Each week, Queerty picks one blowhard, hypocrite, airhead, sanctimonious prick or other enemy of all that is queer to be the Douche of the Week.
Have a nominee for DOTW? Email it to us at [email protected].
It’s nothing new that Newt Gingrich is a hateful little troll. We all knew that back in the Clinton Administration heyday. But his latest shtick, wrapping himself in the cloak of old-timey Christianity has really put him in the cross-hairs of the Douche of the Week nominators.
This week, in a conference call with leaders from the Religious Right, Gingrich said gay marriage, “was a perfect example of what I mean by ‘paganism.'”
How about we take this to the next level?
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It’s pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman. This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and [the attack on it is] a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization.
Thank God it’s not legal to practice paganism in this country. Oh, wait a minute.—it is! So is taking away the right to practice other religions next on the Religious Right’s agenda? (Don’t bother answering.)
At any rate, the pagan meme isn’t all that new for Gingrich: Here’s a clip from 2009, where the Keebler Elf from Hell says America is “surrounded by paganism.”
Wow, he even cited St. Paul! It’s amazing Newt’s ears didn’t begin to bleed at the mention of the holy saint.
Look, we don’t know as much about paganism as Gingrich seems to. Our dalliance with Wiccanism pretty much began and ended with lighting sage in our room to banish the negative energy of a dill-hole ex-roommate. But we never particularly associated it with same-sex commitment one way or the other.
Y’know what we do think of when we think of old-school Roman paganism? Orgies!
Yep, people fornicating with individuals other than their husbands or wives. Like Newt was doing with Callista before (and after) he asked Wife No. 2 for an open marriage. (Partner-swapping also sounds kinda pagan.)
Gingrich hasn’t denied his ex’s claim that he was an adulterous fornicator, in fact he pretty much says it made him a better man today. (Don’t ask us to explain the “logic” of religious zealots.)
So, by our calculations, Gingrich is really the pagan—and he approves of his pagan ways. Two people trying to make a lifelong commitment is practically Old Testament.
Aw gee, thanks for the compliment, Newt—you stupid douche!
P.S.: An Honorary Mention goes to American Family Association’s Don Wildmon, who was also on the call.
This is an election unlike any ever held in our country. We’re not just voting for a president; we’re voting for the continuation of Western Civilization. If those who are listening think that what we enjoy, the freedoms we enjoy, the right to practice our Christan faith, is merely an accident and is there, it’s not, people paid for it. And we can lose it, and we will lose it, if we lose this next election. What’s at stake is everything that the human race, Western Civilization, has fought for for the last two thousand years.
Wait, practicing Christianity was a right people had to fight for in this country? Gee, we thought it was kinda a mandatory requirement, what with those uptight pilgrims and the Salem people burning witches and all that. Well, you were there, Don. You’d know best.
All together now: What a douche!
Photos: Gage Skidmore, En2008
nik
stupid people twisting religion into their own stupid fears….
he’s a pathetic little man……and a big hypocrite!
its about having equal rights…like everyone else…we’re NOT trying to
“attack” religion..
oh..and by the way….most straight couples are a REALLY shining example of the sanctity of marriage….divorce here and there..everywhere!…THAT is supposed to be against his “bible” too-.-..
siiigh*…actually…wicca is tempting…at least they welcome every sexual orientation/skin colour/gender…NO discrimination..
ktew
who cares
no self respecting person would ever vote for this lowlife scumbag
christopher di spirito
Newt Gingrich is the only Speaker of the US House of Representatives to face ethics violations and forced to resign from office to avoid a House hearing.
Newt Gingrich told David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Company that patriotism made his penis hard and forced him to insert it into a woman while still married to his former, cancer-stricken wife, Jacqueline Battley.
Newt Gingrich is the very definition of Washington sleaze. What he thinks about marriage equality is to me, the equivalent of stepping off a curb, singular.
B
QUEERTY wrote, “Two people trying to make a lifelong commitment is practically Old Testament.” Really? Ever hear of King Solomon, who (according to the Old Testament) had 700 wives and 300 concubines?
Newt is just trying to follow this Biblical practice but, because of U.S. law, has to marry them serially rather than in parallel. To save some time, he’s obviously picking up the concubines in parallel with the wives.
Or something like that. If someone can come up with an even funnier explanation, have at it!
the other Greg
Newt is nervous around pagans and witches because he thinks they make potions that call for “Eye of Newt.”
