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Newt Gingrich wanted 'open marriage,' ex-wife says
(CNN) — Newt Gingrich offered his second wife a choice of an open marriage or a divorce when he revealed to her he was having an affair with the woman he later made his third wife, Marianne Gingrich said in interviews with ABC News and The Washington Post.
A day after he told his wife about his affair with Callista Bisek in May 1999, the former House speaker delivered a speech titled “The Demise of American Culture” to a group of Republican women in Pennsylvania, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
“How could he ask me for a divorce on Monday and within 48 hours give a speech on family values and talk about how people treat people?” Marianne Gingrich said in her interview with the Post.
Her revelations echo what she told a reporter for an article published in Esquire magazine in August 2010, but it is the first time Marianne Gingrich has talked about it on camera.
(There is a video if you follow a link featuring a segment of the interview.)
I am bothered by this. In the past open marriages were very common in wealthy and aristocratic families. They were typically patriarchal and involved a husband keeping more than wife. This is less socially acceptable today (as you can tell from news such as this) and the male dominated concept of polygamy is definitely not the desired affect for anyone identifying as polyamorous. It disturbs me that 1) Gingrich’s ex-wife (as countless articles and interviews stress to refer to her time and time again) is setting out to destroy his political career with these interviews, 2) that we really care this much about the private lives of any well known name (political, famous, or otherwise), and 3) that the idea of an open marriage or the suggestion of polyamory is something that could destroy someone’s political career.
Newt Gingrich is certainly not my presidential candidate of choice, but I can’t help but be saddened by the fact that information about someone’s personal, private relationships can potentially destroy their career. Relationships (especially marital ones) are extremely complex, far too intricate for anyone except those intimately involved to have room to judge or critique.
Maybe Newt Gingrich did ask to have an open relationship. Is there something inherently wrong with that? We don’t know all the details of what happened between Marianne and Newt. It’s not our place to know, and it’s certainly not our place, in my opinion, to let that affect whether or not we vote for Newt Gingrich. I’m personally not voting for him mostly because of his war-mongering foreign policy, but I couldn’t care less about his personal life.
I am very interested to see this interview.
