Letters to the Editor

BE VERY AFRAID
Same-sex relationship reforms to the Social Security Act may sound good but they will be disastrous for some. Next July the lives of many in the community will change dramatically. Centrelink beneficiaries will be forced to declare their homosexual relationships.

Couples disclosing their homosexuality, where each received a benefit, will have their payments reduced.
The situation is more drastic for couples where one person is working. People receiving disability support pension and age pension now, who have brought some independent means to their relationships over perhaps years or decades, will be driven into partial or total financial dependency on their partners perhaps for the first time.

The dependency will be total as these individuals also lose all secondary entitlements (such as travel concessions, disability employment programs or the Program of Appliances for People with Disability to name a few).

While high earners may cope with this change in the dynamic of their relationship, low income earners may see their collective income halved, moving them further into the working poor, and a choice between poverty together or ending the relationship. The partner’s income level at which age pension begins to reduce is very low. Centrelink has an online benefit rate calculator. If you are affected by these reforms I encourage you to use the calculator.

It doesn’t matter how you might have structured your assets and income over the years when our relationships were not legal. None of your existing commitments, say, loan repayments, high medical or disability costs, the support of an adult child at university, the costs of caring for dying friends or an ageing parent will matter or be considered in this assessment of your income.

And that’s not all the working partner has in store for them. Centrelink surveillance of their earnings and assets: I have worked hard, despite my own disability, to be independent for so many years and to countenance a forced relationship with Centrelink, at this stage of my life, makes me contemplate suicide.

Other groups in the community are vulnerable. Former lovers who live together as friends, just long-term friends are vulnerable. Gay men or lesbians or queers who share accommodation, you could have the Centrelink dogs sniffing around you, going through your affairs.

If you are likely to be affected or if you’re unsure, you might reconsider how much information or images about your homosexual relationships you have in the public domain at the moment, such as on Facebook or Flickr. You might consider also closing joint accounts in share houses, even if they are useful for shopping and shared utilities. They may be used against you.

Intelligence reports that the usual consultants are faking consultation with the GLBTQ community and trawling for the right spin. Think carefully about cooperating with these parasites. If you do, use a false name.

Many aspects of this remind me of the Northern Territory intervention, particularly the relationship between the controlling of income and sexual and social behaviour. I foresee many relationships ending. It’s going to get very much harder for GLBTQ people with disabilities who are on income support to find partners and form relationships. That’s very hard in our community already.

At this stage at our house it looks like we’re going to have to separate, which after 30 years is fucking sad. The back door criminalisation of our relationships is the ultimate irony, particularly after the decades-long fight against the ideology of compulsory heterosexuality.

To the bourgeois gay men and lesbians who have championed these reforms, all shame on you. The blood will be on your hands too.

-” David, Sydney

SO LONG
We were saddened to learn of the death of Marie Fisher on November 16 (SSO 945). Marie was a longtime supporter of SPAIDS Memorial Groves and had attended the AIDS tree plantings from the very first ones in 1994.

She also represented various lesbian, gay and transgender groups at ADB Consultations and was a friendly presence at so many community events.

We shall miss seeing you, Marie, at the 2009 AIDS planting. We shall plant a tree especially for you.

-” Mannie and Ken, Sydney Park AIDS Memorial Groves.

CIVIL LIBERTIES
It is truly bizarre that there are some homosexual people expressing, at the very least, glib indifference towards the concept of gay marriage.

It is an important rights issue for many reasons, not the least of which is the fundamental importance of a formal recognition of a same-sex union by the state, in whatever form that takes.

Homosexual people must be given the choice. Let me tell you one important reason why.

A few years ago my long-term partner passed away quite suddenly. We cohabited for many years, were joint proprietors of our primary residence, and had other vested assets. Following his passing, there was literally an onslaught of contention from his family regarding the substantial assets he left behind. Of course, they did not perceive our relationship to be a real one.

Dealing with his death was bad enough. But to then have to prove our relationship with numerous statutory declarations from close friends, certified copies of things such as water bills etc, was a truly undignified and upsetting experience. One simple marriage certificate would have taken care of all that.

Changes to the Marriage Act may not even be necessary. The implementation of an all-encompassing Civil Union Act, however, which formally recognises a union regardless of the gender a person identifies, is a very important rights issue, not just for homosexual people, but for transgender and intersex individuals who may not necessarily identify with a particular sex.

This is not an issue of gay liberation, but one of civil liberties, and should be supported by everyone.

-” Darron, Footscray, Vic

DOUBLE STANDARD
Just how mean is it that gay couples are recognised by the federal government as a couple so that their Centrelink payments can be reduced, but not recognised as a couple if they just want to be married?
For shame, Rudd, for perpetuating this nasty, unjust double standard.

-” norrie mAy-welby, Redfern

BEAT USERS
It is always the same.
As soon as anything related to beats appears in the media the more prissy members of the gay community announce that they are embarrassed, ashamed, disgusted by people who use beats … and invariably say that if people want beats they should use sex-on-premises venues and of course, consequently show their utter ignorance of both types of venue.

Bluntly, telling a beat user to use a SOPV in preference to a beat is like telling someone who wants a pub that the golf club has a bar. They simply aren’t the same thing. Period.

I walk past a park. Maybe I see someone I like. We click. Maybe we have sex there. Maybe we go home together. That, dear people, is freedom. Me, under the sky. Being me.

