many times in my life i felt filled with shame and guilt and ugliness. and now, sort of to move through this, i hope to do that for these women. i am that woman in jail. no different. mcgreevey is also speaking out about the need for criminal justice reform. with 2.2 million americans either in prison or in jail, the u.s. incarcerates more of its citizens than either russia or rwanda. with 5% of the world s population, the u.s. has the highly dubious distinction of holding close to 25% of the world s prisoners. i am now joined by former new jersey governor, jim mcgreevey. go, alex! those are great stats. they re so important. they re so sad. i know this week you ve been talking a lot about gay marriage and your status as a gay american, and we want to get to that. the subject of what you re doing in prisons and the prison population, the notion of grace is so important and i want to
after coming out as a gay american and resigning from the new jersey governorship in 2004, jim mcgreevey has embarked on a second act. a spiritual counselor for women at new jersey s hudson county correctional center. it s remarkable how grace works in our lives. when we re broken, we begin to understood that there s a potential to have a different value shift, to live a different way. i get so happy, he s so uplifting. he loves reading and you can tell it s genuine. who cares what his sexual preference is? you won t find many people with that genuine love you will find in jim. his new calling use his owner experience to help rebuild the lives of others. being in the closet is a prison of sorts. for a gay man, there were so
rockefeller, these are not necessarily senators from crazily progressive states. it is in some ways a political liability. it has been for them to come out now as a testament to how quickly this issue has moved. but chad, before we let you go, i want to talk about as a gay american, what this moment has been like. i was on the plane coming down here on monday, and i felt the sense of excitement and the notion that we are at the precipice of history and that this is really a modern-day civil rights battle and the tide is fundamentally turning. from your perspective, feeling like gays are going to have an equal place at the table, what is that like for you? it is an incredible moment. but all i could think about, the plaintiffs are there representing the millions of people who can t be in that room, and all i could think about is that young person i
claire mccaskill, jay rockefeller, these are not necessarily senators from crazily progressive states. it is in some ways a political liability. it has been for them to come out now as a testament to how quickly this issue has moved. but chad, before we let you go, i want to talk about as a gay american, what this moment has been like. i was on the plane coming down here on monday, and i felt the sense of excitement and the notion that we are at the precipice of history and that this is really a modern-day civil rights battle and the tide is fundamentally turning. from your perspective, feeling like gays are going to have an equal place at the table, what is that like for you? it is an incredible moment. but all i could think about, the plaintiffs are there representing the millions of people who can t be in that room, and all i could think
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