Supporting LGBTQ2 youth saves lives, says mom from Sioux Lookout, Ont.

Sylvia Davis says sometimes she refers to herself as "post-evangelical'.

It's a label the Anishinaabe mom from Sioux Lookout, Ont., adopted after her oldest son came out to her as gay seven years ago and the family decided they had to leave the church Davis was raised in. Her youngest child has since come out as trans.

Davis turned to the internet to help her understand her kids and to make peace with her faith. Now she and Angie Morris, another First Nations mom of queer kids, have created a support group to help other parents understand and cherish their LGBTQ2 kids.

"To be an affirming family, that could mean someone's life is spared," she said.

It can be uncomfortable for parents to confront their personal biases against LGBTQ2 people, especially when those biases are rooted in colonization or Christianity, said Davis, who is a member of Lac Seul First Nation.

"Things shifted for us because we knew we wanted our son to feel loved and safe in any environment we were bringing him into," she said. "We soon found that the evangelical [Christian] churches in the area, in Sioux Lookout in particular, were not safe spaces for him."

Davis she could not reconcile the views she was hearing from the pulpit — that homosexuality is a sin — with the knowledge her son was born gay and her belief in a Creator who made him that way. 

"We just felt like it was probably better to take our faith and spiritual journey elsewhere," she said. Soon she found a transgender Bible scholar online who explained the creation story in non-binary terms.

"Like God created the day and the night, what about the dawn and the dusk and the moments in between?," she asks. "God created the land and the sea, what about the muskeg and the marshes and the beaches, it's not either/or, it's both/and."

"So what if Adam and Eve were created on the ends of the gender spectrum and there are all the people in between," she said. "Having heard it like that, I was just like 'wow, that makes so much sense to me.'"

In July and August, Davis held workshops for staff at Tikanagan Child and Family Services to help them better understand LGBTQ2 youth. She and Morris are also compiling a library of resources to share with parents of LGBTQ2 kids.

Davis said she sees a change in attitudes, but more work needs to be done.

"I wish that there was more discussion and more willingness to listen, especially for leadership who might not understand its damaging for someone to pretend they're someone they're not," she said.

Mostly, Davis said she sees hope in how far her kids, now 18 and 21, have come from the early days of their coming out and all the worry about how the world would treat them.

"I look at my two kids and their friend circles and the support they've lent to other people and I kind of marvel at them," she said. 

"I don't care what the world thinks of them and neither do they," she added. "I think it's because they are good in the skin they're in, in the world right now."