Photo courtesy of Cheri DiNovo.

Former politician Cheri DiNovo was raised an agnostic atheist and, from an early age, thought religion was silly. “I didn’t understand why people were religious,” she says. “I always wanted to have that conversation, but was embarrassed to ask because I saw that some of the Christians I knew were very smart people who did pretty amazing things. So how could they believe all this stuff?”

After her husband died in a traffic accident in the early 1990s, asking her faithful friends why they believe seemed less taboo. “I really got the experience of the faith community, as well as the powerful sense that we were not alone, and that it was love that was going to see [me and my children] through,” she says. “It wasn’t just up to me.”

The former Parkdale-High Park MPP left politics at the end of 2017 after an 11-year career that included tabling the most bills that had all three parties’ support, a feat that gave her the nickname “queen of tri-party bills.” She is now the minister at Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church in downtown Toronto. With her blond blunt-cut bob and clerical collar, she doesn’t look like a typical minister—and she isn’t one. As a relatively recent convert and an openly bisexual woman, DiNovo is the antithesis to the conservativism the Bible and Christianity are known for. And although the United Church is welcoming of the queer community, she recognizes the often fractured relationship it has with the church.

“Because I grew up without a religion, I didn’t really have the experience of a toxic religious background,” she says. “But so many of the people I meet do, especially from the queer community. That is a crying shame. That is horrendous.”

For queer Christians, DiNovo’s ministership is a godsend. In DiNovo’s new group of churchgoers, she estimates a quarter of the new members are from the queer community, and, through the group, are navigating through their negative past experiences with religion.

The United Church has technically accepted LGBTQ people since the late 1980s—a decision DiNovo estimates cost them a third of its members—but she is still working toward creating a safe and open space for the community. “We’re trying to be very intentional about being inclusive,” she says. In March, DiNovo asked people from the Trans Women’s Association to give the readings for a Lent service. The women spoke on the work they do and how the story of the crucifixion relates to LGBTQ people. “Of course, we’re not always perfect,” says DiNovo, “but that intentionality I think also builds an inclusive community.”

DiNovo has always been vocal about her left-leaning values as they pertain to religion. On Twitter, she’s referred to Jesus as “non-binary,” “racialized,” “the Jew,” and “the Communist.” In one of her first sermons, she said the apostle Paul was one of the reasons she converted to Christianity, and in the same breath she called him out for being misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-sex work. She believes people who use the Bible to spread hate are not actually reading it, that they are instead “[taking] a line out here, a line out there, and [using] it to beat our neighbour over the head with.”

DiNovo herself has been attacked for these values. Her 2017 TEDx Talk on why the Bible is a queer-positive book attracted disdainful comments from some Christian viewers, ranging from exhaustive rants about DiNovo’s “worldly approach” to the succinct “What a horrible woman!”

In another incident, following the first legal same-sex marriage in North America, which she officiated in 2001, she was berated on a homophobic website. The headline of the post reads, “The Sodomite Lesbian Juggernaut Continues to Roll!” with an image of a military tank rolling below the headline. “At the time, I thought that would make great T-shirts!” she says with a laugh.

Joking aside, DiNovo is quick to show empathy to a community that’s been historically deprived of it. “We need safe spaces. We need safe religious spaces,” she says. In a small way, she does that at the beginning of every sermon, which she opens saying: “Welcome to you, whatever you believe, whatever you don’t believe, whatever you’ve done, whatever you’ve left undone, whomever you love.”

DiNovo recalls an older man who wanted to become a minister in the 1970s, but had stopped himself from doing so because he was gay. “He’s now coming out to church—and that was the reason, he said, hearing that welcome,” says DiNovo. “He said, ‘I finally heard what I wanted to hear.’”

Over 1,000 people walked from Nathan Phillips Square to Queen’s park this past Saturday. Some identified as feminists, some identified as sluts and others called themselves allies. SlutWalk Toronto 2014 was the third for the city since it began in 2011. Now, SlutWalk has become an annual event in 200 cities world over.

The first SlutWalk Toronto was held at Queen’s Park April 3, 2011, with a few thousand participants. It began as a protest in response to what a Toronto police officer told a group of students while speaking at York Univeristy’s Osgoode Hall Law School.”I’ve been told I’m not supposed to say this,” said Constable Michael Sanguinetti at the time. “However, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.”

Not only did he say it, he was trained not to, and did it anyway, raising questions about how Toronto police are trained to help victims of sexual violence; perhaps explaining why only six percent of sexual assaults are reported.

Today, the walk is about ending sexual violence, slut shaming and victim blaming, as well as anti-oppression, urging us to think critically about how power dynamics and privileges impact individuals, communities and larger systems.

On June 12, after participants walked chanting things like, “Yes means fuck me, no means fuck you,” they settled at Queen’s Park to listen to speakers like NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo who spoke about trans rights bill Toby’s Act (Bill 33) and White Ribbon Campaign facilitator Jeff Perera, “Male-identified people, young men and boys, need to hear these everyday stories and experiences,” he said. “Saying ‘not all men’ is not helpful. We need to listen and we need to reflect.”

Other speakers included Maggie’s Toronto coordinator Monica Forrester, “As a trans woman I’ve always experienced slut shaming. My body is beautiful and I’m proud,” she told the crowd. Kira Andry spoke about the injustices for trans survivors in the legal system, despite the rainbow coloured triangle sticker in courtrooms shallowly proclaiming a safe space.

The Canadian Mental Health Association reports, “An Ontario-based study of trans people found that 20 pe cent had experienced physical or sexual assault due to their identity, and that 34 percent were subjected to verbal threats or harassment.”

Among those who also spoke were: Blu Waters, an elder on the York University campus; GRIND Toronto founder Akio Maroon; Flo Jo, a sex worker speaking out against Bill C-36 ;and SlutWalk cofounder Heather Jarvis. Queer writer and comedian Catherine McCormick acted as MC.

The afternoon was educational in intersectional feminism and feminist issues, some that have been unresolved for decades: “Forty-four years ago I was marching here as a feminist with a sign that said ‘Our bodies Our choice,'” DiNovo told those gathered. She doesn’t want to be doing the same thing another 20 years from now.

Aside from the educational aspect, it was an empowering gathering of empathy and solidarity, a time when one can point at a fellow walker’s sign, telling their own story of assault, and say, “Me too.”

As for the name, re-appropriation of “slut” has never been necessary to support the walk. It is about throwing a word—in a world where so many hateful words against women exist in many different languages—back at those who use it like venom.

“We’ve started a lot of conversations surrounding sexual violence, victim-blaming and rape culture,” says SlutWalk Toronto organizer Natalee Brouse. “It’s now up to us to use this platform for more nuanced conversations about who is affected by sexual violence, how we as a culture and society harm rape survivors, and what we can do to change that.”