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, so...
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.
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.
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'm grateful for my brokenness. I'm grateful for my humility.
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 libertie...
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 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 deni...
I realized that my truest passion was for helping people change through faith in a higher power. That meant, for me, belonging to the church. Using my abilities to bring Christian doctrine to a postmodern world.
At a point in every person's life, one has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world, not as we may want to see it or hope to see it, but as it is.
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.
At different points in my life, I had grappled with the idea of going into the priesthood - in high school or law school. Where it ends, I'm not quite sure. Perhaps it ends with death, grappling with one's spirituality.
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 great...
More than anything else I recall being, or trying very deliberately to be, a perfect child. Not a Goody Two-shoes, but a kid who did good, who worked hard and met every expectation. I strove to achieve in the excessive way that psychotherapists tend ...
No relief was forthcoming from my then-Catholic faith, which said the practice of homosexuality was a 'mortal sin' subject to damnation.
I'm on the board of a national group called Faith in America. It's designed to fight religious-based bigotry.
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.
I do not believe that God tortures any person simply for its own sake. I believe that God enables all things to work for the greater good.
Throughout my life, I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself, in fact, confused.
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 o...
