Newt Gingrich: Neo-Gay Activist
Nothing like a two-bit, nutty tyrant such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to bring out all the hypocrisy, all around. His "we have no homosexuals" line was a doozie. It will be interesting to see how conservatives and the American religious right -- which wants to bring back laws that ban sodomy in order to dissuade people from making the "choice" of homosexuality -- respond to the Iranian leader's claim, since what he is really saying is: The only surefire way to keep people from openly living in that abhorrent lifestyle is to threaten them with punishment and death. Surely James Dobson doesn't want to be on the same page as a leader of the axis of evil, does he?
The media bought the right-wing spin on banning Ahmadinejad's talk -- the New York Daily News headline was THE EVIL HAS LANDED -- as the neocons and the White House saw an opportunity to beat the drum closer toward military action against Iran. I mean, suddenly Newt Gingrich was on CNN just before the speech, condemning Columbia University for giving Ahmadinejad a forum, talking about how Iran "executes homosexuals." Newt Gingrich: Gay rights activist. Who knew?
We were discussing the event in the first hour of the show, as it was happening, when Ahmadinejad made the "no homosexuals" remark. I had just finished explaining that the talk was part of an ongoing series of world leaders' talks at Columbia -- something none of the media discussed -- and how just before the Iranian leader spoke, earlier in the day, the leader of Turkmenistan gave a speech.
There was little if any outcry, however, about President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov's talk at Columbia, even though Turkmenistan is a neo-stalinist state that bans all political organizing, jails dissenters, tortures prisoners, restricts religion, and, according to Reporters Without Borders, is second only to North Korea when it comes to controlling the press. As his country plummets into poverty and despair, one of Berdymukhamedov's first acts upon becoming president a few months ago was to mint a coin with his likeness.
I wonder if part of the reason for the silence -- at least from those neoconservative "Saddam gassed his own people" human rights activists -- had to do with the fact that Condi Rice was scheduled to meet the Turkmen president a little bit later in the day, not to talk about human rights but rather to discuss how the U.S. can get its hands on the huge natural gas deposits his country is sitting on. Just a thought. Oh, and did I mention that Turkmenistan punishes male-on-male homosexual activity with five years in prison? I guess neo-gay activist Newt Gingrich would say that five years in prison is a big difference from execution. Progress!
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