marriage and I refused … that I accept the fact that he has somebody else in his life… No. No. That is not a marriage.”
Naturally, since a GOP presidential debate was being held that same evening in Charleston, South Carolina, the moderator, CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, opened the debate with a question for Gingrich about the sensational allegations (which, being a human being with a pulse and functioning brain, Newt should have seen coming a mile away). When King asked Gingrich if he’d “like to take some time to respond to that,” Newt smarmily replied “No, but I will.”
The crowd roared its approval.
Gingrich continued:
“I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office, and I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.”
Now the crowd was on its feet, cheering and hollering like churchgoers at a revival.
“Every person in here knows personal pain. Every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things. To take an ex-wife and make it, two days before the primary, a significant question in a presidential campaign, is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine… and I am frankly astounded that CNN would take trash like that and use it to open a presidential debate.”
When King tried to cut in to explain that a.) it was not his network that broke the story, and b.) the question was a valid one as it had become a topic of conversation for many Americans, the crowd booed and Newt excoriated King with finger-wagging sanctimony:
“John, it was repeated by your network, you chose to start the debate with it. Don’t try to blame somebody else. You and your staff chose to start the debate with it.”
He then emphatically denied his ex-wife’s allegations, adding that his campaign offered to send personal friends to vouch for his innocence but the network wasn’t interested because “they would like to attack any Republican… I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans.”
That’s right: pay no attention to the jaw-dropping hypocrisy. This is all a massive anti-GOP conspiracy conjured up by that evil, elite, liberal media.
The sheer arrogance dripping from Gingrich’s response is nearly beyond comprehension. Sure, Newt’s planet-sized ego has beenwelldocumented (even by members of his ownparty), but Thursday’s display propelled the former Speaker to new heights of political narcissism. After all, when he spoke of the “decent” people who heroically choose to campaign for public office in the face of a “destructive” media onslaught, Mr. Gingrich — a thrice-married philanderer who served two wives with divorce papers while they were dealing with major medical problems — surely counted himself among them.
As I watched King’s question and Gingrich’s response, my head began to spin. What happened to the “personal responsibility” so fetishized by American conservatives? Is this self-victimizing, blame-the-media blowhard the same Newt Gingrich whose so-called “Contract with America” included a “Personal Responsibility Act” that denied welfare assistance to mothers under eighteen, blocked additional aid for dependent children if they were born while their mother was on welfare, and ended aid for dependent children entirely after five years? Is this pompous politician who kisses up to women outside his marriage the same one who pays lip service to the Religious Right’s “values” and travels the country speaking and peddling dozens of books about God, virtue, and the importance of family (including, unbelievably, a “God and the Founders”-type speech to a Republican women’s group in Erie, Pennsylvania just two days after his open marriage ultimatum to his wife)? Is this defiant, habitually non-monogamous sexual reprobate the same former House Speaker who demeaned married same-sex couples in lifelong committed relationships as “friends,” pledged to advance a constitutional amendment excluding same-sex couples from marriage, and funneled $200,000 into the successful effort to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices whose ruling allowed LGBT couples the freedom to marry?
Mr. Gingrich clearly fails to grasp the irony in the fact that he, a self-proclaimed “family values” man, was schtupping a staffer at the same time he was pharisaically pontificating against President Clinton for sexual immorality and leading the charge to impeach him for his extramarital activities. Newt’s ego is so monumental that once he could no longer conceal the affair, he had the temerity to demand in all seriousness that his wife “share” him with his mistress. And his self-righteousness is so epically proportioned that it blinds him to the dissonance between his apparent belief that he should have whatever kind of marriages, open or otherwise, that he wants and his stated conviction that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Americans should be forbidden from marrying at all.
Perhaps the only thing more disconcerting than last evening’s histrionic display? The fact that when Newt Gingrich abdicated his personal responsibility and blamed everyone else — ABC News, the media at large, his ex-wife — for his serial adultery and the troubling flaws in his character, the audience in South Carolina leaped to its feet and cheered.
Catholic leaders issued a letter Friday to GOP presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, themselves Catholics, urging them “to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail.”
