Comments on McGreevey on Craig

Ouch! Touched a nerve there, eh Dan?

You forgot to mention his sham marriage when other gays and lesbians were fighting for marriage equality, and the fact that he abused his authority as governor to get a crony/lover a government position.

Thanks, Gitai. Added "sham marriage" to the list of particulars...

"Shut the fuck up, McGreevey, you lying sack of shit. Harvey Milk was elected to office in 1977—and he was the first of a wave of openly-gay elected officials, all across the country."

He also got shot, Dan.

I mean, you may have a point here, but you seem to be arguing that by the 1970s there was no longer any nontrivial danger involved in being a gay man, at least in an urban area. Are you serious?

If only there was an internet as available to the public in the 1970s as there is now...

i was raped by a card catalog.

Yeah, he got shot--and people poured into the streets, came out to their parents, took a stand. That Milk got shot was only a good reason to stay closeted if, like McGreevey, you were a coward.

it doesn't take any more than skimming any craigslist in any city to see the herds and masses of married men wanting beef on the side. What will happen with all these men 5 or 10 years from now? Will they all still be happily hiding in Craigslist?

McScreevy is NOT a gay role model of any kind and I'm still pissed at the Advocate for putting him on the cover like he was an assest for the lgbt commnunity...

Opportunistic little shit weasel...

For what it's worth, Gitai @2, in his WaPo editorial McGreevey brought up his own abuse of authority in hiring his crony/lover.

the pressures each of us face in coming to terms with our identity vary.

i'm totally with you dan. i watched mcgreevey's ex-wife on oprah, and i was really shocked at all the crap she had to put up with. this guy only cares about himself, in other words a typical politician. he's oblivious to others.

Great Piece Dan. And McGreevey was a coward for stepping down as Gov. of Jew Jersey. He should have finished his term.

But you are right, He and Craig CHOOSE to be in the closet. Period. They need to stop acting like the 70's were some dark age or something.

Yeah, he got shot--and people poured into the streets, came out to their parents, took a stand.

And then his murderer got off on the Twinkie defense, Dan.

I don't really care about McGreevey one way or the other, but your premise here is bullshit; none of the events you're describing constituted some kind of magic gateway swinging open to admit queers to the loving embrace of equal protection under the law. My out gay dad was afraid to divorce my mom until 1986 (though they'd been separated since 1974) because he knew she'd burn him to the ground in court. He didn't feel he could risk it until I was old enough to make a definitive statement about who I wanted to live with. And that kind of shit was all over the place in the 1980s. Coming out in the '80s was dangerous, it was hard, and there were serious legal, economic and social consequences; and the older you were, the more you had to lose. So congratulations for marching in '87, but what were you risking? Your kids? Your carrer? Your family's love and approval? Hardly. Suppose you had to do it now? Suppose coming out now meant you would, without question, mean losing your son?

Everybody knows the value of their own courage, Dan. When the planes hit the towers, you folded like a little bitch and jumped on the war bandwagon. So spare me the stridency about someone failing to come out in the '80s. I was there, and it wasn't as easy as you're making it sound by a country mile. Short of that, you're as morally fallible as the next guy.

I couldn't agree more, Dan. Many people in worse circumstances than McGreevey were able to live their lives with honesty and integrity. There's some satisfaction in that his book has been a total bust.

Judah: I'm not saying that it wasn't hard. I remember what it was like, and how much courage was required to come out in the way, way olden tymes. I came out in 1980, for crying out loud, right into the Reagan/Moral Majority/AIDS buzzsaw.

McGreevey is claiming that all he had to go on, all the information at hand in the mid-to-late '70s, when he was a teenager in New Jersey, was what he read in the library one day and what the Catholic church had to say. That is bullshit, and that's what I'm calling him on.

McGreevey is hardly likeable. As an explanation for his own behavior, the article isn't so good. But I still thought that his piece was a good response to the Craig incident, particularly in the way it raised the question of double standards. As formerly closeted, discredited public figures go, he's miles ahead of Ted Haggard...

Uh...to eliminate confusion, I'm the "D" of posts 10 and 17, not the "D." of post 12.

I read this piece yesterday and felt absolutely sick. McGreevey is no more sympathetic to me than any other lying politician. He has the lying disease so badly, even now he can't tell the truth.

