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The Expansionist
Friday, August 13, 2004
 
McGreevey Resignation. As most of you will have heard, because it was the top news story last nite, the governor of my state, James McGreevey, announced in a press conference yesterday that he is “a gay American”; had an extramarital, homosexual affair (he's married to a woman and has a very young daughter with her and another daughter from his first wife (note: no sons; fate punishes hypocrisy?) — yes, the homo fool has been married heterosexually TWICE!); and is resigning from office effective November 15th. This blog entry is a bit difficult for me to write, because I have so many reactions — not including so much as an iota of sympathy for the stupid bastard himself.
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This was a very big deal in my office, a major New Jersey law firm in Downtown Newark. Around 3:20pm, word had gotten out that McGreevey was rumored to be resigning at 4pm via live press conference. Speculation abounded that he was being charged with sexual harassment (of a woman, everyone assumed) even rape! There was some frantic scurrying to figure out how we could see the press conference.
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My firm is filled with political and some very-well-connected people. Our IT guy set up our antennaless TV in the main conference room (we have a clear straight-line view from that glass-walled conference room to the broadcast tower atop the Empire State Building perhaps 13 miles away (see picture, below), so reception even without an antenna wasn’t so bad).

And one of our politically well-connected attorneys found a streaming-video site on the Internet. But the press conference started quite late, perhaps 4:20, so people who had wandered away had to regroup. Perhaps 20 of us were in the conference room and another dozen in the attorney’s office when the press conference finally got underway.
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When McG announced, after a dreary, c. two-minute vague, philosophical wandering, that he is a "gay American", there were audible gasps from various parts of the room. He then admitted to having had an affair with a man, then detestably said this was wrong, and then resigned in shame. What a jerk.
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McGreevey’s mistake was not in finally, at age 47(!) "coming out" but in having yielded to pressures to be straight and submerge his nature in favor of his ambitions until now. What was "wrong" was dragging an innocent woman he could not fully love into his confusions and shame, and ruining part of her life. Someone I know who worked closely with McGreevey and knew the kinds of pressures that his ambition and family subjected him to, was immediately sympathetic to the man. I'm not.
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When I was very young, I wanted to be President of the United States. But I knew very young that I was homosexual, and I was not going to live a lie and make my life hell just for the sake of avoiding antihomosexual bias. Quite the contrary, I decided that I must first do what I could to change public attitudes toward homosexuality. And then I might just be able to run for President as an open homosexual, and win.
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So I spent years in homosexual activism, amassing tens of thousands of words of encouragement and argumentation for gay rights and gay self-esteem (much of which is available to today's young gay men, who really need it!, at http://members.aol.com/MrGayPride). As part of that activity, I chanced to coin the term "Gay Pride" as it is now used, which has made a very big difference in the way gay men are perceived, by society and themselves. (For how that coining happened, see this blog's entry at June 27th.)
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To do all this, I had to put aside thoughts of a "career", and work on "propaganda" (as I call it) as my vocation. I lost tens of thousands of dollars to this activity, in a time (the 60s and 70s) when tens of thousands of dollars was a lot of money. I also sacrificed resume-building experience at low-level jobs in politics, academia, television, or publishing, in order to make progress on my life's work. McGreevey didn't do any of that. He didn't even read the stuff that I and hundreds of other gay men were writing to try to help people like him cope.
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It's as tho the Stonewall Riots never happened, the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance never held a demonstration. Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's Daily Show last nite said he hoped it wasn't what it seemed, that a gay man could not, in this day and age, serve as governor. There had to be more to it than that, didn't there? Or maybe not.
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Well, in this day and age an ambitious gay man could still hide in the closet, so why couldn't he be forced out of office by antihomosexual bias, even in New Jersey (Jon Stewart's home state as much as mine). No, that really isn't possible. The fault is not in New Jersey, one of the most sensible and liberal states in the Nation, but in McGreevey himself.
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It was, frankly, a little thrilling to hear the Governor of one of the Nation's largest states say he’s “a gay American” — a stirring locution that could have made him a gay hero, and not just in New Jersey, not even just in the United States. For once, the gay men of the Nation had a very highly placed public official, one of only 50 governors in this huge and influential political and cultural superpower — and the bastard resigns! Jeez. I said it aloud as soon as he made the announcement: "Idiot!"
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Maybe he's hoping for a groundswell of support, asking him to stay in office. Commentators in media have observed that many heterosexual politicians have had sexual scandals that didn’t end their political careers.
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My own first thought was to a homosexual scandal affecting an influential Congressman. Barney Frank's live-in boyfriend years at the time was running a CALL-BOY service from Frank's townhouse, unbeknownst to Franks, and Franks didn't resign. That was in 1989, FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. Barney Frank is still in Congress, having been re-elected seven times since then and served as a courageous and important champion of gay rights.+
Indeed,on July 25th of this year Frank said this to Newsweek:

If Kerry wins in November, will you run for his Senate seat?
If the Democrats don't take the House back. If they take the House back, I'd be chairman of a major committee, and I'd stay. But if Kerry wins and the Democrats don't take the House, yeah, I'm going to run for the Senate.

Why couldn’t McGreevey be comparably strong, courageous, and devoted to the public good — and especially the good of his own group (and mine), gay men?
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CNN.com today pointed out that:

McGreevey signed a bill in January that created same-sex domestic partnerships in New Jersey, but urged New Jersey officials to abide by current laws when the city of Asbury Park issued a marriage license to a same-sex couple in May.

In July, he condemned a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit marriage to heterosexual couples as "a divisive and drastic tactic."

Why should McGreevey end his political career and end his good works for gay men just because he was weak and devious until now? Learn from the experience and have the courage to be who you are. End your marriage and all pretense of heterosexuality. Apologize for the hurt you have caused. Then move on, as a proud, and finally self-assertive gay man, who is very much needed in an age when Radical Right Republicans are trying to force us back into the closet.

Why is he resigning as of November 15th? I know that if he resigned before September 15th there would have to be an election this November for governor, and the Democratic Party is ill-prepared for such an election — unless McGreevey himself were to run, and put his fate in the hands of the voters.
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But he didn’t make his announcement on August 15th. There are two full months between September 15th and the effective date of his resignation. The national election is November 2nd. Does McGreevey think that staying in office past that election but not standing tall to say "I'm gay and I'm proud, and I won't be intimidated any longer", would be in the Democratic Party's interest? Very curious.
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So let me close this entry with the observation, as Gaetano wrote it, from the only one of my gay friends who lives here in Newark: I SAY HE STAYS AND SAYS THE HELL WITH EVERYONE.





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