Newt Gingrich explains that discrimination against blacks may be wrong — “you have to decide whether you’re going to tolerate discrimination based on race,” — Â but against gays is perfectly acceptable, suggesting that there actually is no discrimination against gays because gay people can drink from the same water fountains as straight people. Note that Gingrich doesn’t actually come out against discrimination against blacks, stating that “you have to decide whether you’re going to tolerate” it.
But Gingrich also states he would sign an order re-instating Don’t Ask, Don’t tell, and believes that marriage for 3000 years has always been between a man and a woman and cannot change.
Gingrich attributes his stance that discrimination against gays is good on the false concept that being gay is a choice, suggesting gay people should just marry people of the opposite sex.
Marriage is a “value proposition,” Gingrich says, and an acceptance of “that lifestyle” cannot be “normalized.” Gingrich calls equating the African-American civil rights movement with the LGBT civil rights movement “offensive.”
Gingrich, twice divorced, thrice married, is a serial adulterer, and much has been written about the details of his infidelity, including specific stories on where and when and how he cheated on his wives.
Igor Volsky at Think Progress — who published the video and related transcript, below — today wrote:
Newt Gingrich told the Des Moines Register’s editorial board this morning that gay people have a “significant range of choice within a genetic pattern†and can choose to be straight just like someone can “choose to be celibate.†The former House speaker, who opposes same-sex marriage, explained that there is a “big difference between saying that you’re to have an acceptance of people’s lifestyles and saying that you’re now going to normalize that as a standard for the whole countryâ€:
Q: Do you believe that people choose to be gay?
GINGRICH: I believe it’s a combination of genetics and environment. I think both are involved. I think people have many ranges of choices. Part of the question is, do you want a society which has a bias in one direction or another?
Q: So people can then choose one way or another?
GINGRICH: I think people have a significant range of choice within a genetic pattern. I don’t believe in genetic determinism and I don’t think there is any great evidence of genetic determinism. There are propensities. Are you more likely to do this or more likely to do that? But that doesn’t mean it’s definitional.
Q: So a person can then choose to be straight?
GINGRICH: Look, people choose to be celibate. People choose many things in life. You know, there is a bias in favor of non-celibacy. It’s part of how the species recreates. And yet there is a substantial amount of people who choose celibacy as a religious vocation or for other reasons.