IGF CultureWatch

When will the gay community's indulgence of Jim McGreevey end?

The disgraced former governor of New Jersey, in case anyone needs a reminder, was forced to announce his resignation in the summer of 2004 for, among other alleged offenses, putting his lover on the state payroll in a six-figure job for which he had few qualifications.

But that's not the story McGreevey would have you believe. Not if you listened to his resignation speech, read any of his interviews or his memoir, "The Confession," released to little acclaim last year. No, according to McGreevey, the reason he quit was because his "truth" is that he is "a gay American."

McGreevey, who readily admits that he is attention-starved and has been since he was a little boy, is now making headlines for his decision to become an Episcopalian priest. Bully for him.

There are millions of gay people in this country. Most of us are not as politically powerful and connected as Jim McGreevey once was. We work hard, pay our taxes, put up with discrimination, and, I'd like to think, if we ever get caught doing something wrong, do not rashly blame our fate on an inability to deal with sexual orientation. But Jim McGreevey was too much of a coward to admit that what he did was just plain wrong and that he was entirely to blame for his misfortune.

The world is unfair to gay people and the higher rates of suicide, depression and personally destructive behavior amongst gays, especially gay men, has a great deal to do with external homophobia. But let there be no mistake: McGreevey was forced to resign because he was a corrupt politician who shared more in common with the men in his administration now serving time in jail than he would care to believe.

Rather than own up to his abuse of office, McGreevey conflated his political corruption with his own struggles as a gay man. In so doing, he lent credence to the ignorant meme peddled by conservatives that gays are emotionally unstable and shifty people who cannot be trusted as individuals, never mind as public servants.

Conservatives once said gays should not be schoolteachers because they would molest students; they now say that soldiers should not be allowed to serve openly because they'll make sexual advances toward their fellow service members. McGreevey did the bigots' work for them by claiming it was his homosexuality that caused his resignation.

In his memoir, McGreevey says that even though it was wrong to carry on an affair with an employee, his lover Golan Cipel was more than qualified for the six-figure "consigliere" role that he played. In his desperate attempt to show that his sexual repression somehow caused his political corruption, McGreevey effortlessly unburdens himself of blame.

The logic of McGreevey's explanation dumps responsibility on the cruel, heterosexual world that repressed him, transformed him into a compulsive liar, fed his need for widespread public approval and - you guessed it - forced him to hire an unqualified foreign national with no FBI security clearance onto his personal staff and then sleep with him while his wife delivered their premature baby in an emergency C-section. Give me a break.

McGreevey's dissembling about "my truth" aids him in his mission to show that it was his homosexuality, or his psychologically diagnosed "severe adjustment disorder," that led him to behave inappropriately. Many straight politicians get in trouble for doing things similar to what McGreevey did, yet they do not make the absurd contention that their sexuality is an excuse for bad behavior. Never, in McGreevey's analysis, is anything plainly his fault and his fault alone.

Why can't McGreevey just recede into the past? As recent events indicate, McGreevey's desire for fame borders on the shameless. In addition to Oprah's couch, profiles in the Advocate and GQ and a highly publicized book tour, McGreevey auditioned for a role opposite Joan Rivers on a now-scuttled television show in which all three of the catty comedian's co-hosts would be gay men.

McGreevey's latest exploit is a desperate cry for attention, a shallow attempt to relive his 15 minutes of fame.

I think it's long past time we told him to just go away.

A favorite professor of mine once spoke of the small comforts a teacher must snatch amid the stream of indifferent students, taking his satisfaction from the occasional student "stealing a spoon." Likewise, our efforts toward gay equality are wasted unless they take root in non-gay allies. Today I celebrate an ally from one of the most homophobic industries in America, the National Basketball Association. If hope lives there, it is a sturdy creature. The man who stole the spoon? Former power forward Charles Barkley, short at just under 6 feet 5 inches.

The Round Mound of Rebound is now a successful television commentator for the sport in which he is a Hall of Famer, a onetime Most Valuable Player, and an Olympic gold medalist. The 44-year-old's most recent achievement, though, was beating 67-year-old referee Dick Bavetta in a footrace on All-Star Saturday amid speculation that his training consisted of working the Vegas buffet lines. His weight has been the subject of jokes ever since he was discovered by an Auburn University scout who described "a fat guy ... who can play like the wind."

Barkley has authored a couple of books with sportswriter Michael Wilbon, talks seriously about running for governor of Alabama, and is outspoken on social and political issues. He has a certain rough-hewn eloquence, as when he phoned a politician whom he was considering supporting and said, "You aren't going to be talking no bullshit against gay people."

Sir Charles supports the civil marriage rights of same-sex couples, and is tired of politicians stoking fears of gay people to divide the public and win votes. When former player John Amaechi came out as gay, Barkley said, "I played with gay guys. I got gay friends. Only God can judge other people. I don't care if a person is gay or not. Any jock who thinks he's never played with a gay guy is sadly mistaken. Any team you've been on at some point in your life you have played with a gay guy." Tell it, brother.

