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Newt Gingrich on Civil Rights
Former Republican Representative (GA-6) and Speaker of the House
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Loyalty test for everyone, not just for Muslims
Q: You've said you would impose a loyalty test for Muslims to serve in your administration. You said, "We did this in dealing with the Nazis, and we did this in dealing with the communists." What specific loyalty test would you require them to take?
GINGRICH: Actually, I didn't describe it as applied to Muslims. I described it as applied to everybody. There is nothing illegitimate about seeking to make sure that people are loyal to the US if they work for the government of the US. I was responding to
this insane moment [in a trial of] the guy who built the car bomb from Pakistan, was asked by the judge, who said to him, "But you swore an oath of loyalty to the US." And he said to the judge, "I am your enemy. I lied." The judge seemed mystified at the
idea that somebody would have lied. And my point is, we now know there really were communist spies. And I would suggest to you we need security provisions across the board to ensure that those Americans and the American government are loyal to the US.
Source: Iowa Straw Poll 2011 GOP debate in Ames Iowa
, Aug 11, 2011
I helped author DOMA; if it fails, amend Constitution
Q: Are you a George W. Bush Republican, meaning a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, or a Dick Cheney Republican, that same sex marriage should be a state's decision?GINGRICH: I helped author the Defense of Marriage Act which the
Obama administration should be protecting in court. I think if that fails, you have no choice except a constitutional amendment.
SANTORUM: Constitutional amendment.
PAWLENTY: Constitutional amendment.
CAIN: State decision.
ROMNEY: Constitutional.
Source: 2011 GOP primary debate in Manchester NH
, Jun 13, 2011
Army & Marines wanted Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell
Q: Now gays are allowed to serve openly in the military; would you leave that policy in place or would you try to change it back to "don't ask/don't tell"?CAIN: If I had my druthers,
I never would have overturned "don't ask/don't tell" in the first place. Now that they have changed it, I wouldn't create a distraction trying to turn it over as president.
GINGRICH: Well, I think it's very powerful that both the Army and the
Marines overwhelmingly opposed changing it, that their recommendation was against changing it. And if as president--I've met with them and they said, you know, it isn't working, it is dangerous, it's disrupting unit morale, and we should go back,
I would listen to the commanders whose lives are at risk about the young men and women that they are, in fact, trying to protect.
BACHMANN: I would keep the "don't ask/don't tell" policy.
Source: 2011 GOP primary debate in Manchester NH
, Jun 13, 2011
Stop forcing same-sex marriage on religious organizations
The campaign against religious symbols is only the tip of the iceberg. Consider the following:- In Nov. 2006, a student at Missouri State University studying to be a social worker was interrogated by school faculty and subsequently threatened with
expulsion when, after being required to lobby state legislators in favor of same-sex adoptions, she asked for an alternative assignment that did not violate her Christian beliefs.
- In Oct. 2009, Congress passed a "hate speech" law subjecting pastors and
other faith leaders to prosecution for preaching aspects of their faith that the state decides are "hate speech."
- A Methodist camp meeting association in New Jersey now faces civil rights charges after refusing now faces civil rights charges after
refusing a request to host a same-sex couple's "civil union ceremony" in its worship space.
- A young Christian photographer was fined nearly $7,000 in attorney's fees after she refused to photograph the "commitment ceremony" of a same-sex couple.
Source: A Nation Like No Other, by Newt Gingrich, p. 87-88
, Jun 13, 2011
Helped oust Iowa justices who approved same-sex marriage
Gingrich has made gains among evangelical leaders--the result of aggressively cultivating relationships with influential national figures and local pastors in key nominating states.Last year, Gingrich helped secure seed money for a successful campaign
to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices who approved same-sex marriage in the state.
Gingrich is now hoping his network of conservative Christian leaders will help him win over evangelical voters in Iowa and South Carolina.
Source: Matea Gold and Tom Hamburger, Los Angeles Times
, May 12, 2011
Repeal hate speech legislation including campus speech codes
The liberties of both religious expression and speech in general are guaranteed by the First Amendment. Therefore:- Repeal so-called "hate speech" legislation. Allowing the courts to broadly determine what they consider "hate speech" is profoundly
dangerous to a free people. Congress has no constitutional authority to regulate thought. Speech is already protected, and criminal activities are already legally defined, as are their punishments. Religious leaders who speak either from the pulpits are
particularly vulnerable.
- Bar public universities that enforce campus speech codes from using taxpayer funding. The forerunner to recently passed "hate speech" legislation can be found in many of today's publicly funded universities. College campuses
historically have been the incubator of ideas and the strongholds of free expression. Today, those same schools have instituted intolerant rules and reporting systems designed to silence speech deemed politically incorrect.
