While I agree that it is DIFFERENT,I think it is largely a matter of opinion whether the difference is SIGNIFICANT. In my mind it is not.

“Well if that’s most important to you, then you should be for Obama” quite clearly means that Gingrich does not expect people who prioritize gay rights to vote for him and that he will not make any attempt to engage people for whom it is an important issue. Is it then really SIGNIFICANTLY different to say he doesn’t “want gay votes” as opposed to “care about gay votes” or “expect gay votes”?

It seems as if we are splitting hairs with this and basically indulging in sophistry. As STRAIGHTGRANDMOTHER commented above, “Let’s save our condemnation for more flagrantly deceptive rhetoric.”

1) what will you (candidate Gingrich) do to engage gay *voters* from now until election day?

and

2) what will you (potential president Gingrich) do to engage gay people as president?

The answer he gave is valid for question 1, but we are still owed an answer for the much more important question 2.

As I think that libertarianism is a pathetic, unwise, if not extremist Ayn Randian fantasy mostly for young middle class males who feel entitled just because…

As governor, Johnson was annoyingly smug, autocratic and undiplomatic. He also habitually looks like a deer caught in the headlights, for some reason. Shallow of me to write that last remark, I know, but…a President just shouldn’t look like that.

So, I think not, at least for President. If I ever want someone to construct a skyscraper, however…we’ll talk.

I am grateful, however, that he has evolved on marriage equality. Would that more politicians follow him on that.

I have lived long enough to recognize that, although I disagree with its emphasis on charity and protection over liberty, the Democratic party is the one most likely to achieve equality for me, and that any missteps of Democratic governance in enactments of law or policy in the interim will not wreck the Republic and can be altered or reversed as necessary by future .

Maybe I will rejoin the Republican party when this culture war/Christian Dominionist emphasis is abandoned and the party returns to a more classicly liberal, enlightened form of conservatism.

You are too smart and too capable to allow your thinking to be controlled by presumptions, stereotypes, and animus. When you finally let it go – and I do think you will – you will be much happier. It is definitely more difficult and challenging to think with nuance, to measure each situation based on the facts rather than party registration, but you are up to it.

I am not a registered Republican; nor do I copulate with sheep, conduct human sacrifices at the dark of the moon, or eat my progeny. I regard LCR and GOProud members (sorry, ladies and gentlemen all) with the same sick fascination some people have for car wrecks.

I’m with Ben on this one, if we have to use Gingrich’s BS “single issue voter” definition.

I care about other “issues” including ENDA and SNDA nationally, as well asnd the interminable process of Prop 8 and the push-back against the FAIR Act here in California. DOMA, however, is THE topic that seems to have engaged the national dialogue.

I don’t think any of us were played for fools, except in having spent so much time dancing about over this particular reductionist lede. Nor do I think you are a fool – but you do have a talent for contrarian nit-picking and provocative writing that draws me (and perhaps others) to expend more time and energy on your commentaries than I/we realize (with the clarity of hindsight) is in any manner more productive than slamming my head into my desk-top, repeatedly. That being the case, the more fool me.

Oh, how I wish I could quit you, but you are the flame to my moth.

If you’re not intelligent enough to understand the basic nature of anti-gay bigotry, compassionate enough to oppose the harm that being anti-gay does to both gay people and straight people, aware enough of the stupidity of taking whole segments of the population and telling them “you’re not good enough”…

then you’re just not smart enough, compassionate enough, or aware enough to be president of this country.

If that makes me a single issue voter, then I suppose that is what I am.

A good portion of the total messy decline of this country for the last 7 years can be laid at the feet of the Republican party and george bush, all because of the anti-gay campaign engineered by arch-homo Ken “Am I Redeemed Yet” Mehlman. you can also blame the democrats for having no spines worth a back brace.

This was the takeaway by Scott Arnold, the man who is gay and was probing Gingrich. He says, “he told me to support Obama”so that is the headline. I don’t think in this context the headline is misleading. You have to read the full story to get the details but the man going toe to toe with Gingrich summed it up exactly like the headline states.

Let’s save our condemnation for more flagrantly deceptive rhetoric.

He DID say vote for Obama if you have any principles or regard for the Constitution, not just marriage equality.

Anyway, it’s a shame that the prof fell for Newtie’s trick. The question wasn’t about SSM. The gay community’s “engagement” with the candidates isn’t about SSM. It’s about a whole heck of a lot of other issues.

BobN, thanks for bringing this up. Gingrich gives indication he will be bad on a whole range of LGBT rights issues. Clearly he doesn’t want to talk about other current LGBT rights issues on which voters overall strongly favor the pro-LGBT rights side.

Here’s something else from the transcript that gave me pause:

Arnold: How do we engage if you’re elected? Then what? What does that mean?

Gingrich: Then you engage on every topic except that.

I take that to mean, “Don’t bother to lobby or otherwise contact my future presidential administration on the issue of marriage equality.” (I’m assuming the above quote isn’t a verbal misstep that misportrayed Gingrich’s views.)