Newt Gingrich told a gay Iowan that he
should vote for President Barack Obama when the man asked him about
gay rights, the Des
Moines Register reported.
Gingrich reportedly made the comment
during an event Tuesday at Smokey Row coffee house in Oskaloosa.
“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,” Scott Arnold told the paper.
Arnold, a Democrat and associate
professor at William Penn University, said he wanted to engaged
Gingrich on the topic of gay rights.
“When you ask somebody a question and
you expect them to support all Americans and have everyone's general
interest. It's a little bit frustrating and disheartening when
you're told to support the other side. That he doesn't need your
support.”
Gingrich recently pledged to two
conservative groups that as president he would work against marriage
equality by supporting a federal constitutional amendment banning gay
marriage and offering a vigorous defense of the Defense of Marriage
Act (DOMA).
At an October campaign stop in Iowa,
Gingrich said that gay marriage “is a temporary aberration that
will dissipate.”
“It doesn't inspire hope at all,”
Arnold added. “And if that's what he's trying to do and that's
what he's trying to say, that this is a collective effort if he's
elected president, yet he tells me to support the other side?”