Source: To Save America, by Newt Gingrich, p.271-272
, May 17, 2010
ACLU lawsuits designed to drain resources of Boy Scouts
The Boy Scouts of America [are] a venerable American institution that has had a profound impact on the values and virtues of young Americans. Demonstrating that no one is immune from their effort to make society conform to their narrow, secular agenda
aimed at elevating the individual to a place worthy only of God, the American Civil Liberties Union and their sympathetic counter-culture warriors have waged a legal war of attrition against the Scouts, draining their limited resources with numerous
lawsuits and appeals. Their calculated campaign against an institution that teaches young men how to be good stewards of the environment, to respond to emergencies, to be resourceful and thrifty, and to be reverent to adults and
God. Scouting is more important than ever in combating the nihilistic forces of our culture and shaping young lives into service-oriented leaders.
Source: On My Honor, by Gov. Rick Perry, p. iii
, Feb 12, 2008
Five justices banned school prayer against American majority
The views by the media-academic-legal elite are completely at odds with the overwhelming majority of Americans. Once five justices decided we could not pray in schools or at graduation or could not display the Ten Commandments, we lost those rights.
If five justices decide we cannot say that our nation is “under God,” then we will also lose that right. They are not only arbitrarily rewriting the law of the land but are usurping the legitimate rights of the legislative branch to make the laws.
Source: Rediscovering God in America, by Newt Gingrich, p.132-133
, Dec 31, 2006
Foreign opinion has no relevance to US same-sex marriage
There is a new & growing pattern among the Left-liberal establishment to view foreign opinion & international organizations as more legitimate than American institutions. [For example], Justice Ginsberg stated in 2003: “The Court has displayed a steadily
growing attentiveness to legal developments in the rest of the world & to the Court’s role in keeping the US in step with them.”In other words, Ginsberg is promising that as elites in other countries impose elitist values on their people, the Supreme
Court has the power and the duty to translate their new Left-liberal values on the American people. No more old-fashioned defense of American traditions and American constitutional precedent.
Ginsberg quotes approvingly Justice Kennedy’s opinion making
same-sex relationships a constitutional right in part out of “respect for the Opinions of Humankind.” The Court emphasized, “The right the petitioners seek in this case has been accepted as an integral part of human freedom in many other countries.”
Source: Winning the Future, by Newt Gingrich, p. 72-74
, Oct 1, 2005
Foreign opinion irrelevant to US affirmative action policy
The majority on the Supreme Court is continuing to look outside America for guidance in interpreting American law. Justice Ginsburg noted that in Michigan affirmative action cases, "I looked to two UN Conventions: the 1965 International Convention on
Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, which the US has ratified; and the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which, sadly the US has not yet ratified.
The Court's decision in the Law School case, I observed, accords with the international understanding of the office of affirmative action."Thus a mechanism has been locked into place by which five appointed lawyers can redefine the meaning of the US
Constitution and the policies implemented under the Constitution either by inventing rationales out of thin air or by citing whatever foreign precedent they think helpful.
Source: Winning the Future, by Newt Gingrich, p. 76-77
, Oct 1, 2005
Discontinue affirmative action programs
Indicate which principles you support regarding affirmative action and discrimination. - The federal government should discontinue affirmative action programs.
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The federal government should prosecute cases of discrimination in the public sector.
- The federal government should prosecute cases of discrimination in the private sector.
Source: Congressional 1998 National Political Awareness Test
, Nov 1, 1998
ACLU has become eccentric and destructive
The ACLU is an organization with a long and distinguished history of fighting to protect freedom of speech. On the other hand, in recent years, it has carried its mandate to ever more eccentric and often highly destructive lengths.
While is may have been perfectly honorable for Dukakis to belong to the ACLU, it was equally legitimate for Bush to attack him for it. And with what enormous relish he did the job!
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p.183
, Jul 2, 1998
NEA includes most bizarre & extreme misuse of tax funds
One big disappointment for conservatives was our failure immediately to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. Certainly any listing of the most bizarre and extreme misuses of taxpayer money would have to include such examples of
NEA artistic grant to a certain HIV-infected “performance artist” whose art consisted of cutting his uninfected fellow performer onstage and dangling the blood over the audience so they could experience the risk of contracting
AIDS, or to two professors standing at the Mexican border and handing out $10 bills to illegal immigrants as they cross over and so on and on. Everyone has his own favorite cases.
There is no question that if the majority of ordinary Americans were to see many of the examples of where NEA money goes, they would favor abolishing the system. Yet in the Senate there has always been strong support for the agency.
