ONLY IN NEW JERSEY, or perhaps San Francisco ( From the Mayor's Mansion to the Castro District.)
This week, Dina Matos McGreevey filed court papers accusing former Gov. Jim "I am a gay American" McGreevey of extreme cruelty, fraud and libel, for concealing his homosexuality in order to marry her. And so the McGreevey saga continues.
I'd say "only in America," but I suspect this is a story that could happen only in New Jersey.
Imagine: You are the governor of New Jersey and (by your own account) you're having sex with a young man behind your wife's back. The young man in question describes it as nonconsensual sexual harassment, but never mind. The feds are closing in on indicting your fundraising pals, one of whom even claims you arranged a special code word, "Machiavelli," signalling that they had a deal, the deal being: You pad their pockets with public funds in exchange for their donating campaign cash.
Jihadists have just recently blown up the Twin Towers, orphaning thousands of New Jersey children. The country's at war. You're taking time out to have anonymous sex in public restrooms (Or was that earlier? The timeline is murky). Rumors about your randiness are apparently rampant, so rampant you now claim your wife had to know that you were gay when you married. (She was asking for it, see? Somehow with these powerful men, it's always the woman's fault). So Dina didn't know you would be bleeping the boy toy in the marital home while she was in the hospital recovering from the birth of your child, but, hey, what did she expect when she agreed to become your own little Jackie Kennedy?
Suddenly it all blows up in big type. The one indisputable fact -- you are the man who let your lust decide who should head up homeland security in New Jersey -- is suddenly on the front page of every newspaper.
What do you do? First, you ask your wife to smile and look supportive at the press conference in which you will announce that (A) you are resigning, and (B) you are a gay American. Then you write a book, naturally, explaining how sorry you are for your mistakes, but homophobia made you do it. Leaders of groups like the Human Rights Campaign and Garden State Equality enthusiastically endorse your narrative.
But what do you do next? If you're Jim McGreevey you do this: You try to stiff your wife out of as much money as you can, naturally. You can live in luxury with a very rich boyfriend, postponing the job of earning the big bucks you might have to give your wife a piece of. You've got to keep the net worth down until the divorce is over, see? So you work a little on the side, teaching "ethics and leadership" (I kid you not) to future MBAs at a public university in New Jersey. This nominal income (about $17,000 a year) will allow you to pad your pension for years at taxpayer expense without driving up the old alimony, see?
What to do with the rest of your time? Above all, do not get a real job to support your child or the wife you used and abandoned. Instead, enter the seminary. The Episcopalians are glad to oblige. Studying four days a week, with $12,000 tuition for the next three years should do it. Bonus points: You call your wife a homophobe because she doesn't want you bringing a 5-year-old girl into bed with you and your new partner or displaying giant photos of naked men in the little girl's presence either.
As I said: Only in New Jersey, or San Francisco, or West Los Angeles, or New Orleans, or New Hampshire, or Massachusetts, or Palm Springs. I hope.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- About a dozen people gathered in the Castro District of San Francisco Tuesday evening to mark the death of Jerry Falwell.
Falwell used the power of television to found the Moral Majority and turn the Christian right into a mighty force in American politics during the Reagan years, died Tuesday, 15 May, at 73.
Michael Petrelis organized the so-called "anti-memorial" and said gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders said would speak out about Falwell's past efforts to demonize the gay community.
A makeshift grave was surrounded by an assortment of signs, rainbow flags and teletubbies dolls at Castro and 18th streets.
One signed read, "Falwell dies, but the rainbow lives."
At least one person danced on the makeshift grave.
Petrelis said he organized the event because Falwell "spent a number of decades working to deny gays full equality."
Sen. John McCain praised Falwell as "a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country."
Mitt Romney described Falwell Tuesday as "an American who built and led a movement based on strong principles and strong faith."
Rudy Giuliani told reporters that Falwell "was a man who set a direction" -- and someone who was "not afraid to speak his mind."
Falwell started a small church in 1956 inside an abandoned bottling plant. His enterprises would grow to include the 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church, the "Old Time Gospel Hour" carried on television stations around the country, and Liberty University. He also built Christian elementary schools, homes for unwed mothers and a home for alcoholics.
