This Gingrich a Proponent of Gay Pride : Politics: The lesbian half-sister of the conservative Speaker of the House is in Orange County as part of a nationwide effort to promote openness about homosexuality.

Candace Gingrich has a message for gays and lesbians keeping their lifestyle secret to accommodate the wishes of their families, friends or colleagues:

It’s time to come out of the closet.

The half-sister of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Wednesday that gays shouldn’t come out just to make a political statement or to prove to straight people that gays are in their midst, but they should do it for themselves.

“I cannot even imagine not being out anymore,” Gingrich said during an interview. “But I really empathize with those people who feel they can’t come out; it’s like self-imposed slavery.”

Gingrich, who is on a 48-city tour as part of the Human Rights Campaign Fund’s National Coming Out Project, is dedicating six months to urge gays and lesbians to “promote the values of honesty and openness about being gay, lesbian or bisexual.”

After the tour, she plans to stay on with the organization to work on a gay voter registration drive for the 1996 presidential election.

Gingrich, 28, has come out three times: first to friends in college, then to her family and finally to the world, when shortly after her half-brother was elected Speaker, she told a reporter she was a lesbian.

After her disclosure, the Human Rights Campaign Fund, which is the nation’s largest gay and lesbian lobbying organization, asked her to become a spokeswoman. When he learned about her new job, Newt Gingrich said he was a “pleased as punch,” but their mother was leery.

“At first my mom was concerned that it was just a plan to get at Newty, but that’s nowhere near the truth,” she said. “Besides, I’ve always been very opinionated, just now I get to share my opinions with everyone.”

Before she embarked on a national speaking tour, Gingrich worked for UPS in Harrisburg, Pa., and played rugby in her spare time. Today, photo sessions and endless questions about gay rights, gay politics and gay life are handled with the aplomb of a public relations expert as she dashes from hotels to airports to speaking engagements.

“It’s very important work. I am hoping to educate people to the discrimination gays and lesbians face and to the truth about gays and lesbians,” Gingrich said.

The “truth” about gays and lesbians, she said, is that “we’re part of America and American families. We don’t come from dysfunctional or strange or odd families.”

Her own family has taken her new position in stride, much the same way it took the news, in 1987, that she is a lesbian, she said.

Shortly after Gingrich came out to friends while at college in rural western Pennsylvania, her mother found a lesbian newsletter in her bedroom.

“After finding it my mom asked, ‘Are you trying to tell me something?’ I answered, ‘Yes Mom, I am a lesbian.’ ”

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While at first her mother wanted to know where they had “gone wrong” as parents, Gingrich said she convinced her mother that nothing could have changed her sexual orientation.

“I told her the only thing they had done was to raise me with the character to be myself,” she said. “But once I was out, I was a lot happier. I couldn’t stop smiling at least for a year.”

Her mother told the rest of the family, including Newt, who was supportive of her private life. More problematic for Gingrich has been her brother’s public pronouncements about gays and lesbians and his negative voting record on gay issues.

She can tick off his “outrageous” comments without stopping to breathe. They include his references to “practicing homosexuals” and his unwillingness to support gay education issues.

“Oh, so if we stop having sex then we’re not homosexual?” she asks. “Come on.”

But when all is said and done, their differences are myriad. She is liberal and Newt is conservative. They are 23 years apart in age and share the same mother but have different fathers. He was married before she was born, and the two have never really talked about politics, knowing it to be pointless.

She does not ask Newt to change. Instead, Gingrich asks gays and lesbians to come out and identify themselves to their friends and family. Just their presence will change the political landscape, she said.

“But I can understand why some people don’t come out--considering that in 41 states you can still be fired for somebody’s prejudices.

“I don’t think you gain anything until you take risks,” Gingrich said. “Look at the suffragettes; look at the civil rights movement. People lost their jobs and went to jail and were [physically] attacked. But they eventually got what they went after.”