I came out on my own in 1978, at 16 years old, in a small farm town in Central Illinois. Because I knew about the Stonewall riots when I was 7 years old. Because as soon as I knew there was such a thing as gay, I knew that's what I was.

McGreevey isn't that far ahead of Haggard.

like millions of other gay Catholics, I somehow managed to come the fuck out of the closet and live with a little integrity.

Not to say that Episcopalians wouldn't want you, but don't you mean dignity? :)

Right on, Mark.

@14,

Don't roll out the twinkie defense. Are you conveniently forgetting Dan White's other victim that day? George Moscone, the friggin' mayor of San Francisco, was murdered as well. The idiot jury swallowing the twinkie defense had nothing to do with anti-gay bigotry.

Dan, I'm not going to spend too much time chasing you around about this -- obviously there isn't much point -- but we all have filters we use to parse information about new developments in societal behavior; it's not like every queer in America read about the Stonewall riots in the newspaper and thought, "Wow, those rioting queers in Greenwich have changed the world overnight. Now it's safe to come out!" Likewise most of the other incidents you mention; none of them created significant changes in the moment and the implications of some of those incidents took several years to really enter the popular consciousness.

And I'll say this again to you and Mark: it's much easier, in many respects, to come out when you're 16 or 18 than it is to come out when you're in your 20s and you've got a straight identity that is necessary to your career and your family life. I'm not saying there aren't closet cases, particularly in the here and now, who are cowards; I'm saying there was a much wider window of what one could consider "legitimate" fear than you're letting on here. So your whole, "I couldn't write about this because I was afraid I'd puke on my laptop" shtick is totally out of proportion with this guy's offense.

The idiot jury swallowing the twinkie defense had nothing to do with anti-gay bigotry.

And that is so much bullshit.

Yeah, McGreevey's a sleazy cheese ball. I read his book and had to shower for days to wash it off.

Anyone who went through the 70s as an older teenager or young adult had plenty of opportunity to gain self-acceptance - if that's what one wanted - as a gay man or woman no matter how doctrinaire his or her upbringing was. This creep ruined not one, but two women's lives by marrying them as beards for his political aspirations, holding his nose to produce off-spring, all the while hitting the rest stop circuit.

This is not only dishonorable. This is very close to pure evil.

Well, Judah, as I pointed out in my post... there was a rising tide of stories, many, many milestones. It wasn't just Stonewall, but the forces Stonewall unleashed. McGreevey couldn't have been in the dark about the possibility of living as an openly gay man in 1977, 1987, 1977, or in 2000, the year McGreevey married his second wife--the one with the bad dress sense. That marriage, we can both agree, took place long enough after Stonewall, and that encounter with the state patrol officer, for McGreevey to know better.

Some homos will make excuses for pathetic, self- and other-destructive closet cases, some won't.

As a gay Jersey voter, I can't stand McGreevy or his efforts to become a spokesman for the gays. But, I'm leery about attacking people as cowards simply because they weren't out of the closet at 16 or 23 or another age deemed acceptly early. We should be encouraing people to come out when they're ready, not acting like locker room bullies trying to shame someone to beat up the skinny kid to prove he's a man. Doing so means the terrorists win.

Dan writes:

>Okay, let’s pause for a moment. McGreevey was born in 1957—in New Jersey, so he wasn’t exactly cut off from the outside world. You can walk to Manhattan from New Jersey. And “boys and girls of his generation” weren’t exactly limited to dated card catalogues when they sought information about themselves.

As someone who was born in 1959 in Newark and raised in the Essex county suburbs, and I can assure you, Dan, in the mid-1970s, when I was coming out as a teenager, I didn't have to travel to NYC to find other gay people.

Back then we had the great Northern Jersey alternative paper The Aquarius publishing.

It ran a lot of personal ads from gay and bisexual men looking for sex and companions, listings of gay group meetings and stories about gay people coming out of the closet.

There were also a good number of gay bars in the state.

And one of the oldest political gay groups in the country, Gay Activists Alliance of Morris County, started around 1976-77, was garnering media coverage and spreading the word among gays that it was holding meetings.

My point is that New Jersey's gay citizens didn't always have to travel to Manhattan to find political groups, sex, bars and meet each other.

