The Filipino community has ‘great Faith, great devotion to family’ – McGreevey (Part 2)

By Cristina DC Pastor

TF: What were people’s reactions to you?

JM: I think people looked at me askance,  the circumstances of the resignation, the fact that I was high profile. But in a nursing home nobody gives a darn who you are. They know I was governor but the things for them was…people need to be secure in their driver’s license, their Medicaid. People were also incredibly loving.

TF: Some people think what you did paved the way for acceptance of the LGBT community but of course your circumstances were different.

JM: America was changing. Parts of the world were changing. I think I was just part of the story. The LGBT they were very kind. They were people who were compassionate beyond rationale measure, they just understood where I was. And how difficult it was. I was filled with a sense of shame and embarrassment.

TF: What  was it like telling your family about the decision to come out?

JM: My older daughter Morag understood slightly. She was 12. Jacqueline was less than 2 years of age. I had this conversation with her when she was 14 or 15.  By then she had grown up. But for (wife) Dina, that was very difficult. And I well understood that.

TF: Was there anger on her part?

JM: There must have been a sense of anger,  sense of disappointment. But then the old expression…time heals all wounds. We’re now the best of friends. She’s an extraordinary mother. She got married again to a great fellow.

TF: Have you always known you were gay? Did Dina know?

JM: Yes! It’s a great question. I knew when I was 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, that I was different.

I was at a Filipino event the other day. It was a local theater group transmitting values on Filipino identity and culture. And that was what parents do, sharing values to your children. The one area that’s not necessarily shared is sexuality because parents are typically heterosexual and children discover he or she is gay not necessarily from their parents but from themselves. I just sensed there’s something different but I didn’t know what it was.

TF: Your parents didn’t sense anything?

JM: No. I played baseball.

I remember going to the Woodbridge Public Library. I remember as if it was yesterday, I went to the card catalog, I wanted to see what is homosexuality, a 9-year-old looking at the card catalog. I’ll never forget…homosexuality, see psychiatric illness. I said to myself, this is not a good thing. This is not something I wanna own. At the time I thought it was a test from God, perhaps it was a struggle that I had to overcome.

I remember being in Boy Scouts. I remember being in camp. I was with my bunkmate. I remember hearing the older boys say, ‘I think he’s a fag,’ talking about me. I didn’t realize it at first when I heard it. I compared it to almost being a tripwire. To me it became a tripwire. I can never cross this wire. It became less of a moral question than just a psychological question.

TF: Did you grow up thinking something may be wrong with you?

JM: Yeah. Definitely. I thought it was an illness. I tried to make the best of it the way a child of 9, 10, 11 can.

TF: Did you try to fight it?

JM: Definitely. I have two loving wives. (First wife) Kari (Schutz) is in British Columbia with my older daughter Morag. There’s a spectrum of feelings people have and I clearly loved (second wife) Dina and clearly loved Kari. No question. I thought I was doing the right thing, obviously, the closet is not a healthy place. I was trying to navigate it the best I could.  

TF: Why do you like being with Filipinos? (laughs)

JM: Great food (laughter). No…so many contact points. One is growing up with the community. Going to high school at St. Joseph’s in Metuchen, I had many Filipino friends. 

My mother was on the board of the Philippine Nurses Association of New Jersey and I was on the board of the Filipino Medical Society.

It’s a community that has great  Faith, has great devotion to family. I think the Filipino experience looking for independence and coming to this country actually, in many respects, mirrors the Irish experience. Except for the Filipinos it was with the U.S. In the Irish it was the UK. The Irish went into policing and nursing, the Filipinos became nurses and doctors.