ANDREA PEYSER: Bill de Blasio knows about diversity.
Chirlane McCray, wife of the public advocate and mayoral probable, admitted last week that she once slept exclusively with women. Can you really get over that?
“In the 1970s, I identified as a lesbian and wrote about it,’’ Chirlane McCray said in a statement. This after Politicker.com last week outed McCray, who penned a cover story for Essence magazine in 1979, “I am a Lesbian,” boasting about her lust for the ladies. Awkward!
“In 1991, I met the love of my life, married him and together we’ve raised two amazing kids,” McCray continued.
Lesbians don’t simply get cured, as if homosexuality were a temporary disease. Someone (de Blasio? McCray? Both?) isn’t being honest.
Forget the cartoons in the Post. Andrea Peyser is at least ten times as offensive.
As someone who’s compared Peyser’s intelligence unfavorably to that of a cow, I know I should be more tolerant of what is clearly a mental disability, but Peyser’s ignorance about human sexuality is just hard to swallow (perhaps not the best choice of words).
In 2010, brain-dead Peyser proved she survives only because of her feeding and hydration tubes, when her portrayal of "The Kids are All Right" as an idyllic portrait of lesbian parenthood showed that she was just too dumb to live.
Peyser acted as if Hollywood was somehow forcing families headed by LGTB couples down the country's throat (perhaps not the best choice of words) by portraying their fairy tale existence.
There is no rational explanation for this incoherent babbling, except perhaps that the Cobble Hill Theatre is a sixplex and she walked into the wrong film.
In 2011, Peyser beautifully illustrated how the legal normalization of gay families leads to acceptance, thereby leading to further normalization. I was glad that Peyser, who just a year before published that hate screed about ”The Kids Are All Right,” was made to see the error of her ways because she had learned that the issue actually impacted someone related to her by blood—her niece.
Then she spoiled the moment by criticizing the Mayor for reasonably equating the persecution of one religious group with that of another.
The lessons of Passover–that one shall not oppress the stranger, because we too were once strangers seemed lost upon Peyser who, IN THE VERY SAME COLUMN, posited the proposition that it is offensive to remind Jews of what they learned at their Seder.
Peyser, had proven by her prose that she opposes the location of mosques anywhere within the City. Back in 2001, I asked what it would take for Peyser to assimilate the same message about Muslims she learned about gays?
If only her niece had married Irshad Manji.
Back then I joked that, no matter how grave the crimes of Islamic extremists, it was asking too much to demand Moslems marry off one of their number to a relative of Peyser's, just so that she could see the error of her blatant and pervasive ignorant bigotry.
As I’d noted, Peyser’s also pretty much endorsed the right of cab drivers to personally decide who they serve, solely on the basis of race– an idea, which, if taken to its logical conclusion would mean a black male could never get a ride anywhere (not to mention violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964). Back then I’d opined that perhaps we could wish that her daughter married a black man so that she would come to her senses on that one too.
But as it turned out Peyser is still blitheringly ignorant on the topic of L’s, G’s T’s and especially B’s.
I cannot for the life of me figure out what Ms. Peyser is trying to imply by her remarks.
There seem only two possibilities.
The first is that she’s implying that, over 20 years ago, DeBlasio made a calculated decision that marrying McCray would be politically useful because of her multiple identities.
The other is that she’s implying that McCray is bearding for DeBlasio (or they are bearding for each other).
Because DeBlasio is such a player, I carefully considered the first possibility the other day, and after careful consideration, I didn’t buy it.
As I noted the other day, if anyone could have seen 21 years ago that one day they'd be running for Mayor against a black and a lesbian, and wanted to be able to show they've dipped their wick (perhaps not the best choice of words) into both communities, it would be Bill DeBlasio.
But this would have required remarkable foresight.
1991, the year DeBlasio and McCray met, was the year Spike Lee made ”Jungle Fever”, a film which illustrated tremendous hostility in the black community about mixed marriages (When Major Owens ran for congress in 1982, his opponent, the late Vander Beatty said “Major votes black and sleeps white.”).
Obviously, times have changed; in his 2009 race for Public Advocate, DeBlasio mailed a piece featuring his interracial family, but even then he polled on it first.
And frankly, I'm not sure having a Surf & Turf loving Wasbian wife has much appeal in the LGBT community (with the possible exception of the Bs), though perhaps Kevin’s Smith’s “Chasing Amy” is as dated as “Jungle Fever.”
There are also conservative whites seen as DeBlasio’s base in the primary, if only because of his straight white male identity. Would this really help him in those areas? Surely, if his marrying McCray was a product of calculation, he thought about that in 1991 as well.
I suppose one could argue that social conservative will be delighted that DeBlasio won one for the team. Many social conservatives advocate that LGTB people try to fit in as heterosexuals. DeBlasio is practically a living advertisement that this is possible.
Really though, most observers seem to believe that, contrary to their own logic, social conservatives will shun DeBlasio because of this.
All told, the idea that DeBlasio married his wife in the early 90s for demographic reasons does not hold water.
The beard theory is also preposterous. There have long been rumors of such a marriage involving a now retired Staten Island pol, but would someone so afraid of being outed marry a woman with such a paper trail? Would someone, in the early 90s, cynically try to avoid the consequences of prejudice by marrying a black woman?
Someone so cautious and ambitious as to take such a step would surely have been more conservative and cautious in his choice of partners.
I think it’s time that people with bizarre notions about bisexuals like Peyser and Rock Hackshaw get a little lesson in human sexuality.
Think about sexuality like political jurisdictions. Most jurisdictions are pretty safe for one Party or another.
Others are marginal; they can go either way depending upon the circumstances.
Sometimes an ardent suitor of great appeal running a model campaign can turn the tide even in a constituency that might seem hostile; but that is rare, and usually doesn’t last.
Sometimes, even in a safe constituency, there’s a once in a lifetime circumstance, like something approaching a betrayal, that results in a surprise one-night-stand invariably overturned at the next opportunity.
In other cases, a constituency leans one way, but every once in awhile needs a boy’s (or girls’) night out.
And sometimes, a constituency that has been safe and faithful nearly forever, suddenly and permanently goes to the other extreme—like West Virginia in Presidential races.
Think of West Virginia as the political equivalent of Chirlane McCray.
In 1991, the constituency known as Chirlane McCray voted straight lesbian (perhaps not the best choice of words).
By 1992, she changed her enrollment.
I will note that 1992 was a reapportionment year.
I have no idea what the real story of the DeBlasio-McCray marriage is, but as someone once muscled into buying Girl Scout cookies DeBlasio was selling for his daughter, I can attest that he is a pretty ardent family man. Perhaps the marriage is non-traditional in some manner (what inter-racial marriage isn’t?); I can’t honestly say I’m not curious, but I can honestly say that it is none of my business.
I have no reason to believe that McCray’s statements about the matter are dishonest, and other than the force of his habit, I have no reason to believe DeBlasio is lying either.
But, unless someone can prove that DeBlasio is the source of this story, I’m not sure it matters. If this story is involuntary on the part of the principal actors, they’ve given us all of the honesty they owe us.
All told, their marriage seems more genuinely a product of love than those of certain former Presidents and current Secretaries of State.
Colin Campbell has tweeted that neither DeBlasio nor any of his enemies was the source of the story. Campbell says the story is the product of his Observer colleague Hunter Walker’s own research. Since Walker is the proud product of a two-mommy household, I think it is fair to say he just has good gaydar.