Jonathonz
Oh God, WHY do we have to put up with these people?
Kev C
Modern day christians are powerless to defeat paganism. They can’t even defeat Islam.
CBRad
@Kev C: But will Islam defeat Paganism ! (Hope not).
B
No. 5 · the other Greg wrote, “Newt is nervous around pagans and witches because he thinks they make potions that call for “Eye of Newt.””
Hey, I used the same phrase this morning, joking about Macbeth!
GOD
@B: Ha! HA! HA!!! You’re soooo original, “B” . …A real knee-slapper that one.
(!!! Barf !!!])
E
As someone who is watching this all unfold from a safe distance in western europe, I’ve always marvelled at the stupidity of what some of your politicians like to spout and i’m glad people see through it. but i just realised that the people i talk to and the sites i visit would only be visited by people who also see through it anyway and it makes me wonder, do these candidates really stand a chance with their ridiculous, completely irrelevant, overly hateful and downright ignorant and bigoted rhetoric? I mean, i don’t know much about US law or history or the constitution but i know about separation of church and state and i don’t understand how these people are even in the running?
CBRad
@E: You’ll be living in Sharia-law Eurabia soon so don’t be so smug.
CBRad
Minor historical note : no witches were burned in Salem. (They were hanged).
E
@CBRad: Hey, I am fully aware that we have our own bigotry to deal with, (don’t even get me started on geert wilders, our own national treasure of idiocy), but i’m just curious as to how the US is divided when it comes to stuff like this. Sorry, didnt mean to sound smug.
Joanna Sue
This entire thing goes far deeper than just people supporting the likes of Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, or Mitt Romney for president. It goes back to a selfish view within themselves and a belief they know better how others should live than the person living their life does. By and large those who support these candidates look at others with the view of life that “I take care of myself, and the heck with everyone else.” Then they try to tell us this is how the Bible tells us to live? I guess they have never read that book, instead they just let people tell them what it says. They rail against the so called Sharia Law over the name, when they would have us live under their same version of it under another name if they could. All while doing many of the things they would condemn others for doing in the process. I seem to recall the Bible speaking pretty harshly about hypocrites. Perhaps they should read that before they say much more.
cb
We are closing schools, laying people off. Families are being foreclosed on and being put out in the streets. And all the “church” and the States can talk about is who is Gay. We need to start looking at what is best for the country. We are not in high school any more. Hello!!! Or is it just all about the money?!? The Mormon Church spent $22 million to fight the California marriage battle even though the Mormon population in the state is approximately 2%. This country has kids to feed. $22 million could have feed a lot of poor families. It is time for us to grow up and “move on”.
Robert in NYC
Same-sex marriage, paganism? Hello Gingrich, I thought serial adultery and wanting threeways and “open” marriages has more to do with paganism and hedonism combined. What a hypocrite. Is it no wonder the roman cult received him, the bastion of hypocrisy and bigotry?
Charles
My Great Passion
As I sit at my computer I see horror story after horror story about youth suicides and bullying. Suicides and bullying that could have been prevented. These exist because we allow them. We try to pretend that there is no culpability by society as a whole, but I beg to differ. We try to toss the proverbial ball of blame back and fourth. Back and fourth these go and nothing is done. It could be that the victim is somehow with a disability. Someone that doesn’t look the same as others around him or her. Maybe that person walks different or talks and caries his or herself differently than their surrounding peers. It is the primitive human instinct to flush out those like these and thus rid the community village of a perceived threat to its existence. A primitive form of checks and balances that is.
The results of this instinct are peppered throughout Levitical as well as Sharia laws of old. In this comes this fact: Throughout history, no greater blood has been shed than that of the blood shed in the name of “religion”. When these people kill, they believe that they are doing the will of God. When these people scorn, Judge and eventually condemn, they think that they are doing the will of God. In this they use “God” as an excuse to do evil to others. These fundamentalists make the claim that they supposedly love the sinner yet hate the sin. Yet using “love” in this thinly veiled hatred is used all the time. When New York passed the law that expanded marriage to include gays, the religious said something very different. That this law completely changed the definition of marriage. The law also included a protection of and for religion. Specifically that religion would never be obligated nor required to perform services nor is it required to lease out their properties for said events. In this fact, gay marriage would be civil and NOT religious based. Yet the Fundamentalists still cried foul. They said that allowing gays to marry is a declared war against religion. With full religious exemption in place, this is blatantly and patently untrue.
