image: seanmart.com

Upon further examination, it seems more likely that he is one of the smartest people in their political circle because they agree with and give credence to his ideology. What they consider brilliance is little more than masterful manipulation with words, actions, or both. And quite frankly, it takes a pretty smart person to pull it off for as long as Newt Gingrich has.

In politics, infidelity runs so deep that it is no longer considered a career ender when an affair is brought to light. Except, of course, if one has engaged in an affair of the toe tapping (Larry Craig), intern harassing (Mark Foley) homosexual variety. For Republicans, being outed as, or associated with anything gay is, by all accounts, “the” political career killer.

The winds of change shift every time a repentent bible thumber who has been exposed for adultery is forgiven, because they have repented and now have God on their side.

It should be noted that, at one time, adultery was an automatic disqualification for those who aspired to public and/or political office. This is no longer the case. Few people would agree that Newton Leroy Gringrich’s past serial adultery makes him unfit for the office of the presidency. No thanks due in part to former President William Jefferson Clinton who made famous the phrase, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” when every Congressman and their mother knew the omission was patently false.

Little known to most Americans until around 2007 was the true story of how Newt Gingrich, Republican Speaker of the House and one of the most powerful men in Washington at the time, was engaged in his own extramarital affair. He was in the midst of the affair when he, along with a slew of other red-handed hypocrites, headed Clinton’s impeachment proceedings. Under Gingrich’s direct leadership, the GOP launched a multimillion-dollar ad campaign aimed at exposing Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky to the American people.

Newt had this to say about the revelation of his affair:

“The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge. I drew a line in my mind that said, ‘Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being.’ As a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept … perjury in your highest officials.”

The difference lies in the fact that Newt didn’t deny his affair during testimony, while under oath, in a court of law. And because he was never asked he had absolutely no chance to deny the affair, nor did he have reason to admit to it. Admittedly, he is absolutely correct in the legal sense. Clinton was impeached because he lied while under oath, resulting from affairs with Linda Tripp, Paula Jones, Lewinsky and others, and not because he had sexual relationships with these women.

As one of the most recognized members of the GOP, the party best known for shouting its family values, morals, and the sanctity of marriage from the rooftops, Gingrich embodies American Conservativism. He also embodies that of a serial adulterer, sex addict, and your run of the mill misogynist.

Say what you will, but in the tumultuous world of politics, Newt is a survivor who can parlay with the best of them. He, at one time, vocally criticized every single wrongdoing of the Democratic Party to try to bring them down.

Of the big Republican and Democratic nominees pondering a run for the office of the President in 2008, a surprising number could have been considered, at one time or another, serial adulterers.

“Sen. John McCain (affair, divorce), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (affair, divorce, affair, divorce), and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (divorce, affair, nasty divorce). Gingrich even ran for office in ‘78 under the slogan “Let Our Family Represent Your Family” while cheating on his wife. He would go on to divorce her following the election. Let’s not forget the despicable John Edwards (D) who carried on an affair and fathered a child while his wife fought the battle of her life against terminal breast cancer.

But back to Gingrich, whose affairs are most alluring because he frequently campaigned under the family values platform. A short timeline follows:

He divorced his second wife, Marianne, in 2000 after his attorneys acknowledged his affair with his current wife, Callista Bisek, a former congressional aide more than 20 years his junior. His first marriage, to former high school geometry teacher, Jackie Battley, ended in divorce in 1981. They married at 18, but he reportedly begins secretly dating her at the tender age of 16, while still in high school.

“The Cato Institute records that Gingrich “famously visited Jackie, his first wife, in the hospital where she was recovering from uterine cancer surgery to discuss details of the impending divorce. He later resisted paying alimony and child support for his two daughters, causing a church to take up a collection. For all of his talk of religious faith and the importance of God, Gingrich left his congregation over the pastor’s criticism of his divorce.”

After 18 years of marriage to his second wife, he asked for a divorce. He’d been having an affair with his soon to be, and current third wife, for 6 years prior. He decided to follow in her footsteps and convert to Roman Catholicism, after which time he was granted an annulment of his second marriage of 18 years. The reason for the annulment was that his former wife had been previously married, and his current wife was active in the church, including singing in the choir, all the while sleeping with the married Gingrich. Apparently, annulment looks better on paper than divorce.

If Bill and Hillary Clinton’s marriage can be publicly dissected on the front page of every newsstand, why should the marital infidelities of other GOP and Democratic candidates be off limits?

The bottom line is this, what bothers most people about Gingrich is not that he cheated on his first wife while she was sick, and his second wife while she was sick, but it is that he had and still has the gall to get on a national podium and lecture the rest of us about family values and morality. He’s not a big fan of taking his own advice.

