McFarlane explained that Devin’s mother, Barbara Wright, had confronted her with a list of conditions that needed to be met before Devin would attend the party. “Apparently, he’s gluten-sensitive, or whatever,” said McFarlane. “That meant no wheat flour of any kind in anything – cookies, birthday cake, nothing. She wanted me to have my kitchen professionally cleaned to remove any ‘traces of gluten’. She even said I had to serve gluten-free beer to the adults out in the backyard. Come on.”

McFarlane initially refused and asked Wright to send Devin with his own gluten-free food. “She went berserk on me in the Post Office one day,” said McFarlane. “She lectured me about gluten peer pressure, said something about Monsanto and how gluten is deeply embedded in the colonial patriarchal food-industrial complex, handed me a copy of Wheat Belly and told me to ‘educate myself’. Jayson was crying ‘Mommy, why won’t you let Devin come to my party?’ What was I supposed to do?”

“I had the kitchen cleaned like she asked,” said McFarlane. “It cost me 500 bucks; Barbara demanded a copy of the receipt. I had carrot sticks instead of cookies, and even drove for an hour to get a quinoa and goji berry birthday cake from that hippie bakery over in East Elchies. I did everything she asked.”

On the day of the party, McFarlane received a text message from Wright saying that Devin would not be attending. “She said that she would be holding a separate party for Devin in a ‘gluten-free safe space’ so that he wouldn’t be ‘triggered’ if one of the other children snuck in a Jos Louis,” said McFarlane. “She went on about birthday parties being a social construct of an ageist hegemony, and she wouldn’t enable it with her presence. She said that Devin had ‘made his point anyway’. I mean, for **** sake! The kid’s eight!”

When asked how the party went in Devin’s absence, McFarlane said that the kids all had a good time anyway, but that the food went untouched. “Jayson said the birthday cake tasted like dog biscuits. They were all pretty glum, but then we drove them down to the Pizza Hut in Burghead, the party atmosphere returned, and everything was fine.”

McFarlane added, “I mean, come on. She almost ruined the birthday party for everyone, and then didn’t have the nerve to show up? How would people like it if, say, someone blocked a parade and wouldn’t move until all their demands were met, and then didn’t show up for the next parade anyway? Why listen to these people?”

#BLMToronto

Reference: TheStar.com – Black Lives Matter not registered for this year’s Pride parade