The letter, signed by 45 Catholic leaders says:
Mr. Gingrich has frequently attacked President Obama as a “food stamp president” and claimed that African Americans are content to collect welfare benefits rather than pursue employment. Campaigning in Iowa, Mr. Santorum remarked: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”
“At a time when nearly 1 in 6 Americans live in poverty, charities and the free market alone can’t address the urgent needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. And while jobseekers outnumber job openings 4-to-1, suggesting that the unemployed would rather collect benefits than work is misleading and insulting,” the letter adds.
See, the problem with their request, as Gingrich and Santorum likely see it, is that they’re at the point where they’re having to pander to the nasty Republican base, the base that absolutely lost it when Juan Williams dared to even bring up the subject of racism during the Fox News Republican debate on Martin Luther King Day, and during the same debate, booed Mitt Romney for having family born in Mexico. Racism isn’t icing on the cake for these people — it’s central to their governing platform.
Also, lest we forget, they’re running against the re-election of a black, Democratic president.
Glad those Catholic leaders are at least trying to say something, but I think it’s falling on deaf ears.
Newt Gingrich built his career on the notion that he was the great defender of “family values.” Unfortunately, public piety did not match his private prurience. Any honest American would acknowledge that Gingrich is no true social conservative. While he became famous bashing liberals, he has lived quite the libertine lifestyle. Instead of family protection, Gingrich’s behavior has been a case study of projection — with the former House speaker enthusiastically engaging in the very behaviors he falsely ascribes to liberals.
Yesterday, his second wife, Marianne, claimed that Gingrich wanted an open relationship so he could continue his dalliance with his current wife Callista. When this important subject was brought up in the CNN debate last night, Gingrich blasted the moderator and acted holier-than-thou. The fact is, if you are going to run on a “family values” platform, you have no right to whine when your own personal behavior, moral character, and stunning hypocrisy are up for debate. According to an editorial in today’s New York Times:
In this political cycle, it is Newt Gingrich who has been unable to escape the toxic combination of infidelity and sermonizing. The stories about his three marriages have been known for years, but every time he seems to have escaped the wrath of Republican voters, they rise again.
On Thursday, they were resurrected by his second wife, Marianne, who told ABC News that he had sought an “open marriage” arrangement in 1999 so that he could have her blessing to conduct an affair while remaining married to her. She refused, the couple divorced, and the woman he had been seeing is now his third wife, Callista Gingrich, who accompanies him everywhere on the campaign trail. Mr. Gingrich later denied the claim.
Marianne Gingrich’s most devastating memory is that the day after his request, Mr. Gingrich gave a speech entitled, “The Demise of American Culture.” Among other things, he said in the speech that the elimination of prayer in schools had left American teenagers morally adrift.
Newt is now trying to bully the media for asking questions. He is also trying to slime his former wife — even dragging out his children to defend him. No doubt his offspring have an incentive to back dear old dad if they want to remain in his ever-ballooning will. At least what is left of it before he blows it all on Callista at Tiffany’s.
The fact is, Marianne has had many years to attack Newt and refrained from doing so. If she were only out to hurt him, she would have divulged this information years ago. She is clearly doing the nation a service by talking now — and saving America from this lowlife charlatan who would exploit this country just as he uses the women in his life. It appears that Gingrich is an ego-maniac with absolutely no conscience. More than any single person alive he is responsible for creating the ugly climate of hyper-partisanship that mars capitol hill.
Newt Gingrich ought to be ashamed of himself. He should not scapegoat the media or defame his ex-wives. He should look in the mirror and cry in disgust at the poor moral choices he has made that have hurt so many innocent people.
Also: the quote featured in the video from “historian” Newt Gingrich, where Andrew Jackson supposedly said we should handle our enemies by killing them was, um, not said by Andrew Jackson. It was said by Stonewall Jackson.
The Religious Right hates Mitt Romney. We all know this. They do not want to vote for him under any circumstances. The trouble is that the “family values” wingnut crowd can’t seem to settle on which other primary candidate they hate the least — Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich? So some of them are digging their heels in for Santorum, others for Gingrich, and the infighting between the two camps is getting nasty:
Desperate to settle on one conservative alternative, Religious Right leaders backing Rick Santorum and those backing Newt Gingrich are now resorting to vicious attacks against what have long been seen as off-limits targets in presidential campaigns — the candidates’ wives.
