Thomas Vinciguerra is the editor of the forthcoming "Backward Ran Sentences: The Best of Wolcott Gibbs from The New Yorker."

YOU can see it all on YouTube. There is the former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and his wife, Callista, signing copies of “Rediscovering God in America” at an event in Minneapolis. Suddenly, an attendee withdraws a Cheez-It box filled with sparkly glitter and dumps it on the authors.

“Feel the rainbow, Newt!” he says as he is hustled out of the room. “Stop the hate! Stop the anti-gay politics!” Welcome to “glitter bombing,” the latest act of political theater from the L.G.B.T. (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) rights movement. The targets, not surprisingly, are individuals who activists feel are hostile or insensitive to gay marriage and similar issues.

The Gingrich onslaught, on May 17, was the opening salvo. On June 16 in San Francisco, Nancy Mancias and Chelsea Byers of the group Codepink: Women for Peace poured glitter and bunches of long, thin, curly strips of pink paper — the kind found packed in gift baskets — on Tim Pawlenty, then a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Two days later, a lawyer, Rachel E. B. Lang, sprinkled Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, also a candidate. Then, on July 21, a contingent that included Nick Espinosa, who glittered the Gingriches, spread glitter at the headquarters of Bachmann & Associates, a Christian-oriented counseling practice run by Mrs. Bachmann’s husband, Marcus. The group was responding to stories that the clinic engaged in “reparative therapy,” which aims to persuade gays to become heterosexual.