Newt Gingrich’s family values: open marriage, one man, two or more women, no gays allowed

The media is not unfairly picking on Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich for what he has done in the past. We all know no one’s perfect, that we are all sinners. We all believe that people can change and become better and leave their sins behind.

What drives people crazy about Newt Gingrich is the sheer hypocrisy of what he is saying today, the sanctimoniousness of his embrace of traditional family values, and his roaring denunciation of all those he blames for undermining respect for traditional family values as he defines them, even as he has abandoned two wives in succession for a third trophy wife 23 years younger than he is.

Others are to be condemned for the unforgivable choices they have made, but his own bad choices are to be ignored and forgotten because he has been forgiven by God.

Newt supports a constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage, so that even if a majority of the voters and elected representatives in a state approved of same-sex marriage, they couldn’t authorize it because it would be unconstitutional. He is an advocate of traditional marriage between one man and one woman, even though his second wife says he asked for an open marriage in which he could keep her as wife and also keep his willing mistress, who is now his third wife.

According to published reports, Gingrich complained to his second wife that she wanted him all to herself, while his mistress was willing to share. Speaking of his mistress, congressional staffer Callista, now his third wife, Gingrich is quoted as saying, “She doesn’t care what I do.” At the same time Gingrich presided over the impeachment of President Clinton for an affair with a White House staffer.

But allowing two consenting adults of the same sex to marry would somehow disrespect marriage? Two days after asking his second wife for a divorce, he delivered one of his many speeches extolling family values and condemning liberals for advocating tax and other policies he claimed were harmful to families and children, with lots of references to God, families, values, ethics, and standards.

Can Gingrich get away with general denials of the accuracy of media coverage of his personal life without specifying what exactly in the media coverage is untrue? Can he succeed in burying his own contradictions and hypocrisy in vociferous denunciations of the media?

Apparently the answer from South Carolina is, Yes Newt Can!