Newt Gingrich channeled $350,000 To Anti-Gay Hate Groups

[Amerigo Vespucci]

March 17, 2011 11:00 AM
Newt Gingrich channeled $350,000 To Anti-Gay Hate Groups

By John Amato

http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/newt-gingrich-chanelled-350000-anti-gay

Last year, former Speaker Newt Gingrich offered his vocal support for the ultimately successful campaign to oust three of the nine Iowa Supreme Court justices who had unanimously ruled in favor of marriage equality. As Gingrich courts social conservatives while exploring a possible presidential bid, new disclosures from his camp indicate that he and his associates bankrolled more than one-third of the $850,000 campaign to remove the Iowa justices.

ThinkProgress previously reported on $200,000 that Gingrich funneled from an anonymous donor to the anti-marriage equality group Iowa for Freedom, which was also being funded by AFA Action, the political arm of the virulently anti-gay American Family Association. The Associated Press revealed yesterday that one of the cogs in Gingrich’s vast network of business enterprises and front groups, ReAL Action, provided $125,000 to AFA Action. The Des Moines Register reported this morning that ReAL Action also contributed $25,000 to yet another Iowa anti-LGBT group, the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition.

AFA is not only of the nation’s most prominent anti-LGBT groups, it has been officially labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. As ThinkProgress has reported, the AFA is known for making incendiary comments about gays, including blaming gays for crop failure and various other biblical plagues, claiming that Hitler was gay, saying lesbians can’t be justices, equating gay sex with domestic terrorism, and equating gay sex to heroin, just to cite a few examples.

Gingrich’s tacit support for these radical views would not seem to be in question, as his spokesman went to great pains to explain that the grant to AFA Action was for “general support,” noting:

“We leave up to the groups receiving the money to determine how they would spend the money.

[Initech]

1. Someone who's been divorced four times should be automatically disqualified from the marriage debate

:eyes:

[Old and In the Way]

2. Keep hate alive!

'Cuz without some demographic to demonize, they'd have to offer constructive solutions to you know, fix things.

[old mark]

3. K&R-The man who would be president....nt

[Justitia]

4. this man's sister is a lesbian, she must really feel the love huh? -eom

[CommonSensePLZ]

5. "Anti-gay hate group"? There's a double negative in there I think /nt

[athenasatanjesus]

6. Gay people always cheat on their spouses.

He's just protecting this country from the evils of adultery.