Petrelis Files

Gay Inc Fails to Expose Gingrich's
$350K to Iowa Homo-Haters

How well does Gay Inc follow the money of conservatives who oppose our fights for legal protections and social advancement? Not very well, if an important financial transparency and accountability story out of Iowa is any indication.

On March 16, Think Progress noted their research into part of Newt Gingrich's donations in Iowa and the digging done by the Associated Press and the Des Moines Register:

ThinkProgress previously reported on $200,000 that Gingrich funneled from an anonymous donor to the anti-marriage equality group Iowa for Freedom, which was also being funded by AFA Action, the political arm of the virulently anti-gay American Family Association. The Associated Press revealed yesterday that one of the cogs in Gingrich’s vast network of business enterprises and front groups, ReAL Action, provided $125,000 to AFA Action. The Des Moines Register reported this morning that ReAL Action also contributed $25,000 to yet another Iowa anti-LGBT group, the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. ...

Notice that the usual Gay Inc suspects - the Human Rights Campaign, Freedom to Marry, Equality Matters, GLAAD, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force - are not mentioned in the excerpt nor in the full Think Progress piece. If any of those groups are actively and regularly monitoring public records for elections related to gay marriage, they might be breaking the news on Gingrich's donations instead of

Over at Richard Socarides supposed gay war room site of Equality Matters, nothing was reported last week on the Gingrich donations in Iowa. If there was something posted at HRC's blog about the donations, I couldn't locate it. Same goes for the Freedom to Marry and NGLTF sites. Apparently GLAAD wasn't interested either in calling attention to the work of the AP, Des Moines Register or Think Progress.

Maybe the Gay Inc groups had nothing to say about the Gingrich donations because they had no role in uncovering them? If they said anything on their sites, gay people might question why these groups failed to follow the money in Iowa.

By the way, the mainstream press coverage omits all Gay Inc groups and their leaders, which says something about their non-player status is this exposure of Gingrich's role in the battle last year to oust three pro-gay state Supreme Court justices.

With well-funded Gay Inc groups like these, we still need the AP, Register and Think Progress performing the basic accountability task of following the anti-gay money, at least in Iowa.