OSKALOOSA, Iowa — At a campaign stop in Oskaloosa, Iowa on Tuesday, GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich told a longtime resident of Oskaloosa that he should vote for President Obama rather than expect his support of gay Americans.
Scott Arnold, a Democrat and associate professor of writing at William Penn University, said he wanted to ask Gingrich about how he would represent him as President after reading past comments the former U.S. House Speaker as made about gay and lesbians, reported the Des Moines Register.
“I asked him if he’s elected, how does he plan to engage gay Americans. How are we to support him? And he told me to support Obama.”
“When you ask somebody a question and you expect them to support all Americans and have everyone’s general interest,” Arnold said. “It’s a little bit frustrating and disheartening when you’re told to support the other side. That he doesn’t’ need your support.”
Arnold said Gingrich’s comment “doesn’t inspire hope at all.”
Earlier this month, Gingrich wrote to the Iowa-based “Family Leader” — a conservative traditional values organization, advocating for a federal constitutional amendment that would deny marriage rights to same-sex couples, and pledged to “oppose any judicial, bureaucratic, or legislative effort to define marriage in any manner other than as between one man and one woman.”
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Gingrich, who has been married three times — the first two marriages ended in divorce after he committed adultery with women who would become his second and third wives — also pledged “to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others.”