McGreevey's Confession

A friend had my television on and was watching the news while I was shaving. I heard something about "New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey's 'shocking' announcement." I knew my friend had always thought McGreevey was "sexy" for some reason, so I came out of the bathroom and joked: "Hey, I bet he's going to say he's gay." Little did I realize.

I finally got around to reading his book.

I confess I have mixed emotions about James E. McGreevey's autobiography The Confession. First, I found former Governor and future priest McGreevey's religiosity to be oppressive (Let me reiterate that I was raised as a Protestant but consider myself Jewish in the racial sense because my mother was Jewish. I am not in any way religious). In truth, I didn't learn much I didn't already know about the closeted lives of married homosexuals and the way they use women as beards. He talks about the shame he felt having homosexual feelings, and the power it gave him to know he could interest, date, and have sexual relations with women. He would invite male friends to his hotel room just in time to catch some gal waltzing out of the bedroom tugging on her dress. (Of course, a lot of straight guys do exactly the same.)

The portrait of McGreevey etched by the former governor and his co-author David France (whose name does not appear on the cover) is that of a self-absorbed little prick who only came out when it suited him and when he faced exposure. I don't envy his new lover, and I'm not sure what to make of Golan Cipel, his former male lover. McGreevey sort of tries to paint him as a hustler and opportunist -- even suggesting that for all he knows Cipel could be straight (more on that later) -- and Cipel's public denial of his homosexuality and consensual relations with McGreevey hardly make him a candidate for Gay of the Year any more than McGreevey. But is it possible that Cipel really loved McGreevey, and became just another in a long line of gay men who are exploited by married homosexuals and then dumped when it's convenient -- or rather when their affair becomes inconvenient? While I don't necessarily see Cipel as a victim, I wonder which of the two men was the real opportunist.

McGreevey -- or France -- tries to debunk a few gay stereotypes in the book, which is fine. However ... At the opening of McGreevey's "coming out" speech he says one has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world, not as we may want to see it or hope to see it, but as it is. And so my truth is that I am a gay American. Let's take another look at that phrase: "Not as we may want to see it or hope to see it" eh? Even when he was supposedly coming out with pride, McGreevey was still sending the message that it is not okay to be gay.

McGreevey began his affair with Cipel just when his second wife Dina was giving birth to his second daughter. Yes, the affair began practically at the start of their marriage and lasted for quite a long time. McGreevey can talk about how conflicted he was, but he also knew -- and admits -- that he could go further professionally with a family. So his two wives merely functioned as decorative beards and little else. McGreevey says little about Dina in his book, giving a sort of half-hearted apology at one point. He very much tacitly tries to make it sound as if Dina knew about his true interests to a certain extent and stayed with him for her own social and political purposes. Whether this is true or not, it doesn't excuse his exploitation of women (he's careful to say what a supposedly great relationship he has with his daughters, one of whom lives with him and his lover). I suspect neither of his wives knew McGreevey was a full-fledged homosexual nor about his numerous "furtive" encounters with males.

To paraphrase an old quote "When the Devil wants absolution, the Devil a monk would be." Well, McGreevey was hardly the Devil -- not even the Jersey Devil -- but he seems to want to be absolved of his guilt over his early anonymous sexual pursuits by suggesting that good, healthy gays are thoroughly domesticated like he is with his new post-Cipel lover Mark O'Donnell. From the closeted slut and adulterer to the Perfect Gay with the house husband, the 1.5 children, and no doubt a house with a white picket fence to boot. Give me a break! As if this jerk should be the Poster Boy for Gay Male America!

As for Cipel being "straight" -- well, it's highly unlikely that a totally hetero man would repeatedly sleep with another guy just because he wanted to supposedly use him. (And I don't believe any male prostitutes are 100% hetero either.) McGreevey wonders if Cipel's affair with him was similar to his "crossing over" to marry two women and live a supposedly straight life. Hardly. With McGreevey it was all about image and power and his shame over being homosexual. In a world that helps foster such attitudes, it's unlikely a heterosexual man (who has no compulsion to have sex with other men) would sleep with a guy when there was no societal pressure to do so, no matter what the "rewards" of the relationship might have been. With his "crush" on Cipel, McGreevey might have showered him with favors, attention, and inapprorpriate positions (no pun intended) even if the Israeli had never slept with him, so if Cipel were "straight" -- or had lousy sex with McGreevey -- he really was as big a loser as the governor, no?

The book got good reviews from liberal critics who responded, and were sympathetic, to McGreevey's tale of the tortures of being in the closet (McGreevey's chief "torture" was his fear of exposure). Being in the closet can indeed be a terrible, oppressive thing. But since McGreevey only married to further his political ambitions, the fact that his marriage was an utter sham was probably not as much of an anguish to him as it can be to other married homosexuals. Besides, McGreevey is in no way a hero. The activists who led the way both before and after Stonewall, all the gay people who live Out and Proud lives and don't use members of the opposite sex to hide behind, they are the heroes.

Borrow this from the library if you'd like to know more about married homosexuals. Otherwise, it is in no way an essential read.

You can read my reaction to Dina Matos McGreevey's book Silent Partner here.

Biology and Bullshit

I read an article entitled The Science of Gaydar by David France which appeared in New York magazine. According to certain (mostly but not entirely gay researchers) gay men have certain biological distinctions from straight men (ditto for lesbians and straight women), everything from counterclockwise hair whorls to more defined ridges in the thumbs and pinkies of their left hands, differences in their brains, index fingers that are longer than their ring fingers (in straight guys it’s supposedly just the opposite), and even – and this is interesting – bigger penises. According to the article, yes it’s true that gay people are more likely to be left-handed. (For years "left-handed" was a code for homosexual, but that was primarily because left-handed people, like gays, were in the minority.)

