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| Jun. 17, 2004. 01:00 AM |
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Marriage activist now officiates
They educate schools on diversity issues
Woman
marries both gays and heterosexuals
PETER
KRIVEL
STAFF REPORTER
Two
years ago, Barb McDowall was unable to get married in Ontario.
Today she conducts marriage ceremonies for both gay and
heterosexual couples.
McDowall and Gail Donnelly were part of a group of 10
couples that launched an appeal against the prohibition of
same-sex marriages. On June 10 last year, they learned that an
Ontario court ruled that the prohibition is illegal and three
days later they were married.
It's all part of what she says is a natural progression
in her life, which has also become a quest to pursue equal
rights for gays and lesbians through personal counselling and
working on diversity issues with Toronto-area schools.
McDowall officiates at weddings through All Seasons
Weddings (http://www.allseasonsweddings.com/), which
conducts non-denominational marriages. Four of the seven
weddings she's performed have been gay couples.
"In one marriage I helped out with a Presbyterian
minister whose church didn't allow her to marry same-sex
couples," McDowall says.
"So the two of us presided and I was the officiate. The
couple wanted her. It was very important for her to be there.
And I was there to make it happen the way they wanted."
Actually McDowall and Donnelly went through a wedding
ceremony themselves three years earlier in a marriage that had
no legal standing even though they called it a marriage.
"I had met Gail and fell in love with her and this was
the next step," she says of that first marriage ceremony.
"We wanted to make a public declaration through a
ceremony. That's what I did when I married my husband, so it
was a natural step. It was very symbolic.
``I never realized that we would ever have the
opportunity to get legally married."
At the time McDowall was a deacon and assisted with
religious services at Metropolitan Community Church, one of
the first in Toronto to openly support a gay parish.
It was there she saw many people struggling with their
identities and what it means to be gay.
`Things have
moved ahead far faster than what we were ever led to
believe'
Barb McDowall,
Interfaith minister and activist
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"And also people
struggling with spirituality, which for many gay, lesbian, bi
and transgendered people isn't even an option," she says.
Their lives ``have been places of great shame and pain
and worse. The message has been clear that they're not welcome
and loved; that they're alone."
She took counselling training from the Coaches Training
Institute in California and also became an ordained interfaith
minister from The New Seminary in New York, since there is
nothing comparable offered in Canada.
"As an interfaith minister, I'm able to speak to a
broader perspective than just a Christian one, or a Catholic
one or whatever," she says.
"The major problems I see in the people who come to me
are relationships, and the relationship they have with
themselves.
"Most of the time they don't have a clue.
"And that gets played out in their relationships
everywhere, whether at work or their private lives or family."
McDowall and Donnelly, who works for the Ontario
Ministry of Health, have also conducted diversity awareness
workshops at Toronto and Peel high schools. McDowell is also
working with public and Catholic schools in Halton on the
issue of homophobia.
"There is a lot of not recognizing how hurtful language
is," she says.
"It's students not realizing that terms like `gay,'
`fag' and `homo' are just as offensive as using the `N' word."
McDowall says she can't believe how far Canada has come
since that June day in 2000 when she and Donnelly went through
a ceremony that had no meaning other than a commitment to each
other.
"Things have moved ahead far faster than what we were
ever led to believe," she says.
"As we get out and speak about what it means, it opens
the door for other support.
"A lot of our human rights work is to dialogue with
people who don't necessarily support our point of view and
listen to each other."
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