Jim McGreevey article

[JohnnyV]

Here's an op-ed piece about Jim McGreevey, who was the first openly gay governor for about 60 days before he resigned from office in the midst of a scandal.

http://www.gay.com/news/roundups/package.html?sernum=1402&navpath=/channels/news/opinion/

As usual, the gay press vilifies McGreevey for having gotten married and paints his relationships with women as entirely "forced" on him. McGreevey goes along with the clichés because that's what will sell books. Never mind that he would have never divorced his wife if it weren't for the fact that the bribery scandal broke and laid bare his fraught relationship with a younger assistant from Israel.

I am getting so exhausted by America's habit of always denigrating the family life of married bisexual men. McGreevey pisses me off because I can see him changing his story every day to fit in with the mainstream perceptions that everyone's either gay or straight. His life story would seem to reveal his bisexuality, but he won't use that word because it's not politically correct, for a man in his position.

J

[JohnnyV]

Oh, for our members who aren't from the US, I should explain a little:

In 2004, James McGreevey was in his second term as governor of New Jersey, one of the most important local political offices in the US. Philadelphia newspapers broke the story that he had given a high-security-clearance position to his male lover. His male lover was a poet from Israel, not even a US citizen, and the decision to give him the job was extremely poor judgment. New Jersey lost a huge toll in September 11, and yet McGreevey was willing to give the job of state homeland security for his state to an inexperienced but handsome man, who would've had a lot of trouble passing security clearance because he was a citizen of another country.

Even after he was forced to remove his lover from the security position, McGreevey kept him on the state payroll, paying him over $100,000 a year basically to compensate him for sexual gratification.

McGreevey was in his second marriage at the time, and had kids by both of his wives. When the press revealed that McGreevey's lover might be preparing for a lawsuit, McGreevey tried to pre-empt a massive political disaster by beating his lover to the press and announcing the sexual indiscretions first.

"I am a gay American," McGreevey announced with a mix of pompousness and contrition, on national television, while his wife sat smiling beside him. Without revealing the name of his lover (everyone knew it anyway), he saved himself from blackmail because now the younger lover couldn't hold him hostage with the information. The problem, however, was that McGreevey had to resign or risk destroying the Democrats' position in state politics.

I believe it was about a year later that McGreevey filed for divorce. His book paints him as the victim of homophobia and states that he struggled to make himself straight for years. That may be the case, but my perception is more that he is bisexual, and he got caught, so now he's had to claim that his two marriages were forced on him, in order to claim a victim status and therefore not be held responsible for the havoc he's caused.

J

[BiNudistBear]

undefinedundefined
Johnny, you're absolutely right -- and it's not just the gay media. There are many closeted married bi males out there having the kinds of dangerous, degrading and unsatisfying anonymous sex acts he described. Too bad the atmosphere is such that they cannot be honest with themselves and their wives right from the start and share/explore their sexuality.

[bhg08054]

Unfortunately the press spent way too much time focusing on his sexual preferences rather than the fact that he was a liar and a cheat. Would he have been so vilified if it was a woman lover he did all that for?

Of course in their defense the State of NJ has a long history of expecting politicians to be liars and cheats, so I guess that was considered "normal".

[OralBradley]

Of course in their defense the State of NJ has a long history of expecting politicians to be liars and cheats, so I guess that was considered "normal".

Only New Jersey? I thought that being politic meant lying and cheating.

[JohnnyV]

Yes, well, New Jersey's corruption is famous. (I used to live in the Garden State, so I don't say that as an outsider but rather as an insider...)

McGreevey was, in many way, part of an old political machine. He simply got caught. I don't think his bisexuality was even that painful for him, to tell you the truth. He's playing up the cliché of the long-suffering repressed homosexual because that's the way to appease the voters who feel disappointed in him. In truth, if Golan Cipel had not broken off the tryst and made some threatening overtures, McGreevey probably would have kept up his double life indefinitely -- and who knows, perhaps to the greater happiness and tranquility of everyone involved.

I would have loved it if he came out as bisexual and said, "I'm going to stay with my wife, and we've worked out an arrangement." But because I know so little about the wife's point of view, I can't say whether that would have been possible.

J