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The modern Republican Party openly makes alliances with ugly, bigoted hate groups; it’s become so commonplace that no one even notices any more. Case in point: serial philanderer Newt Gingrich’s work with the disgusting far right American Family Association to deprive gay Americans of rights: Gingrich Said to Funnel $125K Via Hate Group to Punish Iowa Justices.

A nonprofit group led by former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich channeled $125,000 through a hard-line anti-gay organization to support a 2010 campaign to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices who voted to legalize same-sex marriage in that state, The Associated Press (AP) reported Tuesday. The donation to the American Family Association (AFA), which was designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) earlier this year, was part of a total of $350,000 Gingrich reportedly helped steer to Iowa for Freedom, which led the successful campaign against the justices, the only ones on the court who were up for reelection.

The SPLC lists AFA as a hate group principally because of its regular use of false propaganda to demonize gays and lesbians. Especially remarkable are the views expressed by Bryan Fischer, its shrill director of issue analysis for government and policy. Fischer has proposed criminalizing homosexual behavior, advocated forcing gays into “reparative” therapy, and claimed gays were responsible for the Holocaust.

The story of Gingrich’s below-the-radar assistance to Iowa for Freedom started to dribble out on March 3, when The Los Angeles Times reported that Gingrich helped the organization get its start, offering strategic advice and arranging a $200,000 gift from an anonymous donor. The remaining $150,000, the AP reported, was raised in the form of donations to Renewing American Leadership (ReAL), a nonprofit group Gingrich founded that promotes his books, TV appearances, and films. It was ReAL Action, an arm of ReAL, that reportedly gave $125,000 of that $150,000 to AFA Action, the political wing of AFA. The final $25,000 was given by ReAL Action to Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. Both AFA Action and Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition then supported Iowa for Freedom’s efforts, the AP said.

The assistance turned out to critical. The campaign to force the Iowa judges out “wouldn’t have happened without Newt,” David Lane, executive director of Iowa for Freedom, told the Los Angeles Times. “Newt provided strategic advice and the initial seed money, about $200,000, which is what got everything started.”

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This evening, Gingrich and fellow presidential aspirant Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) will headline a Minneapolis fundraiser for the Minnesota Family Council (MFC), a Twin Cities-based conservative Christian organization that's bankrolling the effort to ban gay marriage in the state, and whose president has written that gay teens who commit suicide brought it upon themselves.

One of the group's leaders has suggested that anti-gay organizations should be proud to be labeled "hate groups." In an interview last December with Peter LaBarbera of the anti-gay group Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, MFC research analyst Barb Anderson urged him to embrace the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center had designated his outfit a "hate group." "I think it's becoming perhaps a badge of honor to be called a hate group," she said. Anderson went on to describe the "radical homosexual agenda" as "the greatest threat to our freedom and to the health and well being of our children."

But MFC's most chilling comments concern the recent surge in suicides by LGBT teens.

MFC president Tom Prichard argued in a post on the group's blog that the recent spate of suicides by gay teen were tragic, but also the natural consequence of an unhealthy and immoral lifestyle decision. His post came after the death of Justin Aaberg, an openly gay 15-year-old from the suburban Twin Cities area who hanged himself last summer—one of three gay teens at his high school to commit suicide in the past year. Aaberg's death was unfortunate, Prichard said, but was being manipulated by the all-powerful gay lobby.

"Youth who embrace homosexuality are at greater risk [of suicide], because they've embraced an unhealthy sexual identity and lifestyle," Prichard wrote. "These alternative sexual identifications or lifestyles deny the reality that we are created male and female. To live or try to live in conflict with how we are made will invariably cause problems, e.g. emotional, psychological and social. Denying or fighting against this reality is the reason alternative forms of sexual expression, whether homosexual or heterosexual, will put people at greater risk [of suicide]."

Prichard—who also alleged that the brutal murder of Matthew Sheperd, who was gay, in Laramie, Wyoming, was not a hate crime—conceded that he would likely be "accused of being unloving, unhateful, etc." for his efforts to “save” the gay community.

Although they play two distinct roles within the Republican party—Gingrich the elder statesman, Bachmann the rogue insurgent—the two presidential aspirants have a shared history of anti-gay rhetoric. Gingrich has alleged that the United States is under assault from a "gay and secular fascism". In addition to gays, Gingrich has also said that the nation is under assault from Muslims, atheists, socialists, Kenyan anti-colonialists, and the ACLU.

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