SOCIAL ISSUES : Another Gingrich Has ‘Speaker’ Role : For Candace though, gay activism is a counterpoint to half-brother Newt’s views. Both express fondness for each other.

“Nothing’s normal any more,” Candace Gingrich admitted with a chuckle. It has not been for months--not since her big brother Newt ascended to the House speakership and she told a reporter that she is a lesbian.

That the leader of the GOP’s conservative revolution has a gay half-sister has proved an irresistible combination to both the media and gay-rights organizers, who have drafted a willing Candace into the front ranks of national activism.

Plucked from a decidedly unglamorous life of sorting packages for United Parcel Service and playing rugby in Harrisburg, Pa., Candace Gingrich is now flying around the country, appearing at gay-rights benefits and taping national television interviews. When she met briefly with her brother on Capitol Hill during a recent round of gay-rights lobbying with the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the event attracted a horde of photographers.

As self-assured--if not as confrontational--as her famous sibling, she seems to have slipped effortlessly into her role as official gay spokeswoman and public counterpoint to Newt Gingrich’s espousal of traditional family values.

“Anything I can do, I will try and do. . . . It’s important work,” the diminutive 28-year-old said recently over breakfast in Los Angeles, where she had put in an appearance at a fund-raising banquet for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. With her jeans, pink cheeks and bowl haircut, she looks more like a teen-ager on her way to rugby practice than the gay community’s newest poster woman.

Separated by 23 years and an ideological gulf, the two Gingriches embody the messy contradictions of family ties. Earlier this month, the Speaker stood beside her in Washington, announcing to the press: “I have a sister who I love a lot. Period.” The next day he told reporters he does not think gay men and lesbians deserve federal protection from job discrimination--implying that it’s all right if his little sister is fired because of her homosexuality.

She in turn has said she likes him and admires him for achieving his dream of the speakership--although, as a liberal Democrat, she disagrees with “90% of the things that he’s doing and how he’s doing them.”

In fact, she said, the two do not know each other very well. Newt Gingrich was married and on his own by the time the youngest of his three half-sisters was born. They have seen each other twice a year at family gatherings. Put off slightly, she said, by their mother Kathleen’s constant talk of Newt’s political achievements, Candace did not pay much attention as he rose to national prominence. Nor did she discuss politics with him.

Family members, including her brother, have known for years that she is gay and have been generally accepting, she said. She and her former partner lived for a time with her parents. (Her father, Robert, a retired Army officer, is Kathleen’s second husband and Newt’s adoptive father.)

Yet having a lesbian half-sister does not seem to have influenced the congressman’s political views much.

While advocating toleration of homosexuality, Newt Gingrich’s voting record has routinely earned the lowest rating from gay groups. He opposes the anti-discrimination bill that Candace lobbied for this month. He has also echoed conservative Christian assertions that school counseling programs for gay teen-agers amount to “recruitment.”

“In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have expected to change anything that he was doing,” Candace said. “I’ve said in the past that it would be naive for me to think that one person is going to change the mind and the opinions of the third most powerful man in the country.

“But on the other hand,” she said, her voice rising, “I was pretty ticked off and hurt that less than 24 hours after meeting with me and smiling and saying we’re a family, we love each other--for him to reiterate that he’s condoning gays and lesbians being fired in the workplace. That was just like the proverbial, ‘He just doesn’t get it.’ ”

She paused briefly, wrestling with political reality. “But then again, I’m not the one giving money to his campaign.”

Since January, she has sent him several faxes and letters on gay-related topics, but until the Capitol Hill meeting, received no response.

The silence bothered her at first, “but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt that he’s just very, very busy.”

At the same time, he has not told her to stop talking publicly--nor have her parents. Her mother had only one admonition. “She doesn’t want me dragging Newty’s name through the mud.”

Given the family that Candace comes from, it would probably be impossible to hush her anyway. She has agreed to be spokeswoman for the campaign fund’s National Coming Out Project, which encourages gay men and women to be open about their sexual orientation.

“If you can’t be free and be comfortable and openly talk about who you are, I think that only holds people back,” she said. “It’s really important for people to be honest and also, in return, for people to be able to accept them and love them for who they are.”