Gingrich Seeking To Tweak ‘Marriage Vow’ — From Iowa Conservative Group

Newt Gingrich has decided not to sign — at least, not sign as of yet — an Iowa conservative group’s controversial ‘Marriage Vow’ pledge for Republican presidential candidates to personally and publicly uphold heterosexual monogamy and sexual morality.

“We’re happy to work with you to sharpen it so people understand where we’re going with it,” Gingrich told Family Leader head Bob Vander Plaats, according to Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond, in a National Journal report. “It’s not there yet.”

Two candidates, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, have already signed the document — and then when called on it, walked back just a bit from the resolution’s original preamble language on slavery, which has since been edited out — stating, quite contrary to the facts, that African-American families were more secure under slavery than they are today. (But they only walked back just a bit — for example, Team Bachmann declared, “In no uncertain terms, Congresswoman Bachmann believes that slavery was horrible and economic enslavement is also horrible” — thus likening modern economic and welfare policies to chattel slavery.)

Signing the pledge could be controversial for Gingrich in other ways, too. Notably, the pledge commits candidates to “Personal fidelity to my spouse,” and reform of divorce law to put in “extended ‘second chance’ or ‘cooling-off’ periods for those seeking a ‘quickie divorce.'” Such a pledge could potentially lead to renewed attention on Gingrich own personal history of marital infidelity, and the fact that he is on his third marriage to a woman he was seeing for several years during his second marriage.

So to be clear, here is what the pledge now reads — at least, as of this minute — in terms of what the candidates now commit themselves to doing:

• Personal fidelity to my spouse.

• Respect for the marital bonds of others.

• Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices.

• Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage – faithful monogamy between one man and one woman – through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.

• Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy.

• Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended “second chance” or “cooling-off” periods for those seeking a “quickie divorce.”

• Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.

• Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States.

• Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy – our next generation of American children – from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.

• Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel, especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.

• Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.

• Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.

• Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA‟s $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.

• Fierce defense of the First Amendment‟s rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.