All this aside, Dan, great and necessary column reacting to McGreevey's latest bid for attention.

I too was checking the card catalog in the mid-seventies and found plenty of hopeful info and this was the not so urban midwest! Leonard Matlovich was on the cover of Time as a decorated military man fighting the military's ban at that time!! No other options??? None that his cowardice would allow is more like it...

i grewi up in the 80s and 90s in subexurbia washington state.... all the way through high school and early college i ran into not one openly gay peer. all the people close to me were anti-gay without doubt, and mocked homosexuals openly. i think each person's experience varies, and i do not know if mcgreevey was a coward or just grew up in circumstances that made his coming out more difficult.

often, it isn't even a matter of coming out. people like craig may actually believe they are not gay, or that being gay is wrong and are struggling against it daily. some people are gay, but do not want to be.

McGreedy is an ugsome little toady and an extremely agile politician. He would STILL be sliming around behind his wife's and constitutient's backs if he hadn't been caught and he slithered his way out of that mess and is now trying to position himself as a glbt leader and I really wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't try to re-enter politics as the voice of the glbt community. Trying to blame society for not coming out, in his case, is ridiculous. The 'poor, little, Catholic, me' line of defense for a baby boomer with a good degree in a liberal state with extremely close proximity to NYC, the birthplace of gay pride and acceptance isn't going to wash with me. The fucker was just greedy and stupid and arrogant and ENJOYED the double life he was leading and I refuse to give him any respect as a "Gay American". He doesn't speak for me or any other intelligent, articulate , considerate gay man or lesbian, regardless if they are out or not. I have far more sympathy for our sad little neighbor in Idaho, a man who actually DOES come from a time and place where it would be much harder to come out, than for that sack of shit in New Jersey.

You can walk to New York from New Jersey? What are you talking about? Seriously, you don't have a clue about New Jersey. I grew up there, a stone's throw from NYC, but believe me, it was light years away in everything but geography. It was not the "blue state" that it is now. I'm glad New Jersey has evolved into a much cooler place -- and I like the fact that people are in the habit of making fun of it now have to concede that it's politically more progressive than all but a couple other states. But when McGreevy was growing up there? No way.

Like Judah, I have a gay dad. He was married to my mom until about 6 years ago. He came out of the closet 4 years ago. He's in his fifties.

Sometimes I struggle with anger at my dad for lying to my mom (plus us kids and himself) all those years. The truth is that my dad isn't the bravest guy on Earth. However, he was a very good father, loved us, and did his best.

Sometimes I'm thankful that he stayed in the closet so long, because a couple decades ago, there were lots gay bashing murderers. Not to mention AIDS, which killed off an awful lot of courageous, open, honest gay men in the 80s.

I don't think that fear of AIDS or murder are what kept my dad in the closet, though. I think it was fear of more mundane things, like the disapproval of family. Does that make him a coward? I don't know. I don't know what I would have done in his place, given all the variables in his life.

In the end, I guess I am glad my dad did things the way he did, because otherwise I wouldn't be alive, and he might not be either.

What Judah and J in Jersey said.

I’m glad Jodie Foster gave $ to the Trevor Project a couple months ago.
http://www.thetrevorproject.org/jodiefoster.pdf

And congratulations to anyone, anywhere, who has ever come out, no matter what the conditions.

Wow, I guess the tens of thousands of other GLBT New Jerseyites (or is it New Jersians?)are extra-specially brave pioneers...and I don't know what that says about the millions of folks who came out in Nebraska and Indiana and Texas and Arizona and Nevada and South Carolina and Alabama and Maine and every other fucking Red and non-Red state in the 70's and 80's...someone needs to give us a medal!

dan,

i have loved your columns since i was but a wee bi girl in the sticks of nebraska but i have to say you're responding far more from a place of reactionary anger and self congratulation than reason.

yes, mcgreevey is any number of negative adjectives. yes, his way of coming out was likely one of the least admirable methods ever. yes, people have known about brave, open, proud LGBT people for longer than he claims.

but shit, man, just because you had the intestinal fortitude, intelligence, peace of mind and interest in coming out back in the day doesn't mean that those with different experiences and assets ought to be shamed with such vituperation.

i came out in my tiny catholic high school in 1999 and lost several "friends" i'd had since age 6. i regret nothing. but if i had not always been ok with "being the weird one" or taking strong stands in the face of overwhelming odds, i would hate to think you'd give me such a tongue lashing.

mcgreevey sucks, ok, we agree. but damn, we're all ultimately on the same side here.

