Friday, Sep 5, 2008
What the partnership of Gov. and Mrs. McGreevey says about the absurdity of banning gay marriage.
Aug 17, 2004 | New Jersey Gov. James "I'm a Gay American" McGreevey has a pretty mouth. Has any pol ever looked better wrapping his lips around his own resignation? That was my first thought while watching the big gay press conference last week that served as the 47-year-old governor's coming out and resignation -- followed closely by, "Wait, what the hell is up with his wife?" If I called a press conference to announce that I was a straight American, that I had conducted an affair with a woman that was going to destroy my career (much of which is based on my cocksucking cred), the only way my boyfriend would stand at my side beaming would be if he was holding my recently amputated testicles behind his clenched teeth.
The reaction of the wronged wife is almost always the most interesting aspect of a juicy political sex scandal; the public seems to look to her before deciding how it should react. Remember when William Jefferson Clinton was impeached for ... well, take your pick: for having an adulterous affair, for lying under oath about having an adulterous affair, for having the nerve to win two elections. When Hillary made it clear she was going to stick with Bill, the American public did the same. Of course, it helped that rumors about Clinton's zipper problems had trailed him throughout his political career -- Americans knew he was a horndog when we elected him. Finding out he got it on with an intern didn't tell us anything we didn't already know or suspect.
When the Lewinsky scandal broke, there was a lot of speculation about What Hillary Knew and When She Knew It. Many wondered if Bill and Hillary's marriage wasn't a loveless, sexless sham, a marriage of political convenience, a marriage about power, not love. Many concluded that Bill and Hillary must have had an "understanding" about outside sexual contact. For some, Hillary's decision to stay with Bill confirmed their suspicions about the existence of an understanding: Hillary wasn't angry, the "understanding" theorists concluded, because Bill wasn't doing anything she hadn't given him the green light to do. (Except, of course, for getting caught.)
Watching Mrs. McGreevey beam at her pretty-mouthed gay American husband, I found myself wondering aloud to my pretty-mouthed gay American boyfriend (I have a thing for pretty mouths, what can I say?) whether like the Clintons before them, Mr. and Mrs. McGreevey might have had an understanding. Just as Hillary had to know Bill could be true to her only in his fashion, so it seems pretty clear that Mrs. McGreevey had to know her husband was a homo all along. The first Mrs. McGreevey apparently knew: When asked by the New York Times whether she was aware of her former husband's sexuality, the woman who divorced McGreevey pointedly refused to answer the question. In the Seattle Times, McGreevey's former mother-in-law flat-out said that she knew. And then there were all those rumors about McGreevey that have been circulating in New Jersey for years. To my mind, only having already known could explain Mrs. McGreevey's composure, her compassionate, affectionate smile during the press conference. She didn't look like a woman who had been shocked to discover that her husband was getting it on with the hired (male) help.
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