A 17-year-old gay teenager from New Westminster is reeling after the minister of her church called her a poor role model for posing for a newspaper photograph for the city’s first-ever Pride celebration.

A picture of Tory Inglis and two gay men appeared in a front-page story June 12 in New Westminster’s Royal City Record newspaper.

About a month later, the minister at First Presbyterian Church, which she had attended all her life, called and asked to meet to discuss her involvement in the Pride event.

She said she met the minister and a female member of the church the next day, and she was told how she was promoting an improper lifestyle.

“Basically, they told me that I wasn’t being a positive role model for the youth in the church and the younger children, and that I was promoting a sexual lifestyle,” Tory told The Province Wednesday.

“I was one of the leaders of the junior youth group, and it’s not like every week I went up in front of the youth and said, ‘All right, let’s talk about how I’m gay this week.’”

She knew the church was against gay marriage, but didn’t think her posing for the photograph would create such a stir.

“I was so upset. I was crying during points of the meeting,” she said. “I’ve gone there ever since I was born. I was baptised there.

So it’s really hard to hear from this place where I was pretty much raised that I was now different.”

The minister told her the church would prefer if she withdraw from the group that organized the Pride events, Tory said, but she refused and withdrew her membership from the church instead.

“Above all, I want to promote peace and love and acceptance,” Tory said. “And in a place that condemns people for loving, I would much rather be in a place that accepts people for who they are.”

Tory’s father and her mother, Karen Inglis, have also left the church because of the situation.

“I never thought they’d say she’s not a good role model, because she is, and we’ve raised her to be that way,” Karen said. “Our belief is that God created us to be who we are, and I’ve raised her to be true to who she is.”

It was Tory’s public display in the newspaper that seems to have got the backs up of senior church officials, the family believes.

“[The minister] said because it became public knowledge, we have to act on it,” Karen said.

Tory said her family has received plenty of phone calls from other church members expressing their support.
The teen said she will look for a new church come the fall. She said she knows that was one church’s view, and others are more accepting.

Vance McFadyen, vice-president of the Royal City Pride Society, has known Tory for four months and describes her as intelligent, quiet and shy. McFadyen was surprised and disappointed to hear how the church reacted to her story.

“I was shocked that she had to make this decision. She shouldn’t have had to make the decision and it’s unfortunate that her church elders took the position that they did,” he said. “It’s a terrible way to treat a person, especially such a nice person like Tory.”

Calls made by The Province to the church were not returned.

■ New Westminster’s first pride event, set for Aug. 7, is called Diversity: Celebrating our Chosen Families. It follows the 600,000 people who attended Vancouver’s Pride Parade on Aug. 1. Events will include a Hills and Heels fundraiser, flag-raising ceremony and family-oriented festival at Tipperary Park.

Source: LAURA BAZIUK, The Province: Thursday, August 5, 2010
— with files from Jennifer Saltman and The Royal City Record