Former New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey said he has no desire to return to politics since he left office two years ago amid a sex scandal but hopes his new tell-all book leads to public acceptance of his homosexuality.

McGreevey, 49, who announced his resignation in a televised speech on Aug. 12, 2004, said yesterday that he felt he had to come clean about his personal and political life.

"The danger is when people have to act out in dark shadows," he said. "If people can be who they are in the bright light of day, can celebrate their uniqueness... that's what promotes a moral fabric in a society."

He said his book contains some "messy, shameful, sinful" passages, including details of his relationship with an Israeli man that he says began when he was governor, married and a new father.

"Over the past two years my focus has been on protecting my daughter and establishing our lives as private citizens, and I will continue to do so," she wrote in an e-mail to the Associated Press yesterday.

McGreevey had remained publicly silent since resigning. He writes in the book he was forced to quit after a man he loved, whom he put on the state payroll for six-figures as homeland security adviser, threatened to reveal his homosexuality unless he was paid millions.

"Ironically, he did me a favor," McGreevey told publisher Judith Regan for her program on Sirius Satellite Radio. "[Without him], I'd still be in the closet today."

Cipel has repeatedly denied being gay and has said McGreevey forced himself on him. Cipel insists McGreevey's portrayal of their relationship is a fabrication.

He denies trying to extort money from McGreevey and said he was the victim of unwanted advances. "I was not his lover," said Cipel, 37, an Israeli citizen. "I've never met a liar like Jim McGreevey," he told the New York Times in an interview Sunday.

The Times said McGreevey would not directly address Cipel's remarks, but he described the book as a "rigorously and deeply honest" recounting of his furtive sexual exploi ts , and what he portrays as a rapturous breakthrough affair with Cipel.

"I want to recognize my obvious complicity in the relationship and to underscore the damage and suffering I caused," he said. "But for Golan, I would have never confronted my own truth."

State Sen. Raymond J. Lesniak, McGreevey's close friend, was less conciliatory. "There is a special place in hell reserved for liars like Golan Cipel," he told the Times.

On the "Oprah" show, McGreevey discussed back-alley trysts behind a Washington, D.C., synagogue and anonymous sexual contact with scores of men.

"That's not where you find love, in the back of a booth. That's where you fulfill a physical need. But that's not being godly; that's not finding love."

The former governor struggled when asked about his wife. McGreevey says he is now in a committed relationship with Australian-born financier Mark O'Donnell.

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