Letters to the Editor

SELFISH DECISION
How very disappointing of NMG to steal Glamstand from BGF for fiscal restructuring. What a selfish act to perform on an event that satisfies so many local and international patrons and services a vital community need.
Glamstand helps bring life to a poorly produced and stale parade (most participants excluded) by entertaining inclusively. NMG’s festival, parties and events are lacklustre and corporate and this is reflected in a lack of community spirit, hence reduced crowd numbers.
BGF have had a substantial increase in the distribution of financial assistance in the past year and more than doubled new clients seeking a range of assistance. The loss of these funds will make a dramatic impact on their ability to provide direct assistance to people living with HIV. It’s very bad timing and bad form, NMG.
Interesting to note that BGF has paid fees to Mardi Gras for the past 14 years and that the Glamstand was BGF’s idea in the first place.
We see too that NMG have secured state funding and that they could quite easily add seats of their own if they wanted to. This would suit the event more than their pretentious VIP area that stinks of elitism.
The BGF Glamstand has become a popular, precious and firmly entrenched Festival event. It’s a highlight. Please don’t rip it out and deny the great work done by BGF.
Or diminish the Parade even further.
-” Peter Eyers and Tobin Saunders (Vanessa Wagner), Glamstand hosts 2006, 2007 and 2008.

PUBLIC REVIEW
Mardi Gras reviews BGF Glamstand -“ it is now time the community reviews its support of New Mardi Gras.
How dare an arrogant and disconnected board of NMG reclaim what has never been theirs in the first place. By removing the last opportunity for much-needed fundraising by a community organisation, NMG will sever its already tenuous connection with our community.
The solution is simple, rethink your support and commitment to this greedy NMG board. If 1000 people refused to go to the party and donated the cost of the ticket to BGF, the funding lost from Glamstand would be replaced. If 5000 people did the same, not only would there be significant funding for BGF to make a real difference in our community, it would send a strong and effective message to NMG that the community will not tolerate such opportunistic greed and such action is at their financial peril.
David Imrie and the board of NMG do not deserve our support. BGF, on the other hand, does.
-” Wayne, Surry Hills

COUNTRY PLEA
As a country boy, I would like to ask the Sydney gay community to think about the issue of being gay in the country.
My boyfriend and I come to Sydney at weekends to escape the homophobia and discrimination in the country town where we live.
We would like the gay community to make a bigger effort to help country gays and lesbians who are still having to hide our true selves in fear of being gay-bashed by country town boys.
Why is it, in 2008, gays and lesbians still fear coming out of our closets?
While we love Sydney, we would also like to stay together as young gay men in our country town.
As gays and lesbians, we could do a lot more to educate Australians about homosexuality.
-” Gerry and Nick, South Coast

GLEESON’S PARTNER
Extraordinary! Three hundred-odd words on the death of James Gleeson and you couldn’t spare even half a dozen to acknowledge Frank O’Keefe, his partner of sixty-odd years!
This isn’t just an oversight, it’s an absolute insult, and unacceptable in a paper that trumpets its place in the Sydney gay community as a journal of record.
In our rush to demand marriage rights, let us never forgot the hundreds of gay men and lesbians who formed and sustained partnerships in virulent times, paving the way for us in their refusal to be anything but what they were -” queens and dykes who loved and lived together, often in relationships that have lasted well past the average of straight partnerships of the same generation and indeed I would bet a damned sight longer than the marriages of young moderns.
-” Paul, Petersham

CATEGORIES
Before I came to this country I was of the generation who thought they were a friend of Skippy the Kangaroo and his friends and I thought of people far away while listening to the song Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport wondering what the jingoistic rhymes meant. Though I don’t like putting people into categories, I thought the straights south of the equator must be pretty laidback and cool people.
Eventually I did come Down Under and found out that the ditties and the camaraderie weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Some people seemed to think I was a CanSIR who would potentially steal and pillage their women and others thought I was a Yank who thought his power was in his pistol.
I sought solace amongst gays of both genders before we had the Body Politics war, becoming even more into GLBTI categories. After losing lovers and friends and even some adversaries I respected to AIDS and HIV, I distanced myself from everyone as I thought of our community becoming even more divided.
Ignorance is bliss, as the saying went -”this placeboed some people, though the saying wasn’t necessarily the answer.
-” Layne, Surry Hills

MENTORING
I read Phil Scotts’s article (SSO 941) with great interest this morning and feel compelled to write to you about my experience in terms of mentors.
I came out at 15, was at Stonewall at 17, was in my current relationship at 18 and had a lot of fun getting to that point, but never really had a mentor, in fact the idea of speaking to older gay mean frightened me a little, because of stories I had heard from fellow friends, and one unpleasant person who was rather horrible to me on personals websites and ruined it for the rest of them as it were.
A lot of this changed for me when I joined the Mardi Gras Parade Working Group and got to know some particularly inspirational people, in particular Liz Dods and Graeme Browning. Knowing these two people, and learning from them about the history of our community and how we can tackle the future has been amazing, and makes me understand how important it is to celebrate who I am, not just my sexuality, but every part of me.
Many of my friends and people who I know from out and about see me at parties or clubs and pubs sitting and talking to these people, and wonder why I am not out on the dance floor looking at pretty boys, but if they stayed long enough to listen to the conversation we were having, or hear how loud she makes me laugh, they would understand.
I have found mentors to be very, very important to me growing up and understanding my place in this community.
-” Brandon, Sydney

TOO RESTRICTIVE
In this crazy over-restricted world, can’t we at least have a place where people can dance at 4am if they want to? Curfews are crook, telling grown adults when to go to bed. Stop this tyrannical imposition on individuals’ personal choices and (regular or occasional) nocturnal lifestyles.
-” norrie mAy-welby, Redfern

A DIFFERENT VIEW
Imagine you are a gay man in your 80s, you have lived through the era when shock treatment, lobotomy, blackmail, sacking from your job, criminal conviction and potentially prison, were all part and parcel of being attracted to the same sex.
You are now living with your same-sex partner at home. He is also in his 80s and is frail and needing community aged care package-related services. You both live on the age pension.
You are not out to anyone, not to your relatives, or to your service providers, who are nice enough, but you are not about to take the risk.

The Government finally passes the same-sex relationships reforms, including amendments to the Aged Care Act. You don’t list yourselves on any register and you do nothing to declare your relationship, you never have and you can’t take the risk of losing the support of family members you know to be very judgmental.
Flash forward five years, your partner is assessed as needing to go into residential care.
You have to fill in the five steps to residential care kit, and be assessed by Centrelink for residential care payments and fees.
The aged care industry is still largely exempt from anti-discrimination legislation and there is research evidence that gays in residential care are afraid to assert their rights. There is no GLBT advocacy officer you can call.
If you are not in one of a very tight list of defined relationships to the person going into residential care, your house will be counted into the assets test, meaning you will have to pay much more in fees and charges, and may even have to sell your home to afford these.
You are between a rock and a hard place -” disclose now and have Centrelink come for five years back payment of benefits to two singles rather than a couple, or don’t disclose and lose your house, or at least pay more than others with the same assets and income.

When the time comes and the boomers need nursing homes, what steps will we have taken to ensure that no one is afraid or forced back in the closet?
-” Dr Jo Harrison, Exeter

DRINK WARNING
I’m writing to warn others that even if you are cautious you can still have your drink spiked.
Over three weeks, on different occasions, two of my friends have had something put in their drink.
Luckily they escaped becoming the victims of violence, but it affected them emotionally – after all, who do you trust when you go out?
-”­ Bettina, Stanmore