What to make of this? Well, on one hand responsible and intelligent researchers have every right to investigate the origins of homosexuality and why (some) gay people definitely appear to be "gay" (supposedly creating "gaydar"). On the other hand, responsible and intelligent gays and gay activists have every right to be a little nervous – and even skeptical – about this research and to what ends it will ultimately be applied. If proof is ever supplied for the existence of a gay gene will parents have the ability to turn their child straight before he or she is even born? Will a homophobic society eradicate gays and the gay lifestyle for good?

I’m bothered by some of the researchers both straight and gay. France quotes one guy who talks about gene codes determining who’s gay or straight. "Pick the wrong code [italics mine]," he says, "and you’re gay." France deems this a "slip of the tongue." Perhaps the guy was referring to the fact that homosexuality is often considered wrong by society, but in any case his remark is troubling – and telling. Even worse is another straight researcher who has no moral problem with parents being able to eventually opt for a straight child over a gay one (as France puts it, it’s chilling to think of gayness being thought of as something along the lines of sickle cell anemia). But how many parents want a gay child? Given the still existing stigma against homosexuality will even gay-friendly – or gay – parents think it’s okay if their kid is gay? The thought of what may lie in the future is scary.

But some of the gay researchers give me the willies as well. Some of the stuff they say and come up with from their "studies" seems to support a lot of stereotypical blather that perhaps should have been done away with a long time ago (at least no one has yet suggested that gay men can’t whistle, a theory that was widely disseminated in the 1950's). I swear it makes me wonder – and I know this will sound terrible – if some of these guys are stereotypical gay men hoping to prove that yes, most gay men are just "big queens" like they are. If that’s the case – and be assured that I think there’s nothing wrong in being a "big queen" – so be it, but I know and have seen that the gay community is much more diverse than that. Understandably, gay men who most conform to a stereotype tend to see other gay men in stereotypical terms (there are exceptions however). Sometimes put down even by other gay men, femmes tend to believe that most gay men are femmes (safety in numbers) while non- stereotypical gay men tend to think just the opposite. Then again, femmes rarely go to bear or leather bars, and very butch guys avoid the bars frequented by femmes.

[Of course this begs the question that France barely touches upon. How wide a cross-section of the gay community was studied by these researchers looking at hair whirls, fingerprint ridges and dicks? Only Femmes? Femmes and Bears? Guys who fit certain stereotypes already, or non-stereotypical gay men (and women)? If you’re going to do a study of this nature, doesn’t it pay to be as thorough as possible?]

What do I think? I think that most gay men, like most straight men, are neither effeminate nor hyper-masculine but fall somewhere in between. Most are just "average joes" (although once you get to know them they may not be "average" anything). There are effeminate and very naturally butch gay men, of course, on either end of the spectrum. Ditto for lesbians. And since all of us -- "average" or "fabulous" -- are hated by the queer-bashers out there, we all should do our best to get along.

France covers a lot of territory in his article, which also goes into theories as to why gay people exist in the first place. One guy even sort of suggests that the reason for homosexuality is that the gay son can, well, stay home and take care of Mom (what -- straight guys never look after their elderly mothers and fathers?) Yes, he implies, maybe gay guys are born to be —get this! -- care givers! Gee, most of the gay guys I know are out cruising, spending time with their lovers, or both, out living life, not sitting home looking after their parents, although that job eventually falls to many children regardless of their sex or sexual orientation.

France also quotes a straight researcher who questions whether women truly have a sexual orientation; he finds their sexuality more fluid but scoffs at the notion of male bisexuality. (Has it always been true that there are more female bi’s than male, or is that a false perception?) This guy reminds me of a certain sadly misogynous gay activist who rants on his blog that lesbians don’t even exist but suffer from gender-identity confusion, failing to note that gay men were once accused of the very same thing. I know many out and proud lesbians who would tell this guy a thing or two. Both of these guys, in fact.

It’s this kind of silliness that makes me wonder about the quality of the research being done here. These people are not exactly looking for a new drug or a cure for AIDS so their work is not considered high priority and doesn’t get much funding. It’s a few people and their students doing all the work. The mind boggles at the thought of academics measuring penis size and looking at the backs of people’s heads to see in which direction their hair whorls. And since people rarely lie about being gay but lie about being straight all the time, how do they know who’s telling the truth when they do their comparison tests of straight versus gay? I suppose if a man says he’s straight we’ll now know he’s lying if his hair whorl goes counterclockwise and his penis is too big?

Besides, all of this stuff is certainly open to interpretation. France wisely offers alternative reasons for some of the conclusions the researchers have come to. While some could accuse him of being understandably biased, I think he’s trying to look at things from different perspectives.

Let the researchers do their thing. But let them get rid of their pre-conceived notions before they start, because I believe they are influenced by these notions before they examine their first gay brain, thumb or penis. (Considering the kinds of stuff they’re coming up with – "left-handed" indeed – no one can accuse them of political correctness, which is certainly odd in today’s climate.) Needless to say, the straight researchers in this field also need to get past their pre-conceptions, or their studies may be pointless.

But let’s get to the really important issue. Can it possibly be true that gay men have penises that are thicker and longer?

Well, I can only speak for myself – actually I can speak for a lot of people come to think of it – and the answer is yes.