Face-to-face with the ex-Governor Jim McGreevy and his "Confessions"

" If you were gay": MP3 tone from the Broadway hit "Avenue Q'' on your cellphone.



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"Do you mind if I call you James rather than Governor? I feel much better" I said.

"Sure. Actually call me Jim" he replied.

This way we started our short conversation in the auditorium of a major school in New York during a major event organized by the New York Times to introduce govern McGreevy's last book "The Confession".
This book talks about New Jersey's Governor McGreevy's coming out as a "gay American" in August 2004 in a press conference together with his "now ex-wife". During the press conference he resigned as Governor admitting he put an Israeli citizen, Golan Cipel whom he had a sexual relationship with, in his payroll.

Golan Cipel accused Jim McGreevey of sexual harassment blackmailing him as well.



My first reaction at that time was not so positive. I tried to put myself in Jim's wife shoes forced to attend a press conference very humiliating for her, but differently from many people I never thought Jim was a lier and had to resign.

Two years later I heard about Jim McGreevy's book "The Confession" and that he was going to be a guest at "Larry King live": I had to see this.

When Larry King asked him about his wife and why she had to be at the press conference, Jim simply replied that it was her decision because she is a "lady" and she had to be next to her husband.

That was the moment I started changing my opinion about Jim McGreevy and I tried to understand what a terrible life he had to pass through (47 years in the closet) and even when he decided to put Cipel on a payroll I now believe he did it because he was in love with him, totally lonely and that was the way to keep the only "real" part of his fake life with him in a moment in which nobody, except Cipel, knew anything about him being gay and he was extremely vulnerable.

Many straight and gay people said the worse things about him but he had also many sustainers and I'm now one of them. So, when I asked him I didn't want to call him "Governor", I did it because I needed to be closer to the man than to the writer, the politician, the cheater.

"So Jim, I have this question for you, are you ready?"

"Yes, I am" he said.

"When Larry King interviewed you, I was extremely touched when you said that gay people have no heritage when they are kids. It's so true.
Any straight kid is taught who he is, where he comes from and where he's going to and why he is right on everything . So he is spoiled to be right and it's a given. It's the 'imprinting' and no one can reply because that's it.
For gay kids it's different because the 'imprinting' of being who you will never be just doesn't work. We live in a society in which if you are gay they force you to lie when you are a kid, they want you to lie and they are very happy if you lie when you grow up, they want to hide you if you come out and, if you really are an open gay, they fight against you.
Whichever lie you said to protect yourself against all this pressure, you are forgiven straight away.
Said that, I strongly believe the only person you have to alopogize to about your extra-marriage affair is your wife and even in that case, you lied to survive, while the 99.9% of the cheaters and the divorced people they lied knowning they had a choice not to do that and that the society protect them no matter what. Actually some times straight ex-marriage affair are seen like: this is a real man!

So, my quetion is? Why the hell did you resign? You had the right to be there. You are smart, compassionate, honest, prepared and doing a good job."

"I think I did the best thing in my life" he said. "History books will all say that I resigned in disgrace.That misses the point entirely. Resigning was the single most important thing I have ever done. I'd rejected a political solution to my troubles and took the more painful route: penance and atonement, the way to grace."

"Jim, honesty, I still believe you are too apologetic and you still feel guilty, which doesn't surprise me because it's only 2 years you are out of the closet surrounded by your Irish catholic guilty shadows which ... don't help. You really had the opportunity to be a gay Governor until the end, you missed this opportunity and you know it will not so easy to have gay Governors in any State of the United States for a very long time. Bill Clinton didn't resign for his Lewinsky affair (right move) so why you?

Women and African Americans are still in line to be presidents .... so you lost a great opportunity".