Author: Warren Throckmorton

Gingrich Gets Five Million From Gambling Mogul’s Wife

I wrote yesterday about the main financial backer of Newt Gingrich – casino owner Sheldon Adelson. According to a New York Times report, Adelson’s wife, Miriam Adelson matched her husband’s pre-South Carolina primary $5 million gift to Gingrich with her own gift of the same amount.  The gift will go to Winning Our Future, a political action committee dedicated to making Gingrich the GOP nominee.

Sheldon Adelson runs an empire of gambling casinos in Las Vegas, Macau and Singapore. His company is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department in relation to allegations of bribes in Macau. Macau is the largest gambling market in the world, and caters to high rolling Chinese patrons.

Oddly, Gingrich’s family values campaign owes its life blood to profits made in part from free spending Chinese gamblers.

 

 

Gingrich backed by casino mogul – Is gambling a family value?

I wonder how many of Newt Gingrich’s family values voters are aware that Gingrich is beholden to Sheldon Adelson, billionaire casino owner. According to these reports, Adelson recently gave Gingrich’s SuperPac $5 million.

In the Philadelphia Inquirer article, Gingrich is called a “close friend” of Adelson. A conversation between Adelson and his right hand man, Michael Levin indicates how the gambling mogul cast Romney as a ruthless money man. Apparently it takes lots of money to criticize someone else who has lots of money.

According to the Washington Post, the lion’s share of Gingrich’s financial support comes from Adelson who also counts on Gingrich for policies favorable to Israel. The Post article provides some important background to understand how necessary Adelson has been for Gingrich’s career after he left Congress.

According to an anti-gambling website affiliated with the Institute for American Values, Gingrich’s friendship with Adelson involves more than common ground on Israel:

When he was House speaker, Gingrich helped Adelson combat union organizing efforts at his gaudy Venetian casino in Vegas. Gingrich also backed legislation in 1998 to preserve tax deductions beneficial to the industry, The Times reported. Adelson has donated millions to Gingrich in the past and let him use his corporate jet.

At least one social conservative, Richard Land, editor of the Christian Post and prominent Southern Baptist leader was quoted back in April, 2011 as indifferent to Gingrich’s ties to Adelson.

Gingrich’s tight ties with Adelson could cause heartburn for some social conservatives who oppose gambling. Land, of the Baptist group, said “Gambling is a nefarious industry that corrupts everything it touches.”

But Land said that thus far he is not concerned about the ties, unless Gingrich decides to back the expansion of gambling or Internet gambling or if the criminal investigation leads to charges against the Sands.

I wonder how many religious conservatives even know about these ties? Gingrich is taking money derived from an industry which Land says “corrupts everything it touches.” Via Adelson’s donations, it certainly has touched Gingrich.

Land is certainly in a position to write about Gingrich’s ties to the gambling industry as editor of the Christian Post. However, I don’t recall seeing any articles there or in any evangelical news source about these matters. I think these matters might be relevant to evangelical voters.

Did evangelical support for Santorum sink him in South Carolina?

On January 14, Rick Santorum announced that he had become the consensus social conservative candidate by virtue of a vote at a meeting of 150 social conservatives in Texas.

On that date, he was polling at 14.7% in South Carolina, according to Real Clear Politics. Today, one day before the South Carolina primary, Santorum has declined to 11.2% while Newt Gingrich, the other contender for the social conservative vote, has surged into the lead, now at 32.4%.

Gingrich is surging despite losing out in the Texas sweepstakes and the accusation from his ex-wife that he sought an open marriage prior to their divorce.

Santorum had started to sink on January 10 so perhaps his decline is related to something other than the evangelical endorsements. In any case, the endorsements, for all of the fanfare from the evangelical leaders, have not had the desired effect. Apparently, they do not have the clout they imagined.

For a different slant, see the results of this Lifeway survey: Talking about personal faith may not have desired effect.

NARTH member: Mixed orientation marriages hurt children

Recently, a lively discussion has been taking place on the thread of this post: Seton Hall professor: NARTH member “misreported and misrepresented” my research (go to the comments section for the discussion). Central to the discussion has been disputes about whether or not a study by Theodora Sirota on women who grew up in mixed orientation marriages could offer any insight about gay parenting in general. Sirota found that women with gay fathers and a straight mother had more problems with interpersonal trust.

I wrote the post after Dr. Sirota made a statement about how her study was misused in an article by National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality member, Rick Fitzgibbons, posted on the website Mercatornet. Fitzgibbons generalized the results of Sirota’s work to gay couples saying,

There are strong indications that children raised by same sex couples fare less well than children raised in stable homes with a mother and a father.

Fitzgibbons then cited Sirota’s study as evidence for this claim even though the adult women in Sirota’s study grew up in homes where both a mother and father lived, at least for a time. The issue for Fitzgibbons was the father was gay.

Fitzgibbons’ writing partner on the topic of forgiveness, Robert Enright (professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison), then joined the conversation, and after much discussion boiled down his belief about what Fitzgibbons sought to accomplish with his use of the Sirota study.

There is *indirect* (not direct) evidence in the peer-reviewed scientific literature showing statistically significant (in the case of Sarantakos and Sirota) negative effects for children when at least one LGB parent is studied scientifically.

Sarantakos studied gay couples (I will eventually present a critique of this study) but Sirota is the study which Enright referred to as having one gay parent.

There are many things wrong with the way Fitzgibbons used the Sirota study but here I want to note one not often covered. Essentially, Fitzgibbons proposes that same-sex attracted parents are harmful to children, even if they follow church teaching and marry heterosexually.

Many men I work with clinically are gay or bisexual but have fallen in love with their female spouse and together they have made a marriage work. By Fitzgibbons’ reasoning, the children involved are at greater risk for being hurt simply because one parent is gay/bisexual, even though they grow up in a home with a mother and father.

Fitzgibbons’ article, whether intended or not, stigmatizes people with same-sex attraction, no matter how they live.

In fact, Sirota’s research did not use representative sampling and almost nothing can be generalized from it to other mixed orientation couples. The mixed orientation parents in her study divorced more frequently and so it is highly likely that the results were more related to divorce than to anything else. However, in any case, Sirota’s results are only suggestive of further studies and prove nothing. Fitzgibbons’ use of the study was unwarranted and as a result recklessly stigmatized both gay couples as well as those men who direct their lives in accord with their religious views.