Scary

Mackinac Island has a very active LGBTQ+ advocacy group, aptly named Straits Pride. This group, in addition to providing activities for the LGBTQ+ community and their allies, provides support to queer identifying folks in the Straits of Mackinac region of Michigan. Straits Pride is made up of good people who volunteer their time for a cause they believe in. 

On Saturday they hosted a Drag Bingo event at the Mackinac Island Community Hall. (Unfamiliar with Drag Bingo? It's simple: it's bingo called by a drag queen  for entertainment.) Our Bingo-Calling-Queen, Ester Flonaze, is a sassy Italian grandma, and she's a hoot.  Anyway... 

Straits Pride was hosting a bingo at the Mackinac Island Community Hall, until the building (and several blocks in each direction) had to evacuate due to a bomb threat. Yeah, you read that right - a bomb threat on Mackinac Island. Someone decided that the best way to share their feelings about drag, Straits Pride, LGBTQ+ people, or bingo, was to threaten to blow up the building. (And to be honest, I'm making an assumption here. I don't know how the threat came in, how it was worded, etc. Perhaps it was against the City of Mackinac Island, but I doubt it - it would have to be one hell of a coincidence that a drag bingo just happened to be going on at that time.)

When the person made the threat did they think about what would happen?  Sure, it disrupted bingo,  but it also impacted numerous vacations, and inconvenienced quite a few island employees who couldn't go home to eat dinner or sleep. Some of those people are just fine; others were traumatized. He, and again I'm making an assumption here, hurt a whole lot more people than the queer folks playing bingo. 

You may disagree with the word "traumatized," because it wasn't a credible threat, but during the evacuation,  we didn't know that. The police couldn't just say, "Oh yeah, it was probably just some whack-job out to get the gays. No worries; everyone go back to your hotel rooms, it'll be fine." They had to take it seriously until the bomb-sniffing dog could be brought over from the mainland and conform the building was safe to reenter. And, taking it seriously meant that all of Mackinac's first responders were called in to work. All of them. 

I left bingo and walked home in a fog. A bomb threat? On Mackinac? Really? 

On Sunday I couldn't concentrate. I flitted about from one thing to another, not finishing anything and feeling generally "off." I couldn't focus long enough to sew, or read, or watch TV, or clean; and anyone who knows me knows that is very out of character. Monday morning it finally dawned on me that I was really upset and struggling to process what had happened. I'm fine now, but it took a couple of days. (This experience has given me a new-found respect for people who go through significant traumatic events in their life.)

I'm still left to wonder what was this person's end goal? Because if they think Straits Pride will shrink into the background, they're sadly mistaken. This was SP's response:

I hope they catch the guy who did this; which, let's be honest, they probably won't. I wonder how he would feel if a threat was sent in against an event his wife or children we involved with. Too bad we just all can't follow Matthew 7:12 - "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you..." 

It sounds so simple...