Influential evangelical leader James Dobson set off the fireworks at this weekend’s Christian Right summit, giving a speech that lavished praise on Karen Santorum and asked whether Americans really wanted Callista Gingrich — “a woman who was a man’s mistress for eight years” — as their First Lady, according to sources who attended the meeting.
Translation: Daddy D called Callista Gingrich a whore.
One source described Dobson’s tone as “angry,” and said it seemed like Dobson was blaming Callista Gingrich for the couples’ affair, which began while the former House Speaker was still married to his second wife (this is Callista Gingrich’s first marriage).
“It was clear that, to him, the villian in this story is Callista Gingrich,” the source said.
Well, of course! In the fundamentalist Christian worldview, men are never responsible for their own behavior, which means Callista Gingrich must just be a vile temptress. Of course, that also means Newt’s second wife was also a vile temptress, as she lulled Newt into a sensual stupor, causing him to leave the bedside of his first wife, who was fighting cancer. Or maybe the problem is Newt?
The piece goes on to point out that the stories of Karen Santorum’s years-long love affair with An Abortion Doctor started circulating just after the big Religious Right confab in Texas where they were supposed to be deciding who to support, as a united front.
So basically, the religious conservative conversation has devolved to “slut slut slut slut slut!” and James Dobson started it. It’s nice to see them being a little more honest about their true beliefs.
Following the news that Newt Gingrich asked for an “open marriage” with his second wife when she found out he had been carrying on an affair with his current wife, Callista, for six years, Dan Savage has this to say:
Technically you’re not asking your wife for an open marriage if you’ve already been f*cking another woman for six years. You’re presenting your wife with an ultimatum. That doesn’t make you a proponent of open marriage, Newt, it makes you a CPOS.
But Newt’s got a new campaign slogan: “Screw as I say, not as I screw.”
Gingrich May Have Done the Impossible by Setting a New Standard for Political Hypocrisy, says TWO
NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out called on GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to quit the presidential race today if allegations by his second ex-wife, Marianne, are true about the former House Speaker demanding an open sexual relationship. This is hardly the behavior one would expect from a promoter of “traditional values” and a fervid opponent of marriage equality for same-sex couples.
“If the allegation is true, Newt Gingrich has done the impossible by setting a new standard for hypocrisy in politics. I’d call such actions unconscionable, but that would wrongly suggest that Gingrich has a conscience,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Gingrich has worked to deny LGBT people the right to marry based on his professed family values, but may have failed to disclose that his definition of family might include an open relationship with a mistress.”
ABC’s Brian Ross will be airing a story that, if confirmed, would do irreparable damage to Gingrich’s campaign:
ABC Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross, told WMAL’s Morning Majority program that Marianne Gingrich claims her ex-husband wanted an ‘open marriage.’ “He came to her and said, ‘I want to stay married to you and still have an affair with Callista, his current wife,” said Ross. “According to Marianne, he said ‘You need to share me,’ and she said ‘I don’t want to share,’ and the marriage ended,” he added.
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.
Brian Ross, ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent (and the journalist who broke the story of Truth Wins Out’s undercover hidden-camera investigation of the Bachmann clinic on national television), scored an interview with Marianne Gingrich, Newtie’s ex-wife number two. It’s scheduled to air tonight, but juicy tidbits are already leaking out, including this bombshell:
The reporter who conducted that interview, ABC Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross, told WMAL’s Morning Majority program that Marianne Gingrich claims her ex-husband wanted an ‘open marriage.’ “He came to her and said, ‘I want to stay married to you and still have an affair with Callista, his current wife,” said Ross. “According to Marianne, he said ‘You need to share me,’ and she said ‘I don’t want to share,’ and the marriage ended,” he added.
That’s right — not only was Newt schtupping a staffer while sanctimoniously railing (and leading the impeachment charges) against President Bill Clinton for similar conduct, but once he could no longer conceal the affair, the Speaker had the temerity to demand that his wife “share” him with his mistress.
Unbelievable. And this is the man who’s trying to tell me I can’t have even one marriage? That HIS marriage has “sanctity” but MINE does not?!?
(Note: Ross misspoke in the quote above. At the time Marianne Gingrich alleges the conversation took place, she (Marianne), not Callista Bisek, was Newt Gingrich’s current wife.)
(Weekly Column)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Brian Ross, ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent (and the journalist who broke the story of Truth Wins Out’s 
