Like many, we were hoping that Newt Gingrich might drop out of the presidential race and retreat back to the ’90s, from whence he came. Now, unless it’s revealed that Gingrich has a long history of infidelity and impropriety that will sour the American people against him, it seems that he and Mitt Romney will be battling it out for the Republican nomination. That means it’s time to learn a little more about the man, starting with the fact that like several other politicians prone to promoting anti-gay policies, one of his family members is homosexual.
If there’s space in your brain that should be devoted to keeping the younger Kardashian sisters straight, but is instead storing information about Clinton-era politicians, you probably remember that Gingrich’s half-sister, Candace Gingrich-Jones, has openly criticized her brother’s policies for some time. Gingrich-Jones (who still pronounces the name “Gingrick”) is a LGBT rights activist with the Human Rights Campaign. (And once appeared on Friends!) In the past week, she’s started speaking out more about her brother, and is working to reelect President Obama no matter who the Repubican candidate is.
In an appearance this week on The Rachel Maddow Show, Gingrich-Jones says that while her brother calls gay marriage a “temporary aberration,” they’re respectful to each other at family functions. Though Gingrich made sure he and his wife Callista were out of the country when Gingrich-Jones married her wife Rebecca, they did get wedding and shower gifts. (Best dig of the interview: When Maddow asks if the gift was from Tiffany’s, Gingrich-Jones says she’s “not at liberty to say,” a reference Newt’s troubles with the store.)
Gingrich-Jones also told Michelangelo Signorile that she’s not sure if her brother really dislikes homosexuals, or just wants voters to think he does. She says:
“For someone who has publicly and financially opposed marriage equality, he has not so far treated us any differently than a married couple…That’s the question that I ask myself, and many have asked me, ‘Does he believe the things he says or is he saying them as part of his political stands?’ Really, the bottom line is: I don’t like either of the possibilities there, and I don’t know what the actual answer is.”
That really goes for all of the Republican candidates. It’s getting hard to sort out who’s thoroughly nutty and who’s just willing to say anything to get elected, and we don’t want either one in office.
