Senator delivers emotional tribute
Murray Sinclair describes life with gay daughter
OTTAWA— Sen. Murray Sinclair, judge, aboriginal leader and father, invoked paternal pride, unspoken fears for his openly gay daughter and traditional indigenous respect for “two-spirit” people in a tribute to victims of the Orlando massacre.
Sinclair, the former head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission appointed to the senate as an independent by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, rose in the red chamber after a moment of silence Monday.
As the Orlando tragedy was unfolding after midnight Saturday night, he said the Sinclair family happened to be celebrating his “openly gay” daughter’s 33rd birthday.
“At almost the same moment, an American filled with hate for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender, queer and two-spirit people carried his legally purchased machine gun and pistol into a bar in Orlando, Fla., and started killing everyone he could,” Sinclair said.
Sinclair said the only reason Omar Mateen’s victims were targeted was because they were “celebrating Pride month and were openly gay.”
Americans and others will examine the shooter’s connection to Islamist terrorism, his ability to purchase, own and carry guns, despite his history of mental disturbance and violence, he said, adding there were plenty of “political footballs” to be kicked around.
But Sinclair said his thoughts were for the “49 mothers and fathers whose hearts are broken and whose lives have been torn asunder” and for the siblings “whose anger and tears may never end.”
He said his family could have been “and could be one of them.”
His statement in the upper chamber spoke volumes.
“When my daughter spoke to us as a young teenager of her recognition of who she was, we stood beside her and gave her every assurance of our love and of her right to be open about what she was. What my wife and I could not bring ourselves to discuss with her, or between ourselves, at that moment was that she had just enhanced her risk of danger.”
He said she was already “living a life of enhanced danger just by being fe- male,” increased by the fact that “she was in a higher at-risk group because she was an indigenous woman.”
“We told her about the fact that among indigenous people, being a two spirit was traditionally a position of respect and honour. Ceremonies, we have been taught, are enhanced if done by or with two-spirit people present, for it is believed that they embody the strengths and spirits of both man and woman and bring a special healing power and medicine to every special event.”
Sinclair said his daughter has brought “great respect” to his family.
“We are said to be blessed by having her as a daughter because she is twospirit, and we feel so. We adopted another two-spirit daughter into our family as well, whose partner just gave birth to our newest grandson. He will be raised by two-spirit parents. As parents of two spirits, we want to protect our children from the bullying, the offensive comments, the disparaging remarks and the physical and verbal abuses that every member of the LGBTQ2S experiences. We have learned to shield them and to heal them when our shields prove insufficient.”
But, Sinclair said, “society’s dislike and disrespect for those who are gay and transgender has been a part of Western thinking for many generations. The enhancement and recognition of their right to be who they are and their right to public protection of those rights does not sit well with far too many people, the shooter in this case being representative of that.”
He said his and his wife’s fears for his children remain.
“What we fear the most is that someone will murder them just for being gay. The belief that such an event could occur would be enough for many to discourage their children from coming out, and it would also discourage the children themselves. So in our moment of silence, I thought of the parents. We as a society have all lost something as a civilized people in this act of mass murder, but they have lost more than we can ever know.”