He had opposed mixing preaching with politics. But in 1979, he founded the Moral Majority, a conservative political group.
Falwell founded Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., in 1971. The school offers 38 undergraduate and 15 graduate programs.
The 4,400-acre campus serves more than 20,000 resident and external students. Individuals from all 50 states and more than 70 nations make up the student body.
Liberty University is nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and located on the south bank of the historic James River.
Ann Coulter said:
No man in the last century better illustrated Jesus' warning that "All men will hate you because of me" than the Rev. Jerry Falwell.
Falwell was a perfected Christian. He exuded Christian love for all men, hating sin while loving sinners. Like Christ ministering to prostitutes, Falwell regularly left the safe confines of his church to show up in such benighted venues as CNN.
He was such a good Christian that back when we used to be on TV together during Clinton's impeachment, I sometimes wanted to say to him, "Step aside, reverend -- let the mean girl handle this one."
For putting Christ above everything Falwell is known as "controversial." Nothing is ever as "controversial" as yammering about Scripture as if, you know, it's the word of God.
From the news coverage of Falwell's death, I began to suspect his first name was "Whether You Agree With Him or Not."
Even Falwell's fans, such as evangelist Billy Graham and former President Bush, kept throwing in the "We didn't always agree" disclaimer.
Let me be the first to say: I ALWAYS agreed with the Rev. Falwell.
Actually, there was one small item I think Falwell got wrong regarding his statement after 9/11 that "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians -- who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle -- the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them . I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"
Falwell later stressed that he blamed the terrorists most of all. God was at least protecting America enough not to allow the terrorists to strike when a Democrat was in the White House.
I note that in Falwell's list of Americans he blamed for ejecting God from public life, only the gays got a qualifier. Falwell referred to gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle.
No Christian minister is going to preach that homosexuality is godly behavior.
What Falwell was referring to are the gay activists -- the ones who spit the Eucharist on the floor at St. Patrick's Cathedral, blamed Reagan for AIDS, and keep trying to teach small schoolchildren about "fisting."
Also the ones who promote the gay lifestyle.
Comments by Bill Maher:
The anti-Christian bigotry gets more and more sickening. Bill Maher, host of the talk show "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO, recently showed the hatred Maher and the other Hollywood types have for Christianity and Christians.
Just three days after Rev. Jerry Falwell's death, Maher began his weekly HBO program with a verbal assault on Rev. Falwell and then escalated into a vicious attack on Christianity in general and Catholics in particular.
Maher: "We weren’t having sex, officer. I was performing a very private Mass, here in my car. I was letting my rod and staff comfort him. Take this and eat of it, for this is my roommate Barry...and for all those who believe there is a special place for you in Kevin."
Time-Warner, owner of HBO, issued no apology for the on-air explicit homosexual mockery of Scripture and Catholic theology. Neither did the mainstream media bring it to the public’s attention as they did with Don Imus. For the mainstream media, Christians are the only religious group in America against whom such bigotry is allowed.
Comments by Bill Maher made in February 2005
HBO's Bill Maher Says Christians Have Neurological Disorder, Are Crazy
Bill Maher, host of HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher, says that all Christians are crazy and are unenlightened because of their faith. Maher made the comments on MSNBC's Scarborough Country.
Maher said: "We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion…I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think that flying planes in a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder. If you look at it logically, it's something that was drilled into your head when you were a small child."
"When you look at belief in such things--as do you go to heaven, is there a devil--we have more in common with (Muslin countries) Turkey and Iran and Syria than we do with European nations and Canada and nations that, yes, I would consider more enlightened that us."
Maher said he wasn't speaking only of evangelicals, but included all religious people. He said he agreed with Jesse Ventura "who had that quote about religion is a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers."
Because of their neurological disorder, he said Christians "do not believe in science and rationality." He went on to say the future does not belong to religion. One recalls the famous quote from the Beatles in the 60's that they "were more popular than Jesus."
According to Maher, the Bible is a book of fairy tales, calling the account of Jonah a fairy tale the same as Jack in the Beanstalk.
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