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Gay Ex-NJ Gov Divorce Trial Promises Sordid
Details
by The Associated Press
Posted: May 5, 2008 - 5:00 pm ET
(Trenton, New Jersey) New Jersey's former first
couple is finally about to become unhitched, and it figures to be especially
messy.
Jim and Dina Matos McGreevey's
divorce trial, which starts Tuesday, means the end of their 3
1/2-year separation that has lasted nearly as long as their
marriage.
The trial will feature the
usual squabbles - the ex-governor wants equal custody of their
6-year-old daughter, and alimony and child support are at
issue as well. But the proceedings figure to be particularly
salacious because of the question everybody has asked at least
once: Did she know he was gay?
Matos McGreevey, 41, claims she
was duped into marriage by a closeted gay man who needed the
cover of a wife to advance his political career. McGreevey
says he gave her a child and the coattails she rode to the
governor's mansion, thus fulfilling the marriage contract.
Matos McGreevey seeks $600,000
as compensation for the time she would have lived at the
governor's mansion in Princeton had her soon-to-be-ex not
resigned in disgrace. Perks enjoyed by a sitting governor's
spouse include household servants, access to a state police
helicopter and a state-owned beach house.
The gay former governor and his
estranged wife will sit at adjacent legal tables, fewer than 5
feet apart, in the Union County Courthouse in Elizabeth as
their high-priced lawyers lay bare the pair's sex lives and
finances. Only issues concerning custody of their
kindergartner are expected to be decided away from the glare
of tabloid reporters and Court TV.
McGreevey's political career
unraveled during his first term after an affair with a man he
put on the state payroll as homeland security adviser.
McGreevey says the man tried to blackmail him. (The man, who
denies being gay, says the governor sexually harassed him.)
The McGreeveys split,
unceremoniously, when they moved out of the governor's mansion
and into separate residences in the fall of 2004.
McGreevey, 50, who now lives
with a male partner and is studying to be an Episcopal priest,
says in his book the marriage was "a contrivance on both
our parts."
To bolster his case, his lawyer
intends to call as a witness a young aide who claims to have
been involved in three-way sexual encounters with the
McGreeveys. The ex-campaign aide, Teddy Pedersen, 29, went
public last month with allegations of regular trysts beginning
when the couple was dating in 1999, and ending two years
later, after they were married and McGreevey had been elected
governor of New Jersey.
"Plaintiff will testify at
trial that he needed to have a disrobed male present in the
room with them" in order for him to become physically
aroused, McGreevey lawyer Stephen Haller wrote in recently
released court papers. "This tends to prove that
plaintiff was at least bisexual, a fact which should have been
obvious to defendant prior to the marriage."
John Post, who represents Matos
McGreevey, wants to bar Pedersen's testimony, which he says is
"irrelevant" and "inflammatory." Even if
it's true, which Post doubts in court papers, he said it
proves only that the McGreeveys engaged in heterosexual
activity.
A full transcript of Pedersen's
sworn deposition has not been released, and Pedersen has not
responded to repeated requests for an interview.
In excerpts of the deposition
attached to the recent court filings, Pedersen described his
sexual encounters with the McGreeveys. He portrayed a setting
in which McGreevey and his future wife had sex while he
watched. He did not indicate that he had sexual relations with
either of the other two and said he did not learn that
McGreevey was gay until the day before the governor's famous
"I am a gay American" declaration during his
nationally televised resignation speech.
©365Gay.com 2008
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