Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has joined Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty in backing gay marriage foes' campaign to oust three Iowa Supreme Court judges off the bench, the Iowa Independent reported.

A low-lying campaign to remove the judges has been underway since the court's April 2009 unanimous ruling that brought gay marriage to the Midwest. But the effort has grown wings since former gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats, a Republican, announced he'll work against the judge's retention. Voters will decide in November whether to keep Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and Justices David Baker and Michael Streit. The remaining judges are not on the ballot this year.

Vander Plaats said a federal judge's ruling that declared California's gay marriage ban unconstitutional motivated him to act.

“If the judges can do this to marriage, every one of your freedoms is up for grabs,” he said in announcing his plans.

“Iowans are unique in that they have the ability to send a very clear and simple message that the court's behavior is unacceptable by just voting 'no' on the three judges who are up for reappointment,” Gingrich said in an interview with WHO-AM. “If a majority of Iowans vote 'no,' that will send a signal to the whole county that there is a citizens revolt under way.”

“We're going to have to fundamentally revisit how we deal with judges because the judicial branch has grown much too powerful and much too dictatorial and now regularly over reaches in telling us how to live,” he added.

Pawlenty expressed a similar sentiment in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press. He said the does not like judges “inserting their personal views to change” the definition of marriage and added that he was OK with the campaign to oust the judges.

In May, Pawlenty vetoed a bill that would have allowed gay couples to control the remains of a loved one. “I oppose efforts to treat domestic relationships as the equivalent of traditional marriage,” he said in opposing the bill.

Reacting to the California ruling last week, Gingrich renewed a call for placing a gay marriage ban in the U.S. Constitution.

“Judge Walker's ruling overturning Prop 8 is an outrageous disrespect for our Constitution and for the majority of people of the United States who believe marriage is the union of husband and wife,” Gingrich wrote on his website.

“Congress now has the responsibility to act immediately to reaffirm marriage as a union of one man and one woman as our national policy.”

Both men are considered potential Republican 2012 presidential candidates.