On a home turf visit, McGreevey is praised for his ‘revealing journey’

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

Like a head of state emerging from political exile, former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey was greeted with cheers and accolades from hometown supporters and members of the gay community as he reappeared in the public spotlight on Sept. 19, two years after resigning his office.

In a carefully orchestrated publicity stop surrounding the publication of his memoir, The Confession, McGreevey was greeted at the Woodbridge Community Center by gay, lesbian, transgender, and intersex activists — some from the Jewish community — along with local residents of the city where he served as mayor for seven years.

McGreevey was flanked by his partner, Mark O’Donnell, with whom he shares a house in Plainfield, and Steven Goldstein, a Reconstructionist rabbinical student and chair of the gay rights organization Garden State Equality.

“Jim and Mark, you are magnificent. We welcome you home to Woodbridge. We welcome you home to New Jersey’s LGBTI [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex] community. We are all so deeply proud of both of you,” said Goldstein as he pinned Garden State Equality pins to the lapels of the couple’s dark suits.

Reciting words from Ecclesiastes, the GSE leader said, “‘For everything there is a time…a time to reject and a time to embrace.’ Jim and Mark, we at Garden State Equality and the LGBTI community embrace both of you, warmly and with all our hearts.”

Goldstein acknowledged he had “complicated feelings about McGreevey’s governorship” based on the governor’s onetime opposition to gay marriage. In remarks to members of the media, however, he said, “I’ve gotten to know Jim over the past two years, and I’ve seen a man on one of the most honest, deeply revealing journeys I’ve ever known any human being, gay or straight, to take in any walk of life.”

That journey, described in the memoir, involved a sex scandal and a possible lawsuit by Golan Cipel, the Israeli who had once been the governor’s special adviser on homeland security. McGreevey, with his wife, Dina Matos McGreevey, at his side, resigned from office in August 2004, declaring he was a “gay American” and claiming that he and Cipel had a consensual romantic relationship. Cipel denies their relationship was consensual.

“Many in this room confronted your own identity well before I did,” said McGreevey, thanking the 400 patient autograph-seekers on hand. “Whoever we are, there is a challenge to be that person. I had failed to be that person for such a long time and inflicted great harm on those I loved, and from that place also made bad errors of judgment. I needed to embrace that truth — to recognize what I had done and where I had come from.”

Ending his remarks, McGreevey thanked the press corps for their “indulgence in listening to what, God willing, will be the last McGreevey public remarks. Those days are long gone.” Then he sat down at a table and proceeded to sign purchasers’ copies of his book, which is reporting brisk hardcover sales a week after its release at $26 a copy.

Watching from several feet away, Goldstein reflected on the High Holy Days and their spiritual connection to the ex-governor’s revelations.

“This is about redemption and consistent with our Jewish beliefs,” Goldstein told NJ Jewish News. “Jim McGreevey has asked for forgiveness from his fellow humans. You can ask for forgiveness from God, but first comes asking for forgiveness from your fellow humans. He has more than atoned. He said, ‘I made terrible mistakes in judgment.’”