Op-ed: Why Newt Gingrich Really Does Live Like a Porn Star 

Truth Wins Out placed an admittedly provocative full-page ad in today's edition of Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, headlined "Newt Gingrich: Talks Like a Preacher, Lives Like a Porn Star." In it, we admonish Gingrich for his stunning hypocrisy on the issue of marriage equality, taking him to task for the way that he, a serial adulterer with multiple marriages, works tirelessly to prevent same-sex couples from marrying because of a professed belief that marriage is "sacred."

This ad was strategically timed to coincide with the start of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC. The annual conference, which began today and culminates on Saturday with a closely-watched straw poll, is the nation's largest gathering of conservatives and has become a place of pilgrimage for right-wing celebrities, bloggers, pundits, elected officials, and presidential candidates. The speaker's list for this year's conference reads like the roster of a conservative Dream Team: Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Michele Bachmann, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Tony Perkins, Ann Coulter, Herman Cain, John Boehner, and GOP presidential wannabes Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich.

It also comes in the midst of a white-hot week for the freedom to marry movement -- a week in which the House and Senate in Washington state passed a marriage equality bill, a similar bill was introduced in the Illinois Assembly, and California's Proposition 8 was ruled unconstitutional in a federal appellate court. And it's only Thursday!

While TWO's ad is already receiving a lot of attention from LGBT media, our organization is also hearing from critics who wonder why we decided to focus on Gingrich at all, since his presidential campaign has deflated so rapidly in recent weeks. "He's yesterday's news," one activist wrote. "Slamming Newt is pointless -- he doesn't have a chance of becoming the nominee."

Those who make these arguments miss the point entirely. Truth Wins Out is not trying to influence the outcome of the presidential election. We're leaving that to organizations like the Stonewall Democrats, the Log Cabin Republicans, and the Human Rights Campaign. (Besides, one newspaper ad can't even compete in the brave new political world of Super PACs.) TWO launched the ad because we believe that when the LGBT community is attacked, we should fight back. It doesn't matter what political party, if any, a person belongs to - we sharply criticized then-Senator Barack Obama when his campaign invited the outspokenly homophobic and self-proclamed "ex-gay" singer Donnie McClurkin to join him on the trail in South Carolina, to name just one example. Regardless of a person's politics, if they attack or degrade LGBT people, we must respond.

And Gingrich has certainly attacked. He recently demeaned married same-sex couples in lifelong committed relationships as nothing more than "friends." He has repeatedly pledged to advance a constitutional amendment excluding same-sex couples from marriage. He funneled $200,000 into the successful effort to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices whose ruling allowed LGBT couples the freedom to marry. And he wasted no time lambasting Tuesday's historic Proposition 8 ruling as an unconscionable judicial assault on the "Judeo-Christian foundations of the United States."

Newt and his comrades in the antigay lobby used to say that marriage equality harms children and families. Repeated studies showing that same-sex couples have equal (or even better) odds of raising happy, well-adjusted, successful children, coupled with an explosion in visibility for LGBT couples nationwide, have obliterated that argument completely. So now they've shifted strategies, focusing on religion- and morality-based opposition. We seem to be hearing the same platitudes everywhere lately: marriage equality comes at the expense of religious liberty. Allowing same-sex couples to marry is immoral.

Conservatives, including Gingrich, proclaim marriage to be a holy sacrament and position themselves as the valiant defenders of this tradition. Even that doesn't go far enough for the former Speaker, who would have you believe his moral beacon shines so brightly as to render him the "definer of civilization." But as we all know, Newt's personal life proves the hollowness of these words. He has behaved reprehensibly in at least two of his three marriages, yet tells anyone who will listen that LGBT Americans should be forbidden from marrying at all. And the social conservatives at the base of his party are eating it up.

Pointing out Newt Gingrich's serial hypocrisy undermines our opponents' core argument about marriage being too sacred for same-sex couples. Doing so at CPAC implicates social conservatives for aiding and abetting behavior they purport to oppose when they slavishly support Gingrich. (After all, if they can support someone like Gingrich, what does it even mean to be a social conservative today?) It exposes their "pro-family" gimmick and reveals that they're not pro-family at all, just anti-gay. And it provides a critical opportunity to undermine the incoherent, yet potent arguments used by the right to justify their opposition to marriage equality and devaluation of LGBT people and families. That's why Truth Wins Out ran our hard-hitting ad, and that's why it's important to go after Newt Gingrich, at this time, on this issue.

JOHN BECKER is the communications and development director for Truth Wins Out.