Whether it is bullying or suicide. Whether it is marriage being expanded civilly to include gays, there is one great fact that is deafeningly silent: Fundamentalists feel that these issues threaten there perceived God given right to chastise, punish or condemn those they deem as unholy sinners. That is the unspoken truth here plain and simple.
Jim Hlavac
Paganism, as a religion, is of course protected by the 1st Amendment right to free exercise of religion without state interference — and Christianity, which has the same non-interference right, is of course banned from becoming the state religion, of whichever denomination. And as a man who allegedly reveres our Constitution he should well know this to be true. But instead he seems intent on enforcing one religion on the nation’s entire population, while denying the free exercise of religion to others. Bizarrely, currently he claims to be Catholic, though how that Church stomachs this hedonistic adulterous multiple divorced man is beyond me.
WillBFair
Sage is also good on chicken. I have a recipe if you like.
Cam
God…not St. Paul, but GOD, spoke out against Adultery according to the Bible. It is one of the 10 Commandments.
Jesus, said, in “MAtthew”, that if a man divorces his first wife and marries another, he is committing adultery against his first wife.
So NEWT Gingrich is CURRENTLY in breach of the word of God, and the word of Christ, and is continuing to do that.
He has no right to mention religion. He is just a bigot.
Robert in NYC
@CBRad: Eurabia, really? Where did you get that from, Fox News? Can you provide the factual evidence for that? Most EU countries have parliamentary systems. In order for Sharia law to become the law in those countries it would take the voters and an act of parliament to make that a reality. NOT going to happen, just as it isn’t going to happen in the U.S. either. It’s all fear-mongering, the sort of pandering to the right wing low information idiots running the GOP in this country. They create the fear where there isn’t any and their equally dumb constituents fall for it.
LandStander
@Jim Hlavac: “though how that Church stomachs this hedonistic adulterous multiple divorced man is beyond me.”
Really? Considering both of their slimy backgrounds, I think they suit each other quite nicely.
Cam
@CBRad: said…
“You’ll be living in Sharia-law Eurabia soon so don’t be so smug.”
______________
OUR Supreme Court said that churches didn’t have to follow the Americans with Disabilities Act with their own employees, saying in effect that religious law trumps civil law with their employees and Conservatives applauded.
Conservatives want Sharia Law here, as long as it is Christian Sharia Law
kendoll
After he graduated from high school he married one of his teachers. What’s that????? Ya fat fuck!
CBRad
@Robert in NYC: I just don’t like someone from the continent that gave us Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco actually asking if people can say crazy things and still get elected. (And I bet you weren’t born in NYC)
CBRad
@E: That’s okay, E. I was too harsh there. Actually, a lot of politicians will say “crazy” things to different groups to pander to them, and the general public will see it as irrelevant and just care what the candidate will do with the economy, etc. Every president, even, if we wanted to go “through the files”, will have some things they said (depending on what bunch they’re talking to) that sounds nuts.
Jim
Just saw this video poking fun and serial marriage gingrich:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQSsMRe6BJE&feature=channel_video_title
Chris
Nope, Queerty! The reptile wins this one. You see, in Biblical marriage a man is allowed multiple wives and of courses as many mistresses and prostitutes as he wants. Adultery is when a married woman sleeps with a man not her husband or when a married man sleeps with someone else’s wife. Of course he’s wrong about marriage being between a man and a woman: it’s between a man and as many women as he can get. He’s also wrong about the pagans–their practices vary and sexual tolerance cannot be described as “perfectly natural pagan behaviors.” Newt is wholly innocent of breaking the commandments. He’s just ignorant, a hypocrite and a jerk.
ryanthehulk
As an LGBT Pagan I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be offended or not Newt. Equality for LGBTs is indeed a Pagan idea, but I doubt he met it as a compliment.
Also: “Wiccanism” is not a word, it’s just Wiccca, just how it’s just Islam not Islamism.
Shannon1981
I still want to know how someone who keeps cheating on sick wives and divorcing them for the mistresses can run on any sort of values platform whatsoever and be taken seriously by anyone.
axon
If Newt thinks the Bible defines our civilization, he must have never read the Old Testament. Pretty much of the laws and conduct described there come much closer to paganism than a same sex marriage with two people going to work, cooking dinner, bringing up kids and cursing over a dent in the car. In fact, if Newt began living by the Bible, he’d end up in jail, or the nuthouse.