Okay, michael strangeways and every other out gay, here's your medal:

http://tinyurl.com/yogfrr

Yayyy!

link is to: clipartguide.com

Seriously, there is no reason for anyone gay who isn't financially dependent on a homophobe not to be out in this day and age.

You know, every time this happens I try to find some good reason as to why they would allow someone to be in love with them, to think that they know them - namely, their wives. I try to find something in their life that gives me a good reason as to why they would do that to someone who loves them, and I just can't.

Barring fear for one's safety, if you are gay, you should be out. I understand it's not easy, but I'm having a hard time generating any sympathy. I hate that recent representation of gay people on television and in the news, are these cowards. On one hand, it's like Christmas, and on the other, it's a nightmare.

Great opinion piece, Dan. If McGreevey had just admitted that he was a scared little wuss, as scared of being openly gay as much as he's scared of the prospect of not having hot gay sex, we could at least respect his honesty if not his past actions. Being a coward is shameful, yes, but lying to yourself is just sad.

Well, at least he's out now. So let's not judge him or anyone else too harshly who's struggling with coming out. It's not a 12 step program. Some guys and gals will need more time, more support, more love. Your rant, Dan, just makes it harder for them.

i don't want a medal...my point is, the people who came out, don't want or need medals...it's really not that special and it shouldn't be a big deal and don't have lameass excuses on why you can't do it; just fuckin' do it!

I think McCreevey is and always be opportunistic. I have no doubts he's gay. I do have some doubts Craig is gay. I have wondered if Craig were bi or even a sex addict, though less the latter. We always assume either or, but I wonder with people like Craig if he's not somewhere in the middle and unable to reconcile that.

The Lies on top of lies that McSkeevey puts out there on all aspects of his life... Even his friends (one that I know of) refer to him behind his back as Governor McCheese-y.

The Lies on top of lies that McSkeevey puts out there on all aspects of his life... Even his friends (one that I know of) refer to him behind his back as Governor McCheese-y.

When McGreevey's book came out last fall, I wrote an article for the Gay City News making similar points about the dishonesty of his story:

http://www.gaycitynews.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=17283393&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=8

I had hoped McGreevey would have the humility to stop trying to be a spokesperson and skew history, but here he is in the Washington Post continuing to do so.

I'm 53--older than McGreevey--and grew up on Long Island and had no trouble accessing gay life in the suburbs, in New York City and in Charlottesville, VA where I went to college in 1971 and where we had an active Gay Student Union. And while I've been an atheist since I was 28, I did spend eight years before that in New York in Dignity, the gay Catholic group. The point is, there were resources for gay Catholics when he was young.

I'm not saying I was completely open as a kid or anything, but I became president of the gay group in college in 1974 and never did look back.

Now McGreevey is studying to be a leader of the Episcopal Church. It is a more gay-friendly outfit than the Catholics, but it still does not completely embrace gay love nor perform gay marriages. (Some dioceses "bless" gay unions, but they also bless animals on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi.) McGreevey may feel more comfortable in his Park Avenue parish of St. Bart's, but if he really wanted to start living with integrity, why not serve the LGBT Metropolitan Community Church? Or better yet, why not stop worshipping false gods altogether?

sorry d of providence. i've been slogging for a while, but i don't comment that much so you may not have noticed. lest anyone be offended, I usually sign D. Note the period.

