Where is the inherent criminality in appointing your fuckbuddy to your gubernatorial staff?

From an exchange with a friend concerning New Jersey Governor James McGreevey:

I do not accept the notion that Cipel was clearly, unambiguously "unqualified" to serve in a new staff position in the New Jersey governor's office in charge of "disseminating and coordinating public safety programs with other state departments and branches of government." Cipel essentially was supposed to act as a liaison between the governor's office and state and federal security agencies. While four years as the chief information officer of the Israeli consulate in New York City perhaps do not make one the best person for the job, they also probably provide some amount of relevant experience for what I continue to insist is not a very important position, and we do tend to allow elected officials to hire for their staff persons they already know and feel comfortable with, even when there may be other persons whose qualifications on paper are more notable. That New Jersey paid Cipel's immigration fees seems in keeping with the practice of many US employers who provide administrative and legal support in obtaining proper immigration credentials for persons they want to hire (as my own former employer in New York did for my former boss).

Sure, McGreevey didn't tell the public that the two of them were boinking, but does the presumption that it is the public's business not warrant a second thought? If he didn't tell other family members, why is it important to tell the People of New Jersey who he's boinking? And on a more profound level, what is sex, and what does it "do" to the relationship - whether professional or of some other kind - between two persons? If the appointee in question will be a subordinate who reports directly to the governor (and I haven't heard one way or the other whether Cipel was), it's probably not optimal to be boinking, but what if we scrutinize the presumption that sexual involvement make someone into one's "lover," "intimate," or "family member," and thus cast the appointment of the person one boinks as a case of "nepotism" or conferring undue advantage on that person? Could that presumption be viewed as an effect of universalizing a particular scheme concerning the epistemological and relational status of sex, i.e., as a heterosexist presumption?

I am saying this partly to be outrageous, yes. But I haven't gotten a clear idea of why this appointment was so much more egregious than a president appointing a family member to lead one's task force on reforming the nation's health care system. To be sure, the public is aware of the sexual or intimate relationship in that instance, but, again, it's necessary to weigh whether or not the need for secrecy of a politician living in the closet might help not only explain but even justify the secrecy surrounding the boinking. Again, I say this partly based on the idea that we shouldn't jump to conclusions regarding the precise relational, emotional, and political context of the boinking, and partly because I think that we ought to give closeted queers a certain kind of break.

> That part might be parallel to Kentucky's Patton, but not trying to
> appoint your lover to a state office that's taken seriously and salaried
> highly (no matter how un-yummy the "homeland security" concept may be,
> which I'll grant)... and not one of your other examples even involves
> leveraging elective office to financially benefit your hoochie.

Again, let's say a president were to appoint his wife head of the task force in charge of planning his major domestic policy initiative. Would that be equally egregious? Or would it be just as bad to secretly and continuously boink one's Senate colleague, and then the nation's vice-president, before assuming the presidency oneself, as President Buchanan likely did in the 1840s and '50s?

To what extent is the moral primacy and indispensability of particular forms of disclosure surrounding sex and employment constituted by a set of moral norms that are deeply bound up with heteronormativity? Should it not concern us that it was a closely related set of expectations concerning sex and employment - more closely related than we might like to admit or even understand - that forced recent politicians ranging from Ronald Reagan to Lyndon Johnson to Martin Luther King to fire subordinates when the mere fact of their homosexuality became known?

Shouldn't we give this closeted fag a break?

> Look, of course being gay is upping the magnitude on this thing, but
> there's no way that that alone would have been enough to cause a
> resignation. That's all I'm saying. Don't you agree???

Of course, if McGreevey had announced that he is gay, though he had never "acted on it" or not since his marriage, he would not receive meaningful pressure to resign. That, I do not dispute.