Steve
Did…this article bash paganism in the process of criticizing Newt Gingrich? I may not be pagan, but I’m pretty sure its tenets do not include “be a complete sleazeball”. An honest, open relationship is different from what this guy does.
Cam
@Chris: said…
“Newt is wholly innocent of breaking the commandments.”
______________
No, he isn’t. Jesus said that if a man divorces his wife and marries another, then he is committing adultery against his first wife.
Chris
@Cam–Jesus is not the commandments. It’s true that by Jesus’ time Jewish monogamy was the norm and that Jesus took things a step further by claiming that casual divorce was adultery. But what you really are trying to say is that Jesus thought he had the right to revise the commandments. Fair enough for a religious reformer, but not everyone thinks that Jesus was God. Newt made a point of saying that he was adhering to both Old and New Testament values, which he is not.
For all you Wiccans and neo-Pagans who are confused by Newt’s attribution of various odd beliefs to you, you should know that some Christians use the term “Pagan” to apply to anyone whose faith tradition disagrees with theirs–including Christians they don’t like, such as Catholics and Mormons.
MikeE
@Chris: Actually, newt DID break one of the Commandments: no.7 : “You shall not commit adultery”.
Newt had an extra-marital affair while he was married to his first wife… whether he married his mistress is irrelevant. He was married while having an ongoing physical relationship with a woman not his wife.
He then proceeded to break the 7th Commandment a second time by having an affair while married to his second wife.
Again, it is entirely irrelevant that he married this third woman after divorcing his second wife.
Divorce is not in question.
Adultery is.
For a man who supposedly promotes good “Christian values”, he appears to have very little use for the actual rules that govern good Christian values.
pierre
All Newt has to do as a good Catholic is go to Confession, say 3 Hail Mary’s, beat his breast in repentence, and ask for forgiveness. And the church-going public will forgive and forget – and actually rail against anyone who brings it up again as a subject.
B
No. 21 · Cam wrote, “God…not St. Paul, but GOD, spoke out against Adultery according to the Bible. It is one of the 10 Commandments.”
Not so fast … “Adultery” at the time the “Ten Commandments” was written, not filmed, referred to a man having sex with a married women. It was not adultery if the woman was not married (or betrothed, in some interpretations). Women were treated as property at the time, so having sex with a married woman was considered a form of theft – theft from her husband.
Citations:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_Ten_Commandments/You_shall_not_commit_adultery#Adultery_in_Old_Testament_Law_and_Wisdom_Literature
http://blog.beliefnet.com/windowsanddoors/2009/09/adultery-is-about-more-than-se.html
http://www.stjohnadulted.org/cmd_07.htm#The%20Meaning%20of%20Adultery
B
Re No 38:
Should have added http://atheism.about.com/od/tencommandments/a/commandment07.htm
which makes an interesting observation:
“This exclusive focus on married or betrothed women leads to an interesting conclusion. Because not all extramarital sex acts qualify as adultery, even sexual intercourse between members of the same sex would not be counted as violations of the Seventh Commandment. They might be regarded as violations of other laws, but they wouldn’t be a violation of the Ten Commandments — at least, not according to the understanding of the ancient Hebrews.”
CBRad
@Chris: Yes, but Newt knows about the conflict and hostility between the Christian groups, between Protestants, Catholics and Mormons, etc. He also knows the history of different forms of marriage, including Polygamy, and Biblical history and everything. I have no doubt the guy has an encyclopedic knowledge of all that stuff. He just knows what to say, what position to take, to whatever audience he’s talking to- for votes eventually.
Sarina
Youre comparing gay marriage to adultery? I think the two are the same…lol
Elmwood Mac
From where I sit this crop of right wing nutbars who believe they could be President of the USA is just mind boggling.
How could it come to this? Is there any chance in hell that any of these knuckle dragging throw backs will ever make it into the Oval Office?
If nothing else it’s got to be a huge embarrassment for the people of the USA.
B
No. 42 · Elmwood Mac wrote, “Is there any chance in hell that any of these knuckle dragging throw backs will ever make it into the Oval Office?”
Well, I know some liberals who are rooting for Newt – on the theory that there is in fact no chance in hell of him coming even close to winning in the election.
I’d rather not take a chance on that, though. The main thing that is “biblical” about Newt is the proportions of the disaster that a Newt presidency would be.
Right now, he’s getting the “anyone but Romney” votes in the Republican primaries, which tend to bring out the most right-wing of the right wing.
Dionte
Pagans will reign once again.