McGreevey Scandal: Homosexuality as the Last Refuge of Scoundrels

August 15, 2004

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by Nicholas Stix

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New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey has managed to snatch martyrdom from the jaws of damnation. He would have the public believe that he didn’t resign his governorship on August 12 because of the scandals that sprouted from his Administration like crabgrass, but because he was the victim of a homophobic society.

In McGreevey’s resignation speech, he said that ''My truth is that I am a gay American. Shamefully, I engaged in adult consensual affairs with another man, which violates my bonds of matrimony. It was wrong, it was foolish, it was inexcusable.''

Left out were the following details, sketched by Associated Press reporter John P. McAlpin, in the first report I saw on McGreevey’s sudden resignation:

“But he has been dogged by several scandals involving fund-raising.

“Among those caught up in recent scandals were his first chief of staff and former counsel; a top Democratic fund-raiser and former high school classmate; and real estate developer Charles Kushner, McGreevey's biggest campaign contributor, who was charged with trying to thwart a federal campaign-finance investigation by luring a grand jury witness - his own brother-in-law - into a compromising position with a prostitute and sending video and photos to the man's wife.”

In McAlpin’s news flash, he didn’t have time or space to get into the matter of McGreevey having hired his boyfriend, Israeli “poet” Golan Cipel, first to the most sensitive post imaginable, state homeland security adviser (at $110,000 per year), and then when Cipel could not get a security clearance, owing to his being a foreign national, hired him at the same salary as “special counsel.” (Cipel had no qualifications for either job.) Heck, in departing, McGreevey didn’t even mention the male lover who was supposedly the reason for his departure, or his own shameful behavior in embezzling taxpayer funds to pay him.

The truth is, the McGreevey administration had long been on life support. But McGreevey should have been forced from office over Cipel, even if he had not been embroiled in a single other scandal. It’s one thing to have a midlife crisis, or to believe in the privileges of rank, or to be a run-of-the-mill philanderer; it’s another thing to put one’s mistress (mastress?) on the government payroll, and a whole nother ballgame to breach government security, just to please and pay off one’s lover. Consider the case of Wayne Hays.

Back in 1976, 64-year-old, Ohio Democrat Congressman Wayne Hays, the chairman of the powerful House Administration Committee, was known as "the meanest man in Congress." But then his squeeze publicly sucker-punched him. Blonde, voluptuous, 26-year-old Elizabeth Ray, who was on Hays’ payroll as a clerk, in spite of not being able to type, file, or even answer the telephone, came out to the Washington Post, and let the world know what kind of dictation she had really been taking from Hays. Ray then lent her name to a salacious (dictated? ghostwritten?) roman a clef that appeared three months after the scandal broke, The Washington Fringe Benefit. Hays was forced to step down from his chairmanship, and resign from the House. It never occurred to Hays, in those pre-Oprah times, to announce that he was a victim of certain impulses, that he was a sexually postmodern American, or to debate the meaning of the verb “to be.” Those were the good, old days.

Just one of the many absurdities of the McGreevey Affair is that McGreevey isn’t a homosexual. How do I know that? Gay activists told me so. According to them, a homosexual man doesn’t get aroused by women; unless he’s been playing with a turkey baster, McGreevey clearly does. Oops! I just remembered -- if you’re bisexual, you’re gay. In fact, everyone is gay. How do I know that? Homosexual activists told me so. “Queer” theorist/activists are “dialectical” sorts. That means that for them, logic is a “heads we win, tails you lose” affair. While those who disagree with them must be logically consistent, but are still damned to always be wrong, no matter what they say, homosexual activists are right when they say “P and … not-p.” And the job of those of us who are not in the vanguard, is to salute, say “Aye, aye,” and bend over, whenever activists issue their newest, contradictory order.

Jim McGreevey likes girls. He married two, and had a daughter by each. He also likes boys, or at least some boys, or one particular boy. If that makes him a “gay American,” then no word means anything, anymore.

The cover story that McGreevey, who still seeks to keep his corruption in the closet, is pushing, is that Cipel sought to blackmail him for $5 million. But announcing the affair eliminated any blackmailer’s advantage.

Far from someone suffering for being a homosexual, today, being or merely claiming to be gay, is a boon. In Hollywood, Ellen Degeneres managed to save a failing, unfunny comedy series from cancellation, by coming out of the closet and insisting that she was a victim of anti-homosexual persecution. We should all be so persecuted. Heck, her erstwhile lover, Anne Heche, was just one of thousands of somewhat talented, slender, peroxide blondes trying to distinguish herself in Hollywood, prior to becoming Degeneres’ very public lover. That got her a co-starring gig with Harrison Ford, who was then still king of the box office. Once Heche had established herself in Hollywood, she remembered that she preferred boys, dropped plans to marry Degeneres, dropped Degeneres altogether, and promptly married a man and bore his child.

Some may argue that politics is less forgiving. Let’s look at Jim McGreevey’s champion, Barney Frank. Frank, an openly leftwing congressman, has represented Massachusetts’ Fourth Congressional District since 1980. In 1989, Stephen Gobie, a prostitute and felon whose services Frank had once purchased and whom the congressman then hired from 1985-87 (at his own expense) as his “personal aide,” “housekeeper,” and “driver,” told the Washington Times that he had operated a gay prostitution ring out of Frank’s tony apartment, with Frank’s knowledge (Frank denied having known about the ring). Frank had also fixed dozens of parking tickets for Gobie, and written to law enforcement officials on Gobie’s behalf, on congressional stationery.

Gobie had also been using a guidance counselor’s office telephone at Chevy Chase Elementary School evenings to schedule his “tricks.” As a result, Chevy Chase’s principal was in 1989 forced to resign, while Frank suffered only the slap on the wrist of a July, 1990 congressional reprimand. The principal, Gabriel Massaro, had the misfortune of being married to a woman.

