A week ago at this time I was seeing the first stunned posts indicating the Governor McGreevey was about to shock New Jersey and the world with his announcement. Years ago that wouldn't be nearly enough time to look back and reflect, but with the news cycle of today that week feels like a lifetime. So it seems appropriate, today, to look at the reaction of someone who understands all too well what it can mean for a man to suppress his homosexuality: Arianna Huffington, whose former husband did just that.
Huffington gets it. She asks an important question in the wake of the resignation: "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?" She quickly expands on this question, moving from McGreevey's situation to that of many gay men and women in America:
But even if Jim McGreevey did not want to hold public office, if he just wanted a marriage and children--natural urges, perhaps as powerful as the sexual one--the easiest (and indeed the only legal way) to do so remains opting for a heterosexual relationship. So the human costs we only got a glimpse of on Thursday--a shattered marriage, the anguish inflicted on his parents, his wife, his daughters--are not just the result of his personal choices but of the roadblocks society continues to place in the path of the complete acceptance of gay men and women.Huffington uses the event to call for a development that she and I both know is still some time away: "So until the final curtain falls, let’s seize the moment to reaffirm, loudly and without reservation, that to be gay is to be normal--whether you’re a governor or a gardener, a public figure or a very private one." Perhaps one day this optimistic call will be answered, but for now we live in a world where most politicians of the homosexual variety suppress the truth--and a great many openly gay people with much to contribute to the political process opt out of it because their sexuality might disqualify them in the eyes of some voters. I know I viewed my coming out as the death knell for any political ambitions, though events since have given me some hope that one day I might sit on a city council or village board and contribute to my community. But that day is still a far-off hope, not a reality to be taken for granted. If we can learn that from McGreevey's coming out, and work to make things different for those who come after him, we'll have made some decent lemonade out of this bitter lemon.
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