Reverend Dr. Cheri DiNovo, CM, is an ordained United Church minister who performed Canada’s first legalized same-sex marriage. She is currently the minister at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre for Faith, Justice, and the Arts. Cheri is a Member of the Order of Canada, recognized for her contributions to provincial politics and her lifelong advocacy of social justice. As the former Member of Provincial Parliament for Parkdale–High Park in Ontario, Cheri passed into law more pro-LGBTQ2+ legislation than anyone in Canadian history. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Mia Jakobsen, on behalf of The Strand: In your book The Queer Evangelist, you talk about how you discovered that Christianity was inclusive of you as a woman who is a queer socialist. How exactly did that happen? How did you discover that?
Cheri DiNovo: You make your own community. Every queer person I know has done that in some way, especially if your family is not accepting, or in my case, not very functional. The people that I’ve surrounded myself with are a family of choice. You survive because you’ve got support. But it’s also the base from which you do your actions, and hopefully, that base of support grows. In my experience, it has grown substantially.
I was raised in a Christian household and went to conservative churches. Growing up, I never thought God was someone who hated people, but as I got older, I started to be aware that being gay was something the church did not approve of. So I struggled with a lot of internalized homophobia and it took me a while to learn to love myself as a queer Christian. But you were raised as an atheist, so did you experience any of that?
I didn’t have an experience with toxic religion, or with a church that labelled me in that way. I approached Christianity as a new thing. I longed for a community that exists for one reason only, and that is to learn to love each other and to look after each other. I think that’s the most important thing that all faith communities do. I wanted my children to learn the story, and I was also going through a difficult time in my own life. At that point, my life seemed to revolve around my business, and I knew enough as a social justice person that that’s not a very good way to live.
In your book, you say something that really resonated with me. “At my queerest I’m a person of faith. At my most faithful I’m most queer. There’s no separation.” Could you expand a bit more on this? How do you find your faith in your queerness and vice versa?
As a queer person in the Christian world, you’re in a minority. And as a queer Christian in the world, you’re in an even greater minority. I find that the queer people I know spend more time defending their Christianity than explaining their queerness because they’re hanging out with other LGBTQ+ folks. In a secular society like ours, there are a lot of rites in place for queer folk and it’s generally accepted that being a Christian is a weird thing. Conversations about faith are often really tricky, but I personally love them. Having been ordained for 25 years, I’ve had a whole lot of them. It’s so exciting seeing people come shyly to ask questions, watching [their] face blossom, and [seeing] many of them … go[] on to be ordained.
Although this interview is largely revolved around faith, I do want to briefly touch on your life as an activist and politician. You were very involved in Canada’s gay liberation movement (among other social movements) throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s, etc. How did it feel to perform the first legal same-sex marriage in 2001?
I didn’t have any second thoughts. If two women asked me to marry them and I couldn’t think of a reason not to, why would I not marry them? They loved each other every bit as much as any heterosexual couple I’ve ever met, and were courageous to take that step. Instead of going down to city hall where they would have been refused, I married them by banns. The registrar’s office mistook “Paula” for a man’s name and vetted it. But of course, the media got hold of it, and it all kind of blew up. It was really upheld by a few people from my then-church board who went through all that flack to support me and the couple every step of the way. None of them were gay, and I think that’s saying a lot.
You were a long-time MPP for Parkdale-High Park for the New Democratic Party, during which you passed [more] pro-LGBTQ+ legislation into law than anyone in Canadian history. How does it feel to have gone from being a young activist to making history?
It’s an honour and a privilege, and of course, never the work of one person. It’s always a community effort between activists and getting somebody with a degree of power, which I had in political office, to just listen to something. I’m just really privileged to have been able to do that. It gives you a sense of the power of action and activism. I always say to activists [working] on anything progressive that there’s no question you’ll win; the only question is when. That has definitely proven to be the case in my life. I’ve seen progressive action and movements despite all the fear and everything to the contrary.
You’re a socialist (as am I); how did your faith and the Bible further inform your beliefs, since you were already a socialist when you became a Christian?
Before being co-opted by the empire, the early Christian community shared everything they knew. I think that’s what we’re called to do as Christians. We are called to love our neighbours, and how can you love your neighbour if you’re living in a mansion and they’re living and dying on the street? The kind of Christianity we’re seeing on our streets now, carrying Confederate flags and swastikas, isn’t Christian. Part of our job as Christians is to call out heresy and folk[s] who are calling themselves Christians but aren’t doing anything remotely Christian and are rather prophets of hate.
You talk about how the community of faith changed your life; were there any specific ways it did, and do you try to emulate that for others?
Our best faith communities model what the world should look like. Talking about socialism, we model that in church. I think it’s easy for people on the left to get burned out because you’re banging your head against the wall of capitalism. People are together for a cause, but they’re not called together to love each other necessarily. So it can be a lonely and debilitating battle. We strive to be [the] kind of faith community that gives you a soft place to land and a good launching pad to everything else that you do. That’s really important.
Do you have any advice to Christians who think they might be queer?
There are lots of welcoming places for you; you’re not alone anymore. If your faith community does not welcome you, walk across the street. There’ll be another one that will. Wherever you find yourself in a faith community, be a witness. Speak your truth to power. This is true everywhere, but in faith communities as well. Ultimately the faith community might change; ours did.
How can you love yourself as a queer Christian in a world where these two identities are seemingly incompatible?
I don’t think they’re incompatible in the Bible. When you start to look at scripture, I think you have to admit that we have a queer-positive faith. We are called very simply to love each other, our neighbours, our enemies, and ourselves. There’s no “except for” in that statement. Of course it’s really difficult to do, but it doesn’t stop you from calling out hatred, injustice, and oppression. Michael Coren used to have a right-wing Christian television network, and now he’s pro same-sex marriage. You never give up on people. I think that’s the story of our lives.
Love this.