James McGreevey

We need to seek wise leaders who will seek common ground among Americans instead of dividing us further for political gain. As citizens, we must embrace those who embrace ideas, thoughtfulness, civility and kindness to others no matter what their political beliefs.

The history of America is to expand civil liberties in a responsible and civil manner. We need to remember that our wonderful Democracy with its freedoms has been working.

When I first ran for public office, it was with the passion and idealism of a young man who believed that government could help make our lives better, that public service was a calling and that citizenship demanded responsibilities. There was a greater good.

I knew I was different when I was about six years of age but I just knew that I wasn't like everybody else. I mean I wasn't like the other kids. I didn't know what that was. But I guess it was when I was in seventh or eighth grade, I'm like, 'Hey, something's wrong here.'

I realized that I had screwed up my life living different parts of my life in different places. I wasn't whole. I wasn't integrated. I wasn't a complete person. And after that, came out, spent some time at a psychiatric hospital.

I'm enjoying prison ministry, particularly with the women in Hudson County Jail who have suffered tremendously in their lives.

Of all my false identities, the strategies in my campaign to be accepted, being a sworn Republican is the hardest to explain. In my later political life, I can only be described as a Kennedy Democrat, eager to pursue equitable treatment for the least fortunate.

Being gay is a fundamental part of my being - the core of who I've always been, and the thing that I had repressed and run from all my life.

I think - I think you have a conscience growing up in a loving family with a nurturing community. And I think what happens is, and that's part of the problem of being in the closet which is a very sick place. I mean it's self loathing. It's self denial. And you keep that separate.

I'm on the board of a national group called Faith in America. It's designed to fight religious-based bigotry.

I have two extraordinary daughters, who, I can say proudly, are doing very well in school and in piano. Daughters are a father's joy.

For me, living in the closet corroded my ability to have an honest, open relationship with my God, my loved ones, my constituency and myself.

But being in the closet uniquely assisted me in politics. From my first run for the state legislature until my election as governor, all too often I was not leading but following my best guess at public opinion.

I was convinced I was worth less than my straight peers. I was at best inauthentic, and the longer I went without amending that dishonesty, the more ashamed I felt.

No relief was forthcoming from my then-Catholic faith, which said the practice of homosexuality was a 'mortal sin' subject to damnation.

I kept a steel wall around my moral and sexual instincts - protecting them, I thought, from the threats of the real world. This gave me a tremendous advantage in politics, if not in my soul. The true me, my spiritual core, slipped further and further from reach.

As I climbed the electoral ladder - from state assemblyman to mayor of Woodbridge and finally to governor of New Jersey - political compromises came easy to me because I'd learned how to keep a part of myself innocent of them.

I've never been much for self-revelation. In two decades of public life, I always approached the limelight with extreme caution. Not that I kept my personal life off-limits; rather, the personal life I put on display was a blend of fact and fiction.

Civil union is less than marriage. Marriage is a sacred and valued institution and ought to be afforded equal protection.

You know for many elected officials they all started in the same place. You know marriage is between a man and a woman, but they understand that they are moving inevitably, catching up to the American public.