I was born 2 years before McGgreevey in 1955 and came out on 1977. I was 22 and could have come out earlier but 1977 was my time I was in a small northern BC (Canada) town and knew about things gay. Even that far north there was gay people in bars people that busted me on many stupid myths and lies about being gay. So I admitted to myself I was gay in 1977. McGgreevey made the 1980's sound like the 50's in fact that is what I thought he was referring to when reading until I read on and realized he was talking about the 80's and that I am older than him. Now the 80's I knew had full blown gay in your face protesting going on over many issues. It was a great time for many people to come out and many did because of the momentum in the 80's. I worked for the government, the Attorney Generals Office and I was out in the mid 80's. Leather jacket bleached hair OUT and no one dared complain, mainly because I did my job well and the times let me be out, the 80's and have a gov. job. Everything that contributes to the lives we have now are mainly because of the 70's and 80's. There were gay bars in the 70's and people with any kind of backbone came out and held their ground. In fact I not only opted to come out but in a big way. I was a gay/punk/artist running around doing graffiti everywhere and making videos long before there was a music video format and long before NY wild style graffiti hit the west coast. All that while trashing guitars onstage at punk shows. Now that was the 80's. You could not miss it it was a blast and I did not have to sneak around looking for sex it was available everywhere.
On another note I Know many people think washroom sex is "gross" it has been mentioned lots. But I feel there are 2 types of men that go to rest stops, parks and washrooms for sex. Closet cases and gay men living the "public area sex fantasy" (gay men and their fantasies?!?!). If you are single and get off on all that then fine. But if you are attached (gay with boyfriend or closeted with wife) and sneaking around then you are a jerk. A single gay man that gets caught probably will only do himself harm but an attached guy or closet case that is preaching against gay issues all the while having public sex makes you a creep and you deserve the humiliation, you brought it on yourself.

Oh and another thing probably the only reason he was in the fuckin Library was to cruise the washrooms. I remember the public library washroom here in Vancouver before they build the new library it was like a set from a porn flick. In fact I believe the Old Seattle library was the same.

Right on, Dan.

I was born (1962) and raised in South Jersey. By the time 1982 rolled around, I was friends with a couple of out gay men in college, and worked with an out lesbian couple at a social service agency in the college town. This was not some hotbed of progressive culture. It was Glassboro, smack dab in the middle of farm fields.

My friends did not have to travel as far as Philly to find a gay bar. There was one around Cherry Hill.

In 1983, I worked for a mid-sized company in Vorhees, 300 or so employees at that location. One of the key management guys was an openly gay man in his 40s who made no attempt to hide that he and his partner lived together. And there was an open lesbian in the next department over. It was no big deal.

You're right. Everyone who's ever come out late in life should be taken into a public square and beaten until they are dead. That'll teach 'em to be frail, weak and human.

I came out in 1984, when I was 17. In North Dakota. So I win.

One more thing from that decade in South Jersey. The church I grew up in had a gay man serve as an intern during the 1980s. He was discreetly open. That is, he told the pastor up front, and the pastor told the council, and everybody told everybody. He didn't lie about it if asked, but he didn't preach about his sexuality, either.

According to my mother, all the old ladies in her card club loved the guy. Those who objected to his internship were mostly middle-aged, but the pastor held his ground, and our intern served.

It was a Lutheran church, part of a wider church body that still struggles with the idea of partnered gay pastors. That's just for context. I don't want to get off topic and describe how it all came to pass, or my church's history of dealing with this issue.

The point is that it was possible to be out, honest, and open in New Jersey in the 1980s.

Dan's right, no matter where you happened to be in America, it was easy to come out in the 70's and 80's. By then the homophobes had signed the famous agreement to altogether stop savagely beating and killing gay men. Gay men were warmly welcomed where ever they went, be it highschool locker rooms, the board rooms of corporate America, political office, or VFW chapters across rural America.

With homophobia having been abolished over 37 years ago, there's just no excuse for McCreevey's cowardly decision to stay in the closet.

P.S. to the old men: When you're done patting yourselves on the backs for coming early, ask yourself why you came out.

Personally, I don't know a single gay man who came out because he felt an obligation to pave the way for generations to come, whatever the cost to his own welfare. Or because it was better to be honest than a coward. Guys came out because they wanted to get laid (isn't that why guys do everything they do?). For them, marrying some ugly hag and settling for the occassional BJ in a public restroom just wasn't going to cut it, especially when they could be having lots of "out" sex with lots of hot guys, often all at once.

@53, Sean, I think that you are interpreting "out" as a sexual act. I was having sex with other guys when I was a teenager. I was not "out" at the time.

I came "out" to my family in 1981 to let them know that I was gay. I was persuaded to do so mainly by articles I had read in "The Advocate" which, thank God, was available in a newsbox outside of the Denny's near my apartment. I didn't want my family to think that I was weird...just queer.

Thank you, "The Advocate' for being there in front of Denny's.

