David Norris and an Ideal's Downfall

Polls in July showed Ireland on the verge of becoming the first country to elect an openly gay man as president. The ascension of civil rights champion Sen. David Norris would have been a chance, he promised, to challenge homophobia worldwide while signaling his countrymen's belief in diversity and fair play.

And maybe it would have been inspirational, had Norris's campaign not unraveled under the weight of a scandal -- the kind that is any gay candidate's worst nightmare.

Norris is best known in Ireland for driving a stake into laws criminalizing homosexuality. And he is widely described as the quintessential Irishman, a professor and expert on Irish novelist and poet James Joyce.

Norris came out ahead of every other candidate in repeated public opinion polls until it was discovered this year that the senator sent a letter in 1997 on official stationery begging Israeli authorities for clemency on behalf of his then partner, Israeli human rights activist Ezra Nawi. That year Nawi was convicted in the 1992 statutory rape of a 15-year-old Palestinian boy. (In the letter Norris claimed Nawi had been entrapped.) Not only did Norris's letter lack any expression of sympathy for the boy, it also failed to disclose his relationship with Nawi. The descent into political muck sparked a string of resignations among Norris's key campaign staff. Suddenly he lacked even the basic support required by Irish law to put his name on the ballot, so he quit the race August 2.

"I do regret giving the impression that I did not have sufficient compassion for the victim of Ezra's crime," Norris said while standing before a crush of reporters and cameras. "I accept that more than a decade and a half later, when I have now reviewed the issue and am not emotionally involved, when I am not afraid that Ezra might take his own life, I see that I was wrong."

Compounding the public relations disaster was confusion created by a resurrected 2002 interview, during which Norris defended ancient pederasty "as practiced by the Greeks...where it is an older man introducing a younger man or boy to adult life."

Norris said the statement was academic and misconstrued by his opponents. But for a country shaken by the molestation crisis in the Catholic Church, the combination of scandals was of the worst nature and possible timing.

Journalist Joe Jackson interviewed Norris for Ireland's Sunday Independent and describes meeting a stout leader who wept at the thought of being cast by his opponents as a pedophilia sympathizer. Jackson, who wrote a book about the campaign, David Norris: Trial by Media, (joejacksonjournalist.com) says it was Norris's tragic flaw as a "stupid romantic" that led to his downfall. Norris was so "blinded by love," Jackson says, that he overlooked years of cheating until Nawi ultimately left him in 2001. That idealism extended to his own campaign, Jackson insists, which Norris mounted as an independent despite the obvious handicap it posed to not be backed by a political party.

In what seemed to be the end of the story, at a news conference held outside his home in Dublin, Norris claimed his failed candidacy had been worthwhile.

"It is now possible for a gay person to be seen as a viable candidate for the highest office in the land," he said. "I would have loved to have had the opportunity as president of Ireland to extend that to the service of the entire people, but that is no longer possible."

Or, so he thought.

What might have ended as a tale of a ruined candidate could instead become a redemption story. The Independentreports that Norris will re-enter the race this week carried by a fresh round of encouraging polls that show the public still backs his candidacy. The former frontrunner would immediately return as the race's leader, with 40% saying in the most recent poll that they would support a Norris comeback.