Had a heterosexual congressman’s mistress been prosecuted for running a prostitution ring out of his home, unbeknownst to the pol, I do not for one minute believe that the representative would have been permitted to remain in office. But then, I can only speculate, since there has never been such a case involving a heterosexual, national politician.

The most journalistically embarrassing case I’ve so far seen of playing the gay hero-victim card (it’s all dialectical), was in of all places, that supposed bastion of “right-wing” intolerance, the New York Post:

“Gov. Jim McGreevey's ‘coming out’ announcement was a watershed moment, leaders of gay and lesbian groups — and one openly gay congressman — said yesterday.

"‘Ultimately, an announcement like that is helpful to all of us,’ said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), one of a very small group of openly gay members of Congress.

"‘He was elected governor, so voters obviously connected to him. This will refute the notion that there's “something wrong” with gay people.’…

“But the announcement was not easy to make.

“‘The lesson is that the closet is the most horrible place,’ said Alan Van Capelle, executive director of Empire State Pride Agenda.

"‘It destroys families. It ruins careers. To reach that conclusion at 47 years old is very sad for him.’

“Van Capelle and others said that McGreevey's announcement will encourage other closeted gays to come out.

"‘Gay people are still invisible in many segments of our society, especially politics,’ said Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal, a gay civil rights organization. ‘So just to hear the words “I am a gay American” from a politician is very powerful.

"‘But is this a good day or bad day for gay Americans?’ he asked.

"‘How can you say it's a good day when you watch a man quit his job after struggling for years to come to terms with who he is? Homophobia twists people into living a lie.’”

The above “news” story, which sounds like something from the New York Times or a Lambda Legal press release, was written by the ubiquitous Gersh Kuntzman, who is the Post’s Brooklyn bureau chief, a Newsweek.com columnist, and who until about an hour ago, was one of my favorite New York writers. Kuntzman, who can be one of the wittiest writers in town, has a dark, pc side. For at least the past six months, he has been shamelessly, mindlessly shilling for same-sex marriage. Although Kuntzman has on one occasion written with humor (and sophistry) attacking critics of same-sex marriage, he has more typically consigned anyone who criticizes gay intolerance to the eternal damnation of “Hate Nation.” He is assured of winning awards from gay activist organizations for his, ahem, journalism. In fact, the New York Times editorial board, of all places, has expressed more journalistic detachment and skepticism than Kuntzman, regarding the circumstances surrounding McGreevey’s resignation.

But Kuntzman’s journalistic crime isn’t merely in quoting only gay activists pushing the party line, but in misrepresenting the story so radically, that he would have to be either utterly ignorant about McGreevey and New Jersey politics (and thus incompetent to report on the matter) or lacking an honest bone in his body, when it comes to gay stories.

For the truth is, McGreevey was not carrying a deep, dark secret. I know next to nothing about the New Jersey political scene, and yet I had already known about McGreevey’s affair with Golan Cipel for almost two years. On November 3, 2002, “FReeper” (habitué of the conservative Web site, Free Republic) “deepthroatnnj ” posted “NJ Gov. McGreevey’s scandal coming out.”

“ NJ has within its borders a scandal which makes the Clinton/Lewinsky matter a walk in the park. The press has danced around the real issue. It will be revealed that what has occured [sic] in the Garden State is a scandal of the greatest importance. It will lead to the resignation of its current Governor James McGreevey due to his abuse of office and the NJ tax payers to prop up Golan Cipel. The nature of their real relationship is on the verge of breaking into the spotlight. This will be earth shattering.”

If I knew about it, and everyone visiting Free Republic knew about it, the press corps covering New Jersey politics had to know all about it, as well. (While the post was to me a mere rumor, the aforementioned media knew better.) And so, the same press that prints phony stories “outing” as homosexual athletes who aren’t (see Koufax, Sandy, and Piazza, Mike), suppresses real stories in which homosexuality and political corruption are inextricably intertwined.

Gersh Kuntzman and his journalistic allies aside, consider the mentality behind Barney Frank’s celebration of McGreevey: Outing a man who ran for office as a scrupulous politician and a faithful husband as a crook and a closet bisexual, who betrayed his constituents for sexual gain, “will refute the notion that there's ‘something wrong’ with gay people.”

Now, some folks may say that Frank is simply bonkers or “not normal” for a homosexual politician. Bonkers he may be, but he is simply applying the role model argument that has been used by blacks, feminists, and white lefties for over thirty-five years. (And more recently, by Hispanics.) White folks -- and some blacks -- look at a Marion Barry (when he was mayor of D.C.) or a Leonard Jeffries and see the obvious: A racist, corrupt, incompetent. But millions of blacks see in each a ‘strong black man.’ ‘He’s not just any old crook; he’s our crook!’

The “role model” mentality was born of 1960s’ black nationalist apartheid, whose supporters sought to run whites out of any positions of authority dealing with blacks, and replace them with blacks, regardless of the latter’s fitness for the job in question. It was imitated by the other groups I cited. The mentality rose to prominence, however, through the evasions and euphemisms of affirmative action’s white patrons, who argued on behalf of hiring black incompetents, that seeing blacks in positions of authority would inspire young blacks and enlighten young whites. No one ever explained how making manifestly incompetent blacks representatives of the race would do anything but communicate to young blacks that ability and hard work have nothing to do with success, or tell young whites that blacks are innately inferior.

And now, according to the Hon. Barney Frank, young homosexuals and those who might find it advantageous to claim to be homosexuals, are learning that they too may aspire to one day become corrupt governors.