In an interview last year with sportscaster Chris Meyers, he said about same-sex couples, "I think if they want to get married, God bless them. Gay marriage is probably one percent of the population, so it's not like it's going to be an epidemic." That sounds a bit patronizing, but it is significant when a star of Barkley's stature, far more famous than Amaechi, is so cool about a subject that evinces hostility from so many of his peers.

Barkley's confrontational style got him into trouble during his NBA career, as when, after being taunted with racial epithets, he spat at a heckler, accidentally hitting a little girl; or when he broke a man's nose during a post-game fight; or when he threw a man through a plate-glass window for hitting him with a glass of ice. Regretting the spitting incident (after which he became friends with the girl and her family), he said it "taught me that I was getting way too intense during the game. It let me know I wanted to win way too bad. I had to calm down ... Instead of playing the game the right way and respecting the game, I only thought about winning."

Barkley famously said in an old Nike spot: "I am not a role model. I'm not paid to be a role model. I am paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court. Parents should be role models. Just because I dunk a basketball doesn't mean I should raise your kids." That conservative message was accompanied by compelling footage of Barkley's athletic prowess. There was something paradoxical about it: if he wasn't a role model, why was his adorable masculine self giving us advice?

Somehow, his charm always comes through. In a foreword for a book by Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly in 2000, Barkley wrote, "Of all the people in sports I'd like to throw through a plate glass window, Reilly's not one of them. It's a shame though, skinny white boy looks real aerodynamic."

Asked by The New Republic about people who criticize Barack Obama "for not being black enough," Barkley sounded like a more profane Bill Cosby: "Well, that's because black people are fucked up. One of the reasons that black people are not going to be successful is because of other black people. We tell black kids that if they make good grades, they are acting white. If they speak well, we tell them that they are acting white. We have a lot of demons in our own closet - in our own family - that we have to address."

In a TravelGolf.com interview last year, he said, "I was a Republican until they lost their minds." He said, "What do the Republicans run on? Against gay marriage and for a war that makes no sense. A war that was based on faulty intelligence. That's all they ever talk about. That and immigration. Another discriminatory argument for political gain." Not that he was thrilled with Democrats, who he said "have wasted the last two years going after this guy and two years from another election, we don't have a frontrunner or a plan." As he told the Associated Press earlier this year, "The Republicans are full of it. The Democrats are a little less full of it."

There you have some good, plain American wisdom. Sir Charles, here's a big wet smooch.

It is admirable that Gov. Spitzer has once again declared his support for gay marriage, stating in a legislative memo released last week that legalizing gay unions would "only strengthen New York's families."

He's right on the merits. But here's how much political capital Spitzer should spend fighting for same-sex marriage: Zero.

I say this not as a disinterested observer, but as a gay man who would like to get married someday.

The governor has plenty of other vital issues on his plate - from cleaning up Albany to reviving the upstate economy. And even if he didn't, going to the barricades for gay marriage will probably hurt, not help, gay couples in the long run.

Sometimes politics gets in the way of idealism. And no matter how just the cause, all the facts in this case are arrayed against those who claim that now is the right time to ram a gay-marriage bill through the state Legislature.

First, there is just no way a gay marriage bill would pass. Not only do a substantial number of Assembly Democrats oppose the idea, but a series of statewide polls have found that a majority of New Yorkers do as well, with opposition in some Assembly districts running as high as 90 percent. Opposition increases in the Republican-controlled state Senate, which has already made clear its intention to kill any such bill.

Contrary to gay activists' suggestions, bigotry isn't what motivates all gay marriage opponents. Many are simply decent people who are just a little uneasy about redefining a central social institution. I think they're wrong - but we cannot win the argument by strong-arming them.

Just look at what happened in Massachusetts. In 2004, full same-sex marriage rights became legal in the Commonwealth via judicial fiat. That resulted in a huge national backlash. In the ensuing three years, most states have passed constitutional amendments banning not only gay marriage but in some instances other legal arrangements protecting gay couples. In this sense, gays in these more conservative states are paying the price for the full marriage rights that gays in Massachusetts now enjoy.

If Spitzer and his allies in the Assembly push forward with a gay marriage bill, will New York see a campaign for a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage? Most gays might scoff at the notion of such an amendment ever passing in this supposedly liberal bastion - but with polls indicating that a majority of New Yorkers oppose gay marriage, why take the risk when the chances of winning are zip and the chances of losing, and losing hard, are better than negligible?

For now, Spitzer's time and energy would be far better spent fighting a battle that can be won: getting meaningful civil unions for New York's gay couples. This would extend all the same critical rights to gays without risking the potential damage of an overreaching marriage bill. Let us not allow the perfect union to be the enemy of a good match.

