Columnist Arianna Huffington, the go-to girl when a husband figures out he's gay, noted that McGreevey "came out" the same day that the California Supreme Court annulled the state's nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages, raising the question:
What if the world were a more welcoming place where gay people could have in their lives all the 'good things' and the 'right things' without having to pretend they're straight?
Such as, what, boyfriends on payroll? For the record, the California Supreme Court ruling wasn't about whether homosexuals are due all the good and right things, but whether San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom acted legally in issuing marriage licenses to homosexual and lesbian couples. He did not.
Picking up where Huffington left off, Kevin Jennings, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, wrote in Newsweek of feeling "sick" hearing McGreevey's resignation speech.
I nearly had to turn away from the agony and pain that radiated from his face, all caused, I thought, by his decision to live a lie in order to attain political power. And I had a startling realization: but for one decision, I might have been Jim McGreevey.
I don't doubt Jennings' sincerity in empathizing with McGreevey. But his portrait of the governor as victim won't wash with the great unwashed. Bad actors who happen to be gay don't get a pass for corrupt public behavior just because they're gay. If McGreevey had placed an unqualified female paramour on the public payroll, he'd be no less culpable, though certainly less sympathetically treated.
Coming out of the closet is doubtless a relief for people who haven't publicly come to terms with their sexual orientation. Few Americans would begrudge McGreevey his personal truth as a gay American. But the larger truth is that McGreevey placed personal gratification above the public good, and that's a firing offense when you're a public servant. Eyes all dry.