How can you lecture anyone about the sanctity of marriage while so blatantly ignoring those very ideals yourself? We can all agree that infidelity does not disqualify a man or woman from public office, nor should it. We’d be unable to run the country if that were the case, but it does disqualify them from making lectures and soap box speeches that point to that very thing. It’s his glaring hypocrisy that knows no bounds, and speaks to a character lacking integrity. It’s his defense of “the sanctity of marriage,” and his anti-same sex marriage stance. Here is a man who clearly has no respect for marriage’s sanctity outside of it being an institution that suits him whenever he feels fit, and when his wife, whoever she may be at the time, is without illness.

President “Do As I Say, Not As I Do” Gingrich? Ugh. Will a serious GOP candidate please stand up? Republicans will have to come a lot better than this.

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

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A fresh breath of cynicism is sometimes useful, but not in relation to granting American’s their civil liberties. With that said, I strongly agree with the president’s state of the union address regarding DADT, but only with the understanding that there exists no timeline on promises made. Unlike many others, I didn’t expect the important gay rights issues to be served with the first course, but perhaps, in politics, there should be a timeline if multiple promises are made in conjunction with vying to hold the highest office in the land. Consider that Democrats insisted Bush present a timeline when he initiated talk of withdrawing soldiers from Iraq. Therein lies somewhat of a precedent set by Obama’s own party. Politicians, no matter how smooth talking, acting, or walking are often held accountable for [insert cause here] on a [insert criteria here] basis based on what they say they can do, but that accountability doesn’t reach beyond the walls surrounding Capitol Hill. Any accountability to ‘we the people’  manifests itself at the polls; when it comes time to vote.

Accountability is a word that causes the quelling of discontent from all sides when put to action. But the reality is that President Obama has 3 solid years remaining in office and his accountability for unfulfilled promises has not extended beyond Capital Hill. Not yet, at least, and in all fairness I’m not ready to lambaste the president for any perceived shortcomings specifically due to the fact that he still has plenty of time to make good. Whether the next three years are productive or destructive is wholly dependent on the congressional atmosphere, i.e., congress’s political make up, President Obama’s wherewithal and the American people; you know, the ones who voted him into office. We all know that once an official is elected to a position of power all bets are off. There’s a bigger picture they’re exposed to that you or I will never have access to. What this means for the gay community is that we cannot rely on mere words and promises alone to defeat discrimination at the federal level. The longer we allow gay organizations to speak for us and represent us while criticizing their actions, without critiquing our own [in]action, then we remain nothing more than bystanders with opinions. The president can make promises he fully intends to keep, but we don’t help when we bite the hand that intends to feed us without allowing that hand as much room as necessary to put the smack down on those hindering progress. And what of the gay and lesbian organizations who lobby for us? They have their own political infrastructure and agendas to attend to that were implemented long before  Obama started banking on new and old promises.

Gay organizations have been in existence from Republican to Democrat presidents. They haven’t stopped playing to a specific GLBT audience and to a specific brand of politics within that secret world so why all the angst against their pleasure or displeasure with a specific administration? If you don’t agree with their agenda, don’t support their cause. If you never supported their cause to begin with, why place them above any other “non-profit” that purports to have no real political agenda when that logic does not add up? The fact is these organizations are largely government funded and they give voice to reason and common decency on a general level, but beneath the surface they will not bite the hand that feeds them and risk restricting that federal funding. In essence, they refuse to do the very thing Religious organizations that enjoy major government tax breaks proudly do. When we grow weary of sitting around and doing nothing while they work toward their agenda (growing some balls), we call ourselves activists and find our voice, but only when it comes to a cause we deeply care about.

The carnival that makes up the primary branch of GLBT organizations or “Gay, Inc.”, as they’ve been dubbed, has succumbed to a dichotomy that has successfully divided the gay community over multiple issues for many years. The one I feel most strongly for concerns federal marriage equality. Same-sex couple’s and their estates are not federally protected as it relates to domestic partnerships and civil unions under federal law. There exists gay and lesbian lawmakers who do little to lend their powerful voice because they are, in effect, just as complacent as the bulk of us. Case in point; Barney Frank who is arguably one of the most powerful members of congress, would rather we stop complaining federally and start writing our congressmen and women locally and lobbying on a state level instead. Personally, I view Mr. Frank as a waste of political breathing space due largely to his direct role in our economic downfall, but he has provided a good point about just what it takes to get things down in Washington. He is well known in gay political circles as ‘the gay asshole’ that discourages gays from protesting, most notably the 2009 march on Washington. On the other hand, he’s done practically nothing to advance the gay “agenda” from where he’s sitting, and I meanhe has yet to really step up and lobby for gay equality. The good thing about Barney Frank being an openly gay, powerful congressman is… on second thought, I’ll get back to you when I have something positive to write. That’s why I dislike announcements such as “the first openly [insert sexual identifier here] was just hired, yada yada yada, because all it’s a facade. 

