Out In The Spotlight Candace Gingrich Uses Newfound Celebrity Status To Urge Gays, Lesbians To Vote
For someone she seldom sees - just on holidays and family birthdays - Candace Gingrich’s half-brother has changed her life.
The media attention that came along with Newt Gingrich’s rise to power as speaker of the House pushed his lesbian half-sister into the spotlight as well.
She was publicly outed in an Associated Press story. “I wasn’t ashamed,” the 30-year-old Harrisburg, Pa., native said. “When the reporter asked me, I just said, ‘Yes.”’
Now, Gingrich wants others to do the same thing. Gingrich visited Spokane on Saturday to encourage members of the gay community to vote. It was the latest stop on her election-year tour for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay and lesbian political organization.
She met with the media at a private home in Browne’s Addition before speaking at a downtown reception to raise money for The Privacy Fund, a state political action committee.
The title of her speech was “Come Out Voting.”
Gingrich was the committee’s “first speaker of such notoriety,” said Dean Lynch, one of the event’s organizers.
In an interview before the reception, Gingrich urged gays and lesbians to go beyond revealing their homosexuality. Gingrich said they should register to vote and volunteer to help candidates who are willing to work toward ending discrimination against gays.
“We’re asking them not just to be vocal with their family members and relatives, but to be vocal in the ballot box as well,” she said.
Most Americans support ending discrimination against gays in the workplace, she said. But most lawmakers, including Newt Gingrich, don’t share that view, she said.
“He’s out of touch with the rest of the country when it comes to gay and lesbian issues,” she said. “It bothers me that anyone doesn’t recognize that we’re treated as second-class citizens and it adds to the frustration knowing that my brother doesn’t get it.”
Before her half-brother became speaker, Gingrich said she was “apathetic and uninformed.” She already had told her family, friends and co-workers of her homosexuality, but was hesitant to come out publicly because, she said, she didn’t want to hurt his career and then lose the respect of her family.
“But once you become speaker, the press wants to know everything about you and your family,” she said.
Gingrich said the 1994 election also impacted her decision to announce openly she was a lesbian.
“Before then, I always said to myself that Ted Kennedy would be around to fend off Jesse Helms or that Pat Schroeder would continue to work on our behalf, that someone else would do the work for me,” she said. “But with the people I considered champions of my cause no longer in control, I knew I needed to do something.”
So she joined the Human Rights Campaign in 1995 after working as a computer consultant and as a package sorter at United Parcel Service.
When she arrived at Spokane International Airport on Saturday, Gingrich learned of a recent Oregon ruling ordering that insurance benefits be offered to the homosexual domestic partners of state employees.
“In light of some things that have happened this past year, this ruling is a nice breath of fresh air,” Gingrich said of the judge’s decision. “It’s another step forward for us.”
But more steps are needed, Gingrich said.
“I think there’s going to come a point in time when most people realize that you can disagree over homosexuality but agree that the discrimination we face is wrong,” she said.
Gingrich leaves today for San Diego for the Republican National Convention, where she will participate in rallies for Voices ‘96, a gathering of national, state and local gay organizations.
“I’m heading out there to be a friendly reminder that we don’t want a repeat of Houston ‘92,” she said, referring to the way social conservatives controlled the last GOP convention.
“We wouldn’t want to miss out on the fun there. So we’re headed to the zoo.”
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