I don't care at all that he's gay. But it's disgraceful that he hired his lover for a well-paid position for which he was clearly not qualified.
Are his sexual preference(s) and issue? Would the residents of NJ have elected him if he was honest with them prior election? Would they have elected a married gay man? His sexuality in itself is not a big deal. However, he misled and deceived the people of NJ. What's worse is that he cheated on and lied to his family. His resignation was appropriate.
What the fellow is, is an adulterer. The fact that his speech tried to portray him as a gay hero (echoes of Bishop Robinson) is disgusting and disingenuous. He betrayed his wife and his children. If gay marriage were legal in NJ and he had committed adultery, he would have betrayed his spouse in that instance, too. Does private wrongdoing mean a man is unfit to be governor? Not necessarily. My religion views gay activity as wrong. But a governor does not hold a "religious" office. Were he a single gay man who simply "came out," it would be neither here nor there as far as his fitness to hold a secular civic office is concerned. But glorying in a private wrongdoing (adultery), especially when the wrongdoing is a breach of trust, would seem to do so, unless sexual orientation simply trumps all ethical regard. His gayness is incidental. His untrustworthiness--and his pious cloaking of it--are gross and repellent. To applaud this man, you must erect a schizoid internal wall between personal betrayal of trust and public reliability. That dike is porous, and will require too many fingers to plug. Betrayal's wet insistence will soon become a whelming flood.
I'm going to interrupt here because everybody gets this wrong: Robinson was not an adulterer. He and his wife made a mutual decision to divorce two years before he even met the man who would become his partner, who was serving overseas in the Peace Corps at the time. The ethics of divorce aside, his kids and ex-wife were all present and extremely supportive during his consecration, and there has never been so much as the faintest credible suggestion that he was unfaithful to his wife while they were married. Cheers,
St Henry of Baltimore, ora pro nobis Hi Tom: Let me interrupt your interruption. The marital misadventures of Bishop Robinson were not the playing field of the parenthesis. His loudly self-claimed status as gay hero and pathfinder was. The guvna was trying to claim an analogous mantle in a reminiscent manner. I found that attempt disgusting. In my religion, we assume we have to explain ourselves to non-members. In yours, Tom, thanks to media-darling status deriving from old money (for good or ill), there is an assumption that all the rest of us hang with bated breath on the interior gossip of your denomination. 'Tis not so. I recall when your church minted its first female bishop, one Barbara Harris of Boston. The news networks all went a bit gaga over the "first" female bishop. Of course, the United Methodists (not to mention several Holiness and Pentecostal denominations) had had several female bishops by that point, starting with the redoubtable Marjorie Matthews. I recall as well that Bishop Harris' colour was trumpeted as well--ignoring the already veteran United Methodist Bishop Leontine Kelley. Bishop Harris was not the first woman, or the first woman of colour, to be episcopated--but one would never have known it from the public-relations jagannath surrounding her consecration. I heard a two-hour interview with your Bishop Robinson on NPR. He seemed delighted to be a cultural icon, as well as with himself generally. So he must suffer the indignity of becoming a cultural trope (gay pioneer) echoed by self-righteous Joisey governors (a noxious type going back to the late Professor Wilson). My apologies for failing to spell all this out above. O fallen foul of irony's dearth, thou damn'd allusion! Have a nice day. Your rusticated correspondent, Janko
Heh. I've missed your posts, Unc. Glad to see I'd misunderestimated you on the Robinson matter, and I don't mean to be so touchy--it's just that so many people (Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, His Eminence Peter Akinola of Nigeria, and of course the Venerable Geshe Pat Buchanan) have gotten this wrong, so I try to be a personal Snopes.com whenever the matter comes up. Think of me as Bishop Robinson's proud but bizarre knight in shining armor, boldly conquering forth whenever anyone has a mistaken impression about his sex life. And I was never terribly fond of Gov. McGreevey anyway. He opposed gay marriage, for starters... Cheers,
Every news source that I've seen has identified him as "married". Regardless of whatever agreements he had with his wife, he was still married when he had his fling with the other man. Sex outside your marriage....that's adultery, plain & simple.
FOR TOM HEAD Hi Tom, I understand a former Mississippi governor has been diagnosed with leukemia. Do you know who it is?
Bruce, that's simply not true. It has appeared in print, to the irritation of Bishop Robinson and his family, but there's no basis in fact for it. Gene Robinson and his wife divorced in August 1987; Gene first met Mark Andrew while vacationing in November 1987, three months after the divorce. Even anti-Robinson Episcopalians are now conceding the fact that Robinson did not have an extramarital affair with his current partner, and nobody has suggested that he had a sexual relationship with any other partner after he married his wife. But the rumor just won't die, despite the fact that there is absolutely no evidence of any kind to support it. The Rev. Jan Nunley, of the Episcopal News Service, posted this email on the matter: Archbishop Akinola isn't part of the U.S. scene and Pat Buchanan has never been very conscious of the details, but Fr. Neuhaus really should have known better. I do wish all these fine Christians who are so concerned about Bishop Robinson's sexual orientation would take a little more care not to violate the Ninth Commandment, but that's probably too much to ask. With all the effort expended in documenting and condemning other people's sins, who has the time? Cheers,
Re: Re: NEVER MIND TOM I was about to check on this myself. Sorry to hear it; I was never a huge fan of Fordice as governor, but he did a good job with our economy and seems like a nice enough guy. I loved his work as a talking head during last November's state elections. Cheers,
*blink* Honest mistake I suppose, though my post only referred to Robinson. I can see some delightful spinoffs of that: Abbott: "Jefferson was a real clever inventor--invented the coathanger, the hideaway bed..." Costello: "But, you know, he was a crazed serial killer who kept the dismembered bodies as souvenirs." Abbott: "You can't back that up." Costello: "I was talking about Jeffrey Dahmer." Agreed regarding McGreevey, though; definitely married, with kids aged 11 and 2. Really, I think the Robinson and McGreevey situations stand pretty much at opposite poles--Robinson who discussed the matter with his wife and dealt with the situation in a gentle and loving way way that would still leave him as father of his kids, McGreevey who slept around and offered his lover a cushy state job, all while pretending to be heterosexual. I suppose it mitigates things a bit if his wife knew and approved, but he had to know this would blow up in his face eventually--and jeez, how did he think this would affect the kids? Cheers,