That the governor has been so consistent and outspoken in his support for gay marriage is no small thing. In so doing, he is starting to make it politically acceptable for mainstream Democrats with national political aspirations to voice their support for marriage equality.

He is ahead of his time. But that's exactly the point.

Marriage is a conservative social institution. The best argument for gay marriage is rooted in a conservative idea that marriage itself is good because it is stabilizing.

There are, however, academics and political activists who support gay marriage for radical reasons: they hope it will destabilize many of the traditional sexual, relational, and familial values associated with marriage. For example, the late Professor Ellen Willis of NYU argued that gay marriage might "introduce an implicit revolt against the institution [of marriage] into its very heart, further promoting the democratization and secularization of personal and sexual life."

Opponents of gay marriage love to quote these pro-SSM radicals. In his new book, The Future of Marriage, David Blankenhorn writes that "people who have devoted much of their professional lives to attacking marriage as an institution almost always favor gay marriage." They support gay marriage, he observes, "precisely in the hope of dethroning once and for all the traditional 'conjugal institution.'"

Pro-SSM radicals are useful to opponents of gay marriage because what they say frightens people. Identifying some tangible harm from gay marriage has been the elusive Holy Grail of the anti-gay marriage movement. Now they can say, in effect, "See, even supporters of gay marriage admit they're destroying marriage with this reform. We've exposed their real agenda."

However, there are multiple problems with using pro-SSM radicals to show gay marriage will harm marriage.

First, pro-SSM radicals are surely a small minority of those supporting gay marriage, though they are over-represented in the op-eds of gay newspapers and in universities. I doubt most gay-marriage supporters have any desire to fight for access to a "dethroned" institution.

In fact, supporting gay marriage does not require one to be anti-marriage. One could both support gay marriage and believe that (1) marriage is not an outdated institution, (2) it is generally better for a committed couple to get married than to stay unmarried, (3) adultery should be discouraged, (4) it is better on average for children to be raised by two parents than by one, and within marriage than without, (5) divorce should be harder to obtain, and so on.

Second, a policy view is not necessarily bad because some of the people who support it also support bad things and see all these bad things as part of a grand project to do bad. Some opponents of gay marriage also oppose the use of contraceptives (even by married couples), would end all sex education in the schools, and would re-subordinate wives to their husbands. But it would be unfair to tar opponents of gay marriage with all of these causes, or to dismiss their arguments because opposing gay marriage might tend to advance them.

Third, regardless of what pro-SSM radicals hope gay marriage will do to undermine marriage, they may be mistaken. Gay marriage may end up disappointing them.

Conservative opponents of gay marriage ignore the large and complex debate on the left about whether gay marriage is really worthwhile and what effects it will likely have. While some marriage radicals support gay marriage because they think it will undermine marriage, others oppose it (or are uncomfortable with it) because they expect it will strengthen marriage and traditionalize gay life.

Paula Ettelbrick, in a very influential and widely quoted essay two decades ago, argued that marriage is "antithetical to my liberation as a lesbian," would lead to "increased sexual oppression" of unmarried gays, and would "mainstream" gay life and culture. "If the laws change tomorrow and lesbians and gay men were allowed to marry," she wondered, "where would we find the incentive to continue the progressive movement we have started that is pushing for societal and legal recognition of all kinds of family relationships?"

Since then, many other activists and intellectuals have written a stream of books, articles, and essays expressing similar assimilation anxiety and other concerns about gay marriage. Rutgers Professor Michael Warner has argued that gay marriage would "reinforce the material privileges and cultural normativity of marriage" and thus be "regressive."

Here's gay writer Michael Bronski: "The simple fact remains that the fight for marriage equality is at its essence not a progressive fight, but rather a deeply conservative one that seeks to maintain the social norm of the two-partnered relationship - with or without children - as more valuable than any other relational configuration."

These anti-SSM radicals, as we might loosely call them (some don't actually oppose gay marriage), are worried that gay marriage will enhance the primacy of marriage, cut off support for alternatives like domestic partnerships and civil unions, de-radicalize gay culture, gut the movement for sexual liberation, and reinforce recent conservative trends in family law.

If those things happened, conservatives would cheer. But these anti-SSM radicals aren't useful to anti-SSM conservatives, so what they say is ignored.

The point is not to argue that any of these radical writers are correct that gay marriage will have the effects on marriage they predict. Activists on both sides of the issue tend to exaggerate the likely effect of adding at most three percent to existing marriages in the country. Gay marriage may have a big (and conservatizing) effect on gay families, but it is unlikely to change marriage itself. Heterosexuals simply don't model their relationships on what homosexuals do.

The point is that both support for and opposition to gay marriage spring from a variety of complex ideas, experiences, emotions, and motives. The debate will not be resolved by dueling quotes from marriage radicals.