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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.
Inauthenticity is endemic in American politics today. The political backrooms where I spent much of my career were just as benighted as my personal life, equally crowded with shadowy strangers and compromises, truths I hoped to deny. I lived not in one closet but in many.
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.
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.
We are losing sight of civility in government and politics. Debate and dialogue is taking a back seat to the politics of destruction and anger and control. Dogma has replaced thoughtful discussion between people of differing views.
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.
The arc of American history almost inevitably moves toward freedom. Whether it’s Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, the expansion of women’s rights or, now, gay rights, I think there is an almost-inevitable march toward greater civil liberties.
To be able to love and live in freedom means to be able to make godly decisions. To make godly decisions we have to surrender our egos and all the falsity and shame that goes with it.
I’m on the board of a national group called Faith in America. It’s designed to fight religious-based bigotry.