Mental health meeting fell short
Members of the LGBTQ community felt left out of meeting; transgender boy committed suicide
Monday night’s information meeting about mental health and bullying in North Sydney left a sour taste in the mouths of some people who felt the crowd was too angry and the LGBTQ community was excluded in the conversation.
Madonna Doucette, a LGBTQ community educator with the Ally Centre of Cape Breton, is one of them.
“I went to the meeting expecting to hear a conversation about the systemic problems we have in Cape Breton that lead to suicides,” she said.
“For me that means we should have been talking about poverty, addictions, discrimination that exist out there for minority groups.”
Doucette and Mary McPhee, her partner, both felt the meeting was unproductive and left out some important issues.
“They talked about the bullies as if they are some sort of aliens. I mean, our kids who are doing the bullying, that’s their own cry for help,” Doucette explained, evidently frustrated and upset.
“Is anyone thinking of the ramification and guilt all of this is having on them? If they were to take their own lives, is that an acceptable death in their minds?”
McPhee, whose daughter was bullied to the point where she was suicidal and taken from school to the hospital, agreed.
“It’s almost like there’s no connection anymore, everyone is angry and they just want to attack these bullies. But these
bullies are people too. They are kids. There is something going on in their lives.”
However, the tipping point for the two was when Reverend Julio Martin addressed the crowd with his message that God is love, which included a slide show which featured a graphic image that said man plus woman equals love which equals God.
“I’m a gay woman. Where do we fit in that equation the priest was talking about? I work with LGBTQ youth. Where do they fit in that equation?” asked Doucette, passionately.
McPhee she felt excluded and fearful.
“I don’t get intimidated and fearful, but that night I felt intimidated and scared … it felt like a mob mentality in there.”
However, it wasn’t Martin’s intention to exclude anyone. In fact, he is very open in his support of the LGBTQ community and even started blessing samesex couples in 1994 in Mexico City, before the church had condoned it.
“For our brothers and sisters of the LGBTQ community, in this church and with this priest, you are always seen as children of God just like everyone else,” said the Mexican-born Anglican priest, who lived in Jasper, Alberta, before taking over St. John the Baptist Church in North Sydney two years ago.
Martin said the slide was meant to be a generic reminder that love is what God wants. And that bullying is wrong in the eyes of Christianity.