Today's Musical Selection: "Vacation" by the Go-Gos
Hello, all! As promised, I've returned from my out-of-town engagement. And I was going to post the latst Uncle Millie and Aunt Beatrice column as promised, but then Governor McGreevey of New Jersey had his press conference, and I made a decision on the fly to wait on our romantic-advice column until next week.
For those who somehow managed to miss it, yesterday Governor McGreevey unexpectedly resigned from office and announced that he was gay and had had an affair with a man while in office. McGreevey had been in trouble for a while, with accusations of fundraising improprieties swirling around him in recent months, so the resignation in and of itself was not an enormous surprise. However, the revelation of his homosexuality, and the affair, was a great surprise. McGreevey's sexuality had reportedly been the subject of some scuttlebutt around the political grapevine, but no observers expected anything like this.
Here's the problem for me. In general, I'm always happy to see someone come out of the closet, because I think it's a good thing when you can be open and honest about your sexuality, or in fact your life in general. The fewer things you have to hide, the better. The problem is that McGreevey's revelation is tangled up in all the other issues swirling around him, and in some ways raises more questions than it answers.
The cynic's view of McGreevey's resignation is well-expressed by Bill McCabe over at Leaning Toward the Dark Side. Bill argues that McGreevey did not admit his homosexuality because he truly decided it was time to come clean, or because he didn't want to hurt his family, but because he got caught. The man with whom McGreevey had an affair, who McGreevey put on the state payroll as his top anti-terrorism aide, is preparing a sexual-harassment lawsuit. Odds are that McGreevey was about to be outed anyway, so, Bill concludes, by making a big public splash McGreevey hoped to gain points for being forthcoming and not encourage a hard look at the facts of the case, or the facts of the other corruption scandals in which he was implicated. McGreevey chose to go this route because it was the most graceful exit available to him, and continuing in office would only have meant that these facts came out in a harsher, more negative light. (Also, Bill notes, had McGreevey's resignation been effective immediately, a special election would have been held to fill the seat. But by waiting until November 15th, the Democratic lieutenant governor will serve out the remainder of the term.)
I don't share Bill's level of cynicism. But it's also hard to argue, given the situation McGreevey faced, that his decision to out himself was merely for his family and his own peace of mind.
But that part is only midly interesting to me. Unlike Bill, I don't have any interest in ripping McGreevey personally or trying to drive him from office immediately, the better for the Republicans to have a shot at capturing the seat in the special election. What concerns me more is the precedent it sets for other politicians who may be thinking of coming out of the closet.
Let's suppose our old hypothetical politician friend, Senator Blutarsky, is weighing whether or not to come out of the closet. (I'm sure Senator Blutarsky does not enjoy this hypothetical, but he should have thought of that before he said all those nasty things to me at the Blogiversary Bash.) And we'll further assume that Senator Blutarsky is from a reasonably liberal state, one where he would not automatically assume that admitting homosexuality is a political death wish. So he's weighing if now might be the right time. Suppose he looks at McGreevey's case. Will it encourage or discourage him from admitting the truth about himself?
On one level, he might find it encouraging that in the aftermath of the revelation, very few people are saying, "My God! How could New Jersey have had a gay governor? Just horrifying!" On the other hand, when McGreevey announced his resignation, he suggested that his affair made him unfit for office, since it made him vulnerable to "false allegations and threats of disclosure." This is all well and good, and he's probably right that he could have been subject to blackmail had he continued to keep his secret. But by resigning, he makes it seem as though those threats would have been valid. Had he said that he was outing himself to avoid blackmail and then stayed on, he would have shown that blackmail threats based on sexual preference are only powerful because the closeted politician is desperate to keep it quiet. But by resigning, he implies that the threats are powerful because they are personally damaging. He implies that admitting homosexuality, and homosexual affairs, is not something that a politician can survive. And that's likely to have a chilling effect on poor Senator Blutarsky. He'll conclude that he had damn well better keep it quiet, lest he suffer McGreevey's fate. After all, if a non-conservative state like New Jersey isn't a safe place to be a governor and be out, where is?
Melissa Etheridge wrote a song on this theme:
Mothers tell your children
Be quick, you must be strong
Life is full of wonder
Love is never wrong
Remember how they taught you
How much of it was fear
Refuse to hand it down
The legacy stops here
I fear that McGreevey's disclosure may actually preserve the "silent legacy" rather than helping to demolish it. Gay groups are reportedly celebrating his outing, but I wonder if they realize the degree to which it may encourage other politicians not to follow in his footsteps.
The surest way to gauge this is to imagine whether the same thing would have happened if McGreevey's affair had been with a woman. What if every other particular of the story had been the same, except that McGreevey had taken a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend? And I think we can all answer that: Plenty of politicians have been caught with girlfriends, and a number have kept their girlfriends on the payroll, and most of them survived. The most recent example is Maryland governor Parris Glendening, who survived putting his girlfriend on the state payroll at a six-figure salary, and survived it despite a vigorous fanning of the political flames by his old nemesis William Donald Schaefer. And of course we all know about Bill Clinton's Oval Office adventures, which he survived. The odds that this story alone would have driven McGreevey from office had he not been involved with a woman instead of a man are fairly slim. It was the homosexuality that pushed it over the edge. Still happy with McGreevey, gay activists?
So what to do? It's not as though it would be a good idea for those activists to attack McGreevey for coming out of the closet. But it would probably be a good idea to make it clear that McGreevey was primarily trying to help himself, inasmuch as he decided that "McGreevey resigned because he was gay" was better than "McGreevey resigned because Option B was being dragged away from office in handcuffs." And to the degree that he used homosexuality as a smoke screen, gay activists should not be afraid to criticize him for it. If they try to hold up McGreevey as a shining example, they'll wind up getting burned. I might be wrong, but I don't believe that he'll wind up being a great asset to the cause. I believe that there's a growing tolerance today for homosexuality in our public officials, but McGreevey is absolutely not proof of it. He was a man who needed an out, and coming out was it.
A moment of silence, please, for Julia Child, who died today at age 91. What can I say about Julia that hasn't already been said? The thing I loved most about her show is that she was very serious about cooking, but very unserious about herself. She had that high-flying joie de vivre and down-to-earth personality that made her a breed apart from the old paradigm of icy, pompous, snooty chefs in those tall white hats treating cooking as something for the initiated only. Julia Child is the godmother of modern American cooking, and the Food Network and its chefs. All us amateur home chefs owe you a debt of gratitude, Julia. We'll miss you very much.
And that's all for today. See you Monday!
Posted by Fred at August 13, 2004 05:35 PM