I only ate there once, but I wonder how screwed up I might have become if you hadn't had a gay newspaper out front in 1982.I probably would still be in the closet. Who knows what is going through McGreevey's mind.

dan, i just have to say that your blog has been outstanding lately. keep up the good work!

Straight people, what's your freakin' problem?!:

More than half of Americans are against gay marriage.

No nonincumbent out person has ever been elected by statewide popular vote (for example, no governors or U.S. Senators).

Tammy Baldwin was the first and only nonincumbent out person elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, in 2003.

Sean, you can't have it both ways. First you say that McGreevey is excused for being closeted until he was almost 50 because there was and is a lot of anti-gay bigotry around. Then you trash those of us who did come out in the early 1970s as only doing it to get laid.

McGreevey has to be taken on every time he repeats the historically inaccurate and self-serving line that he couldn't come out in his day.

Coming out is indeed a combination of wanting to participate in gay social, sexual and relational life and a desire to end the tyranny of the closet in gay political life. It is about wanting the next generation to have an easier time in their coming out and ending all the myths about homosexuality.

There's no law against living your life in the closet as McGreevey did. But now that he has decided to be open, he can't rewrite history and put forth his own experience as somehow typical.

Dan, I thoroughly disagree with you on this one. Being gay and facing adversity is much more difficult than for other groups. Why? Because gay people usually don't have a gay mom or dad or anyone close to them that are gay. So it takes a lot of courage to say that you are different from the rest of your family. For those that were willing to take the risk, you should be applauded.

Dan,

When you buy into all the hysteria over restroom sex, you are buying into the homophobia and sexphobia that pushes so many queers into the closet. Instead of coddling the politics of sexual envy, you should be speaking out against it.

Point of clarification on the murder of Harvey Milk. Dan White didn't kill Harvey Milk because Milk was gay and White could stand it anymore. The pressing issue that led to the Moscone-Milk assassinations was Mayor Moscone's decision (made after consulting Milk) to not re-appoint White to the Board of Supervisors.

I'm not trying to diminish Harvey Milk's status in the gay community nor would suggest that his murder wasn't a tragedy. Dan White was a fucked-up, right-wing nut-job. The world is better for his (White's) suicide. What I am saying is that it's disingenuous to use the Moscone-Milk tragedy to justify McGreevy's decision to stay in the closet until he was caught using the public dole to care and feed his man-mistress.

Where were comments like these when everyone was oohing and ahhing over that movie about the two closet cases on the sheep ranch a couple of years ago?

I could have accepted it a little better if Proulx had set her story back a couple of decades, but instead she had them meeting in the 60s and carrying on through the 70s and 80s. Everyone yammered on about how hard it was to come out way back then, especially if you lived in some godforsaken place populated solely by ranchers.

But the Gyllenhall character wasn't living in a one-cow town; he was living a middle-class life in Texas with a television - which would have brought him "A Certain Summer" and news reports of Leonard Matlovich - and he probably subscribed to some mainstream mag like Life or Time, which did several post-Stonewall stories on Gay Liberation (including photos of gay couples getting married - yes, way back in 1970 and '71!). He knew there were other possibilities, but instead he and his fucked-up, mumble-mouthed lover chose to marry and impregnate women they didn't love and then cheat on them for years.

Where was the outrage over the straight media's adoration of the "sensitive" portrayal of these life-destroying closet cases?

I am SO with Dan on this! I am 43 years old. Came out at 16 in 1980. Granted I was born and raised in San Francisco so it was definitely easier. But I can't stand it when someone my age tells me they HAD to get married. And younger than me? Oh HELL no. You're a scared lame ass f*ckwad and I'd prefer you stay in the closet so I don't have to deal with you.

All the gay folks I grew up with came out as soon as they graduated high school, which was in 1971. Which as a side note, explains why the cute lesbian I went on a blind date with, senior year, had not wanted to go out with me again. These kids all went to Catholic school, too, just like McGreevey.

Plus, although you don't have to come out, you don't have to marry a woman, either. I know a gay couple in their 80s, who have been together for almost 60 years. Their families got used to their relationship back in the 50s, when homosex was still a crime.

Born in 1953 in the midwest, I managed to start to "come out" in 1972 and was 100% "out" by 1977. McGreevey is still lying to himself about himself, and wants us to believe him. I don't.