Gay ex-governor discusses memoir

James McGreevey, the former New Jersey governor and University trustee who stunned family members and colleagues in August 2004 by announcing that he was "a gay American" and would soon resign his office, told a U-Store audience Saturday that his very public and punishing admission has enabled him to at last find peace.

"It's been a wonderful journey, at times an excruciatingly painful journey for the individuals that I love," he said to the crowd of about 50. "It's ultimately been a journey of self-discovery and at long last the willingness to embrace my truth."

McGreevey visited the University as part of a promotional tour for his new book, "The Confession." In recent weeks, the publicity surrounding the personal and at times lurid memoir has drawn McGreevey onto the sets of the "Oprah Winfrey Show" and "Today Show," and landed him on the cover of New York Magazine.

The Democrat — who lived at Drumthwacket, just miles from the University, during his two-year tenure, exercised most weekdays at Dillon Gymnasium and attended Mass at the University's Catholic chaplaincy — said he was embarrassed and shamed into hiding his sexuality during the course of two marriages and a rise up the political ladder.

"For many young gays of my generation there were no role models. There was no understanding of who we were," said McGreevey, the first openly gay state governor in U.S. history.

Faced as a young boy with the realization that he was gay, he looked to scientific sources like the American Psychiatric Association and his Roman Catholic faith for answers. Homosexuality, he concluded, was something to "deny, oppress, overcome."

"Inch by inch by inch I moved into this godless descent where you think you can manage different departments of your life," McGreevey said. "And concurrent with that I made the decision to go into politics which only exacerbated this. The moral compromises I made in politics were made in part easier because of the falsehoods I dealt with myself."

One such compromise, he now admits, was the decision to appoint Golan Cipel — an Israel citizen with whom McGreevey claims to have had a consensual affair — to the position of special counsel to the governor on homeland security.

Cipel has denied the affair. In his book, McGreevey calls the appointment of Cipel a "spectacular lapse of judgment."

During his talk, he also acknowledged that being in politics intensified his desire to hide his true self in order to gain acceptance and led him to engage in an affair "in the most morally bankrupt of circumstances."

One reason McGreevey said he felt compelled to write the book was to inspire other gay people and help them avoid his mistakes.

"This is not how you're supposed to do it," he said of his secret life. "How you're supposed to do it is with love, honesty and with self acceptance."

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Because he has come to terms with being gay, McGreevey said he could finally be at peace about his true identity.

"My mom had always wanted me to go to Princeton," he said. "When I was elected governor and put on the board of trustees I told my mother I finally made it the hard way. And now I have finally accepted my truth the hard way."