I go to a sex-on-premises venue. What is that? Some guy has paid the straight community for the right to run a kind of lucky dip. I go to the place, I pay cash, usually between five and 17 dollars, to go into a black stinky hole and just perhaps, meet someone and have sex with them in a little dark box like a rat. That is if there is even anyone else in the damn place to start with … and do I get a refund if that happens?

Get real. It is a lucky dip, and the owner doesn’t even have to provide a prize. Is it any wonder that SOPV owners are rich? And usually straight? And well connected?

Sure. Beats are dangerous. They are dangerous not because there is anything wrong with gay people, but because society penalises beat users by legal, economic and criminal means, because, get this … society simply does not like gay people.

Shocking, isn’t it?
When I read the mealy-mouthed rubbish in the gay press that amounts to if we can pretend to be more like straight people then maybe they will like us, all I see is a bunch of credulous twerps announcing that they think that wearing a pink triangle and having the right identity papers is fitting in.

Hell. People like that belong in sex-on-premises venues.

-” Alex, Surry Hills

WEAK LAWS
RE : Anti-discrimination push goes national (SSO 944).
It would be wonderful for the GLBT community to achieve uniformity in anti-discrimination laws but an absolute disaster to follow NSW AG Hatzistergos’ suggestion that the rest of Australia should adopt the NSW model or its legislation.

In most respects NSW has the worst and weakest set of anti-discrimination laws, largely due to Hatzistergos himself. The 1999 NSW Law Reform Commission reported on reform of these laws including proposals to remove the unjustified exemptions for religious organisations and educational authorities to perpetuate discrimination against the GLBT community. The Labor Government, ( Hatzistergos in particular) rejected these recommendations -” almost all of the LRC’s significant proposals remain unacted upon.

By contrast most other jurisdictions (apart from SA) have taken steps to modernise their anti-discrimination laws and nearly all limit religious-based discrimination exemptions.
The claims by Hatzistergos that NSW laws are one of the strongest, that adopting them would not involve winding back any protections are simply false -” in every respect. His failure to address the key recommendations of the LRC report [and] failure to address religious-based exemptions which perpetuate discrimination against the GLBT community are matters of public record.

That Federal Commissioner Innes (an outstanding supporter of the GLBT community) clearly does not endorse the NSW model speaks volumes -” he knows the truth.

If we really want to advance the cause of removing discrimination against the GLBT community, we would press for the adoption of the Tasmanian model and a complete rejection of the nonsensical claims that NSW can teach the rest of the country anything in this area of public policy.

-” Chris Puplick, NSW Anti-Discrimination Commissioner 1994-2003

DEAR PREMIER
Dear Mr Rees,
I’ve noticed, as I’m sure you have too, the turbulent economic times we are living in. The talk of recession, or worse, depression, seems to be getting louder and louder, and with consumer confidence plummeting, it’s difficult to see how we’ll avoid it.

Comrade Rudd has been going on about handouts and bailouts and the War on Recession. He just wants us to spend more money to lift Australia out of the doldrums. I’ve noticed that you’ve had your fair share of troubles too, what with the $900m deficit, and so on. Well, Mr Rees, have I got the ticket for you.

You may remember, back when you were just the Minister for Toongabbie, that same-sex marriage ban that Howard forced on the gays and lesbians. Well, in light of the fact that Comrade Rudd is unlikely to overturn that, it falls to the states to implement a state-based civil union partnership scheme. I know that Mr Hatzistergos has dealt with this before, but let’s look at it this way.

NSW is in $900m deficit. Rudd wants us to spend more. Imagine if NSW implemented the first state-based civil union scheme. It would be an instant vote winner with the gay community, and given our reputation with the pink dollar, why not capitalise on that?

If NSW were the only state with one in place, people from all over Australia would flock here to get their civil union. That means money, people. Not just the license, but catering, floristry, the works. It’s not like gays and lesbians would suddenly become stingy once they were granted the right to be recognised as a legal couple. And remember, with our divorce rate, at least a third would likely be divorcing within two years, meaning more dollars into the system. Who gets that $3000 Armani jacket?

Of course, you’d make sure that priests and rabbis and such who refused to legally bind these people wishing to do so under the scheme weren’t sacked or whatever as a result. I can respect that. It’s their religion and their belief. Just so long as they respect the fact that gays andlesbians can still legally bind together in a civil ceremony. If it’s a state-based affair, and not a religious one, I can’t see what their objection would be.

So, I ask you, not just as a part of the gay and lesbian community, but as a New South Welshman and an Australian citizen to grant us the right of legal civil union recognition. Not just for the gays and lesbians, but for all of us in this great country. To inject some much needed cash into the NSW and Australian economies is a win-win for all of us.

-” James, East Hills

WALK FOR AIDS
As a gay man living with HIV/AIDS I would like to thank the organisers of the walk [Walk for AIDS], the sponsors, the generous donors (those who were not able to be there but made a donation), the volunteers, the invited guests and, most of all, those people who turned up despite the rain to walk.
The number was pitifully few. It is sad to reflect how many members of the community can drag (no pun intended) themselves up Oxford St dripping with rain for a Mardi Gras parade yet cannot manage to face the elements to help support an HIV cause.

For those of you who don’t know (?) or those of you who have forgotten, HIV/AIDS has decimated our community and changed the lives of people living long term with HIV/AIDS. The organisations involved in Sunday’s walk contribute in so many ways to the fight against HIV/AIDS and their continued welfare.
I am saddened that so few members of the community felt the need to show their support.

-” David, Sydney