Newt Gingrich, who spent the better part of the 1990’s carrying on an extramarital affair, all while leading a witchhunt against the President for his own marital infidelities, considers himself an expert on choices, apparently. You see, just like you can casually choose to take advantage of your wife’s being in the hospital with cancer and shack up with the newer model, Newt believes that you can simply choose whether or not to be gay. Here he is speaking to the Des-Moines Register:
Q: Do you believe that people choose to be gay?
GINGRICH: I believe it’s a combination of genetics and environment. I think both are involved. I think people have many ranges of choices. Part of the question is, do you want a society which has a bias in one direction or another?
I’d prefer a bias in the direction of reality, Newtie.
Q: So people can then choose one way or another?
GINGRICH: I think people have a significant range of choice within a genetic pattern. I don’t believe in genetic determinism and I don’t think there is any great evidence of genetic determinism. There are propensities. Are you more likely to do this or more likely to do that? But that doesn’t mean it’s definitional.
It’s a sad commentary on the state of affairs in this country when this man is even being asked his “opinion” on the subject, much less having it printed in the newspaper.
Q: So a person can then choose to be straight?
GINGRICH: Look, people choose to be celibate. People choose many things in life. You know, there is a bias in favor of non-celibacy. It’s part of how the species recreates. And yet there is a substantial amount of people who choose celibacy as a religious vocation or for other reasons.
And then there are some people who choose celibacy, but yet end up diddling altar boys.
Here’s the video. It’s particularly gross how he starts talking about “values” at the beginning, since Newt Gingrich is probably one of the most obviously amoral politicians I’ve seen in my lifetime.
