Gays gauging effects of case
By NANCY SHIELDS and NICHOLAS CLUNN, GANNETT NEW JERSEY
From the Home News Tribune on the Web, August 16, 2004
Gov. James E. McGreevey's disclosure that he is gay and would resign in November because of his extramarital affair with a man since identified as former aide Golan Cipel helped gay rights in some ways, but also may have been an attempt to deflect the governor's real problems, participants and supporters of the gay-rights movement say.
"The positive is that it's great the governor found the courage to be honest about who he is.
Honesty makes you bulletproof from anyone attacking you," Joe D'Andrea, an Asbury Park Web site businessman who runs the gayasburypark.com site, said Friday.
"But on the other side, I hope that his coming out was not intended to create a diversion from what sounds like the really stupid moves he made in appointing someone who wasn't qualified for an important position," D'Andrea said.
McGreevey, whose public support and chances for re-election had sagged after federal charges were brought against two of his fund-raisers, Charles Kushner and David D'Amiano, met Cipel in Israel in 2000, got him a public relations job with Kushner, and gave Cipel a $110,000 homeland security adviser's job in Trenton for which Cipel was not qualified and soon left.
On Friday, Cipel, in a public statement, described his relationship with the governor not as a consensual affair but one in which he was sexually harassed by McGreevey.
Alphonso David, a staff attorney for Lambda Legal, which represents seven New Jersey gay couples seeking same-sex marriage rights, said McGreevey's disclosure and resignation announcement Thursday would have no impact on the group's court case but did affect the community at large.
"Any time you have a highly-visible public person that self-identifies as being gay or lesbian, it resonates with other gays and lesbians and the American public," David said.
"It illustrates that gays and lesbians are your neighbors, postal carriers, politicians, taxi drivers an integral part of the community."
David said that it was unfortunate that some media reports first made it appear that McGreevey was resigning because he was gay, rather than because of difficulties in his relationship with Cipel.
As McGreevey and Cipel began their public battle over what took place between them, the New Brunswick-based New Jersey Lesbian & Gay Coalition in a Web site message lauded McGreevey's signing of the domestic-partnership act that extended health insurance, inheritance and hospital-visitation rights to same-sex couples.
The group also lauded a bill McGreevey signed in 2002 requiring school districts to discourage bullying, including any gesture or physical act motivated by one's sexual orientation.
Frank D'Alessandro, an Asbury Park school board member who is gay, said he did not think McGreevey's actions on Thursday would have any effect on gay or human rights matters and that much more significant and detrimental was a ruling by the California Supreme Court also on Thursday that voided nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages sanctioned in San Francisco this year.
"I just think it's kind of a quagmire he (McGreevey) got himself into," D'Alessandro said.
"I think it has more to do with who the governor hangs out with."
D'Andrea, speaking of the gay-marriage movement as it crested in Asbury Park when same-sex couples were issued licenses in March, said McGreevey had strongly backed domestic-partnership rights but did not do the same for gay marriage.
"I hope that he didn't agree to domestic partnership instead of full marriage equality thinking that would placate everybody," D'Andrea said.
"His political opponents could shrug their shoulders at domestic partnership, but if he had come out for full marriage, his opponents could have put the spotlight on his personal relations or sexuality before he was ready to do it."
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