Date: Thu, 19 Jan 1995 19:36:36 -0500 From: ***************************************************************** PRESS RELEASE PRESS RELEASE PRESS RELEASE THE HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN FUND The Nation's Largest Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Political Group ***************************************************************** To contact the HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN FUND, please call us at (202)628-4160, fax us at (202) 347-5323 or write to us at PO Box 1396 Washington, DC 20013. WE CANNOT RESPOND TO E-MAIL. ***************************************************************** The following is a transcript of an exchange between House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Cathy Woolard, Deputy Director of Public Policy for the Human Rights Campaign Fund (HRCF), the largest national lesbian and gay equal rights organization. The discussion took place Saturday, Jan. 14, 1995, at a town meeting at the Lost Mountain Middle School in Kennesaw, Georgia. An audio recording is available to the news media upon request from HRCF. Woolard: I think I'll just say ditto to all the accolades that the people that came before me said... Gingrich: That would shorten it. Just say ditto, and then go to your question. [applause] Woolard: ...I do want to add that I have questioned your sanity just a tad, and I don't mean that in a mean-spirited way, but you've got the tiger by the tail now, and some people would wonder why anyone would want it. But I appreciate your courage and vision in taking it on. I have two related questions. In the press you've indicated a real desire to stick to the hundred-day agenda with the Contract and then, you know, sort of move, as those issues clearly take beyond a hundred days, that we keep to that. What I'm concerned about is how you're going to handle the pressure to deal with negative social legislation like choice issues, gay rights issues, civil rights issues that are sort of burning around the country. And a couple things have brought me to ask you that. One is Lou Sheldon, who heads a Radical Right...group out in California, has said that you've committed to hold Congressional hearings on sort of the "Gay Rights Agenda." And the other piece is on the Senate side...Senator Helms has introduced a package of about 25 bills dealing with all of those issues in a fairly Draconian way. What I'd like to have the answers to is: one, have you committed to holding those hearings, as Sheldon has said in the press, and are you going to hold those hearings? And number two, how are you going to deal both in the House side, as well as the pressure that's going to come from the Senate side, who are a little less disciplined than the House, in handling these issues? Gingrich: Well, let me say first of all, I assume there'll be a fair amount of clutter. The way a free society operates, you have various people every morning who think up their own version of what they want to be doing, and you have to be sort of cheerful about it and just keep moving. So I assume, on both the right and the left, if we wanted to we could get off onto everything from killings at abortion clinics, which I abhor and I'm opposed to and I think that no American in the name of "Right to Life" can go out and start shooting people, it's just crazy. [applause] So you could, you could say, you know, you could legitimately, if you're in the pro-choice movement, jump up and say "Aha, let's suspend the Contract and now let's go rush over and do this." Similarly, my position on the whole issue of homosexuality and gay and lesbian rights has been very clear. I am against repression, and I'm against promotion. I believe in tolerance. So, while I don't want to have sex police in the YMC--or the Central Park bathroom--which we once used to have, I also don't want your tax money to go to have first-graders being taught a set of values that, in fact, have no place in the first grade. [applause] And in the case of Sheldon who, as I remember, is an Evangelical minister, he and his daughter, who is very active in their particular wing of this stuff, came and said look, we have serious evidence of, both in the AIDS program and in the education program, of things being taught that are clearly propaganda and clearly recruitment, some of which, frankly, I mean I don't want to get into too much graphics here but, I don't believe that the taxpayers should pay a program to teach you effective methods of sadomasochistic interaction. [applause] I mean, this may make me old fashioned ... [laughter] ...but I think it's legitimate to say not, "let's run out here" -- and in fact, you may notice that Bob Dornan, who is normally considered very strong in this, has said, as the new Chairman of the Personnel Subcommittee, he is not for the moment going to hold hearings on the gays in the military issue. That he is in fact going to wait and see how the court cases work out, and he is not using this occasion as a place to start a new fight. I do think at some point this spring or summer, if we can have a one day hearing on whether or not taxpayer money is being spent to promote things that are literally grotesque, that that's a legitimate request, because that's taxpayer money. But I don't want to see us get diverted off onto these kind of fights. Not because they're not important issues on both sides, and I say this across the, I think people here know not only my position, but some of you may well have seen my younger sister on television who is a lesbian and who went in and saw my mother and said "Mother, don't tell people I'm gay, I'm a lesbian. Gays are boys." My mother said "OK, dear," and went on. She also said she wouldn't vote for me, because she's a Democrat. [laughter] But my point's just this: I think we have to have toleration, but that doesn't mean we have to back off from talking about what we believe in. I'm very pro-family. But I'm not, I'm not for repression, but I am for being very pro-family. Now, you're going to see some argument, because I'm going to argue, for example, that we ought to change the earned income tax credit.... If you earn $11,000 a year, and somebody else earns $11,000 a year, and you get married, you lose, by the act of marriage, $4,600 in tax credit. Now that, in my judgment, that's crazy. So I'm prepared to be pro-family and pass a law which shrinks the amount of earned income tax credit per individual, but then guarantees that two individuals, if they marry, have no penalty. And that changes the dynamic. [applause] I don't know if that counts as a family issue, or if that counts as a, you know, is this going to start a social fight or not. I think that's rational public policy. All of the issues that are largely emotional about social policy, I think we can take a truce. I think we can focus on balancing the budget and on focusing the country, and then if we want to get back and fight over those later on, they'll still be available. But my goal from now, my goal from now through August is pass the Contract, pass the budget, and pass the appropriations bills. And if we get that done, we are more than busy enough without having to find new fights. Woolard: Thanks, I appreciate that. So, then I could guess that, from your answer, that you probably will hold the hearings with Mr. Sheldon, but they would probably be after August? Gingrich: Probably would be, and we'd certainly have people from both sides. I mean we're not going to -- It doesn't do us any good to set up a circus, where we only have one side come in, and then discover later that we did not inform the country and we did not inform the Congress. So anything we do is going to have both sides and is going to have a clear effort to get a real advocacy on both sides. Woolard: Thanks, and I'll pass my card to one of your aides so you can contact us. Gingrich: That would be great, thank you. - end - 1101 14th Street, NW Suite 200 Washington, DC 20005 phone:(202)628-4160 fax:(202) 347-5323