It’s Pride Week in Tantramar, and this past Sunday the Sackville United Church hosted an event to celebrate its anniversary as an affirming ministry, one that proactively includes and affirms 2SLGBTQ+ people. But when minister Lloyd Bruce posted a video showing the preparation for the event online, he noticed a lot of negative and sometimes hate-filled comments start to pour in.
“A group of us gathered to decorate the sanctuary for the pride celebration on Sunday, which we have hosted every year,” says Bruce. “As we finished the decorating, we had a brainstorm… well, let’s make a little video. And so we made a little video welcoming people, celebrating pride.”
Bruce posted the video to the Sackville United Church Facebook accounts on Thursday, and by that evening, “we started receiving some very hateful comments on the video,” says Bruce, “disparaging comments towards LGBTQ-Two-Spirit+ persons, comments that disparage our support of the LGBTQ community.”
Bruce and the church’s office administrator spent “the better part of Friday and Saturday” deleting comments, says Bruce. “Eventually I just came to the point of making a comment on the video and said, point blank, that any and all negative comments will be deleted, because I’m just not entertaining that kind of foolishness.”
“It’s hurtful to us, and even more so, it’s hurtful to the LGBTQ community,” says Bruce.
Bruce says anti-LGBTQ commenting on the church’s social media is a relatively new phenomenon, which he worries has been spurred on by the New Brunswick government’s efforts to amend its own education policy 713. “My fear is that some of the conservative hateful voices have been given license by some of the political forces that are at work,” says Bruce.
This summer, New Brunswick education minister Bill Hogan changed its policy to require teachers to deny requests from students under 16 for use of preferred names or pronouns, unless they have consent from their parents. The move sparked protests by a number of education and health groups, but also support from groups such as the west coast conservative Christian Action4Canada.
On Wednesday, protests took place across the country under the banner “1 Million March for Children” with a goal of eliminating or amending sexual orientation and gender identity curriculum in schools. Bruce made the trip to Moncton on Wednesday to join the 60 or so counter-protesters somewhat outnumbered by about 300 protesters holding placards reading “Leave our kids alone” and “Say no to child grooming.” Bruce said he went be “a counter presence to the rhetoric of hate and disparaging comments.”
“I really do believe that some of this has made its way from even south of the border, where hate is given permission to fester and grow,” says Bruce, “and people feel that it’s okay to say such hurtful, negative, painful things.”
Pride Week in Tantramar continues on Friday with an author reading at the Sackville United Church, and Queer Prom at Tweedie Hall, Mount Allison University.