Source: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Newt Gingrich, p. 9
, Jul 2, 1998
Shocked by legal segregation in 1960s Georgia
Besides being overwhelmingly Democratic and corrupt, the Georgia I entered in the 1960s was bitterly segregationist. It always amuses me when reporters and columnists assume I must be a traditional southern conservative with, they hint, racist and
redneck roots. As an army brat, my first experience of legal segregation was shocking. In Columbus, schools, bathrooms, and water fountains were all segregated. In 1962 I found myself in my first political argument about race, listening to a yellow-dog
Democrat from Cairo (deep in south Georgia) patiently explain how blacks were not fully human and that any effort to integrate was biologically doomed to failed.Segregation had been erected by the southern
Democratic Party to give power to white elites by splitting poor people of both races. Segregation was bitterly defended by southern white Democrats while being challenged by a coalition of northern Democrats and Republicans.
Source: Renew America, by Newt Gingrich, p. 21-22
, Jul 2, 1996
Individual rights trump group rights
One of the great debates of the near future will be individual versus group rights. It is a debate that must end decisively in favor of the individual.If our rights are inalienable, they clearly belong to us as individuals.
They cannot be taken away by the government because our Creator outranks the government. Similarly, neither can they be taken away by a group.
The very concept of group rights contradicts the nature of America. America is about the future, about "the pursuit of happiness," while group rights are about the past.
America asks who you want to be. Group rights ask who your grandparents were.
Source: Renew America, by Newt Gingrich, p.153
, Jul 2, 1996
1968: Led college protest over suppressing racy newspaper
Those who seek hypocrisy in Gingrich are quick to note that he led protests when he was a graduate student at Tulane U. in 1968. But his protests were over the suppression of racy material in a student newspaper. He was arguing a constitutional point,
even if his tactics were those of the counterculture he is quick to demean. Classmates of time told interviewers that Gingrich was a 1950s sort of man, wearing a jacket and tie to class when dress codes everywhere were yielding to blue jeans and T-shirts
Source: Newt!, by Dick Williams, p. 23
, Jun 1, 1995
America is multi-ethnic but not multi-cultural
Gingrich's views on race were shaped by his rearing in the culture of the military meritocracy [including military bases abroad]. "I was in an integrated society," he recalled in an interview in the spring of
1995."I knew kids who were black. We formed friendships; we were in the same classes; we were on the same teams. We routinely interacted on a level where you didn't think about it. And they were Americans. In
Europe the distinction was between us and not us. And they were us."His views also are grounded in his historical view: e pluribus unum, or out of many, one. To use his phrase, "American civilization is diverse and multiethnic, but it
is one civilization." Newt finds common ground with those who argue that in diversity there is strength--but only to a point. We are multiethnic, but we are not multicultural.
Source: Newt!, by Dick Williams, p. 28
, Jun 1, 1995
Affirmative action OK individually, but not by group
In 1995, a California referendum [was proposed to] eliminate affirmative action programs in state and local government. When Gingrich was asked about the issue at his regular daily press conference, he was consistent."It is my belief," he said, "that
affirmative action programs, if done for individuals, are good, and if done by some group distinction, are bad. Because it is antithetical to the American dream to measure people by the genetic pattern of their great-grandmothers. So, I'm very interested
in rewriting the affirmative action programs so that they allow individuals to get help whether they are Appalachian white or blacks from Atlanta. But I think it ought to be based on the fact that you individually have worked hard and are trying to rise
and that you come out of a background of poverty and a background of cultural need."
A reporter noted that some beneficiaries of government preferences have been subjected to discrimination for centuries. "That's been true of virtually every American."
Source: Newt!, by Dick Williams, p. 31
, Jun 1, 1995
Half-sister, a lesbian lobbyist: "Newt promotes tolerance"
When [Newt's sister] Candace made the rounds of Capitol Hill in early 1995 as a lesbian lobbying on behalf of the homosexual rights organizations, the Human Rights Campaign Fund, her meeting with Newt became a major news story. Brother and sister hugged
and kissed, and Candace praised Newt for working hard to achieve a goal.The Speaker never has made much of an issue of homosexuality except to oppose its promotion in schools. In an interview with a homosexual newspaper in 1994, Gingrich said, "I think
our position should be toleration. It should not be promotion and it should not be condemnation."
His half-sister disagreed, saying "A leaky faucet, a barking dog--those are the things you tolerate. While Newt is promoting tolerance, his colleagues are
preparing anti-gay legislation."
Gingrich was unpersuaded, saying, "I am not prepared to establish a federal law that allows you to sue your employer if you end up not having a job because of a disagreement that involves your personal behavior."
Source: Newt!, by Dick Williams, p. 68
, Jun 1, 1995
Page last updated: Jul 09, 2016