The encouragement to lobby strictly statewide speaks to other issues that remain in jeopardy if the fight remains mostly or only at the state level. In particular, federal discrimination will persist as the state by state fight rages on, and at the same time gays and lessbians still won’t be afforded any federal allowances, benefits or protections as it relates to marriage, adoption and employer benefits. This vicious circle is a cycle of regurgitated nothing.

Despite that, it makes little sense to criticize gay organizations for playing politics as usual; until it comes to a cause we hold dear to our hearts. Why do we do nothing the remainder of the time? Because we don’t care about those issues. We’re all guilty of it. What hasn’t happened, but needs to happen, is mass mobilization. We can compare the fight for equality to the fight for civil rights until the cows come home, but we haven’t properly fashioned our movement or borrowed from some of the best sources of political warfare, and unlike those involved in the civil rights movement, we’re fighting against not only a political agenda, but a religious one as well. Think about the fact that most of our opposition is derived from biblical interpretation and religious doctrine.  

Like the civil rights movers and shakers of yesteryear, the gay community must collectively mobilize as a majority to get the message of equality spread and passed federally. Instead of criticizing gay organizations for not being tougher on the president with regard to promises made, we need to criticize them for placating the gay community and not addressing all of the pressing issues of our time which can be met without much of any political fanfare. They’ve done little to reach out to the larger community, specifically gays and lesbians who live, work and thrive in urban enclaves and those who are rightly considered double and triple minorities, i.e., Black/Hispanic/Asian, gay, men and women.

There is a strikingly potent element of cultural diversity that exists and is widely underrepresented within discussions about socio-cultural and socio-economic issues affecting the community.  This is on a national and international level and that lack of representation; the lack of diversity within the most visible voices the community has to offer is noticeable and alarming. This translates into lobbying for LGBTQ initiatives that will rightly impact the community at large, but it also shifts focus from equally important, smaller, wide scale social and economic divides and deprives attention from issues such as violence against gay youth, youth homelessness, same-sex domestic violence, etc., and further widens a VISIBLE gap that exists within the gay community. How can we collectively fight for equal rights when we know for certain that there exists things such as racism within our own gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual communities? We cannot.

We must provide a positive and reinforcing message to the country and to our legislatures that says we will collectively support the president’s efforts to strike down “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and will work with him to accomplish this long awaited goal. I won’t get into my thoughts about health care and the president’s shortcomings so far because that is certainly an issue for another day, but we shouldn’t support the hijacking of our own message of equality and unity by joining conservative dissent and dissent from within our own ranks about the granting of rights. There is nothing stopping us from putting a positive spin on a negative situation while also expressly showing how much we care about this issue and will support the only president besides Clinton to give credibility to equal rights for gays. If he can accomplish this without bending over backwards for the church, he’ll rank in a class all by himself, as presidents go. 

 
image by Unwanted__by_DetrimentalMemories

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

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We are moving swiftly so that more Americans can see our government in action as it reviews this landmark case, said Ainsworth around one week after the start of the trial, which last Wednesday concluded witness testimonies    
                                                           – source ChristianPost

Two filmmakers from Los Angeles, John Ireland and John Ainsworth, have posted a series of videos on YouTube depicting the Prop 8 trial, which is currently in recess. They used first hand notes from bloggers and writers who witnessed the trial live to re-create the transcripts. They plan to record the entire court drama for availability to the general public via YouTube and their website MariageTrial.com. There you will find actual attorney and witness photos including the actors who portrayed them. Full text of the transcript is available.

What makes the video broadcasts so significant is their contrast to a ruling brought down by the Supreme Court of the United States prior to the start of court proceedings. They ruled that the trial could not be streamed live to YouTube and other courtrooms throughout the country. What this meant was no video originating directly from the courtroom could be broadcast, which makes the availability of the reenactment videos all the more significant. The trial hasn’t received as much media coverage in other parts of the country as it has in California, however it is bound to go before the U.S. Supreme Court at some point and it’s impact will greatly effect gays and lesbians everywhere. It is the first trial in any U.S. federal court where the argument for same sex marriage is being heard.

Watch the first series of episodes below.
Many more will follow.

Day 1 Chapter 1

Day 1 Chapter 2

Day 1 Chapter 3

I greatly appreciate the efforts of everyone involved in re-creating the prop 8 trial.

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

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