Letters to the Editor
BAD LAWS
The laws against drugs make no more sense to people who choose to use them than the laws against homosexuality did to me as a young man a couple of decades ago.
Arguably there are health risks in kissing boys, but I choose to manage those risks for the sake of being a physically loved human being. Likewise, many people choose to manage the risks of drug use in order to have a special social experience with their friends.
The problem remains bad laws, and the armed gang of paid mercenaries (aka The Police Force) who would lock us up for breaking someone else’s rules.
People are going to do whatever they are strongly motivated to do, and should be allowed to so long as they are not causing harm to anyone else.
Criminalising young adults for something that most of us have done, however we now view that activity, is unfair, cruel, and in some cases, fatal.
-” norrie mAy-welby
NOT FORGOTTEN
Let me assure Anton (SSO 956) that Sydney’s Pride History Group has not forgotten Gay Liberation. Indeed a number of us in the Group first became active in the community during the gay liberation period.
The Group only has a small number of members who have been able to engage in our oral history program and, rightly I think, priority has been given to older members of the community who were active in the camp community before the period of gay liberation. Many are now in their eighties, some not well.
These interviews have been the basis of the four publications so far produced. The latest, Out & About, on the early lesbian social scene will be launched on 28 February during Mardi Gras.
However, at the first meeting of the Group’s new executive in January, it was agreed that for the next two years our major focus would be on the 40th anniversary of the formation of CAMP Inc and Sydney Gay Liberation and, thus, on the beginnings of gay and lesbian activism in Australia in the early 1970s.
We would be interested in hearing from anyone who was active during this early period. We, also, would invite people to join the Group and work out with us the best ways of commemorating this important milestone -” be it by forums and conferences, publications, dinners, or other forms of celebration.
A meeting to start this process will be held at the Group’s offices in mid-March after Mardi Gras festivities.
You can contact Sydney’s Pride History Group at [email protected] or by writing to GPO Box 415, Sydney 2001. You may also contact me on 9568 1995.
-” Robert
INVENTING HISTORY
So Lance Gowland is now -˜the founder of CAMP NSW-¦’ (Ani Lamont, SSO 957, p9)
That will be news to people like Dennis Altman, Jill Roe, Christabel Poll, John Ware, Ian Black, et al, whom I remember as being the people who attended the first meeting at Balmain Town Hall in February 1971. A glance at p40 of Graham Willett’s Living Out Loud will tell you who the actual founders of CAMP NSW were.
Better luck next time.
-” Garry
FLIPPER
When Clover Moore parades up Oxford St in this year’s Mardi Gras, I suggest that her theme song should be Flipper from the ’60s TV show about a backflipping tame dolphin.
Her backflip on the 2am lock-out and the collective punishment of all bar patrons as delinquent juveniles puts Flipper in the shade.
With breathtaking hypocrisy Moore now claims to ask the Minister to review the introduction of 2am lock-outs and a 10-minute no sale of alcohol rule (23/01/09) as though she had always had misgivings -” yet on 31 October last year in one of her many anti-clubs and anti-hotel rants, Moore gushed and welcomed the Premier’s announcement for … mandatory 2am lock-out…
A few days earlier she fully backed the new wowserism of the Police Commissioner; Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP today backed the call to cut back licensing hours, (13/10/08).
At Council meetings and the GLBT Forum I have alone vigorously questioned the Police and Clover Moore over their selective use of data and resorting to collective punishment.
The Police would not budge and Clover Moore unquestioningly backed their every action .
Last September when Clover Moore ran for Lord Mayor with her so-called -˜independent’ team they did not mention supporting the closure of clubs and bars nor their draconian restrictions of our civil liberties as responsible patrons and citizens .
Now she would have us believe that she did not support these measures in our bars all along! We should all call out -˜Flipper’ as she passes our 2am lock-out bars (Exchange Hotel, Stonewall, Oxford and Arq) on Mardi Gras night.
-” Cr Shayne Mallard
PLANET IN PAIN
Financial collapse, loss of life, fire-ravaged houses and land, floods, fever, temperatures well over forty and we’re only in the second month.
Do you suppose we could all begin to see what’s really behind this series of Cecil B DeMille calamities, or are some of us stilling holding fast to the idea, that by some stroke of magic, it will all be OK in the morning. That is, if there is a morning?
I think our planet is in real pain.
Isn’t it ironic that we can explore outer space, grow human tissue outside the body, perform great feats of laser surgery but we still dump our poisons into the air, our rubbish into holes in the ground and our human excrement out to sea?
People wait in long queues to buy fresh seafood for Xmas lunch without the slightest idea that our seas are being vastly overfished.
The -˜use it all up’ mentality of the past must be replaced by genuine love and respect for our sustaining Earth.
Let’s drop any remnants of disempowerment we may feel as a minority in this society and lead the way on this issue.
Perhaps we could begin with a lead float in the Mardi Gras.
From Pecs to Planet. From Torsos to Trees.
-” Brent
OLD NEWS
Give us a break!
That letter to Dr Laura [SSO 956] goes back to the year 2000 when North American gay and lesbian groups targeted the advertisers who began deserting her radio program once they discovered the content.
Either your letters editor didn’t do a quick check of the web or your correspondent Danny was quite happy to copy some 2002 material without reference! Very poor journalism.
There must have been so many more letters about the missing -˜grandfather’ clause from the change to the Social Security Act affecting so many Centrelink pensioners, which could have been used in the space occupied by Danny’s plagiarised effort.
-” Kendall
Just a comment for David Gwyn, above, re. him saying “Remember . . . how confused you were, when you found out Nana Mouskouri — whom you loved as a mortal MUST love an angel — voted AGAINST GLBT rights.”
Yeah, I remember all right, ‘cept I was downright bloody angry – having spent a small fortune on the bitch over the years (even sent a hundred red roses to her dressing-room at the Opera House once!). And what’s even sicker is how since the news broke about how she voted against queer rights in the European Parliament she’s been trying to cover it by pushing her friendships with a few gay celebs. Her pretty crappy biog (full of errors and self-delusions) goes on about one gay celeb (a French actor) was “the brother I had never had”! Boo-hoo, Nana, you reduce me to tears . . . NOT! As far as I’m concerned now all Nana Mouskouri was interested in was being adored (yeah, David, “whom you loved as a mortal MUST love an angel”). She took our money, told us she loved us, and then went and kicked us in the teeth!
When the government proudly announced the 85 pieces of Federal legislation that changed in 2008 , laws in relation to taxation, superannuation and family law, I believe we have been mislead.
I recently received a letter for our local federal MP Mr. Bob Debus following a concern by me about payment of superannuation benefits upon death directed to a same sex partner.
In the letter he says that superannuation fund trustees are permitted but not required to pay superannuation death benefits to a deceased member’s same sex partner. Trustees of superannuation funds generally have discretion in determining to whom death benefits are paid and in what proportion. he goes on to say that a same sex partner may wish to transfer their benefits to another fund under the portability provisions.
So what was the big change in relation to superannuation and same sex couples?
absolutely none !!!
Back To Me.
Who remembers the buzz it created, when you came out to your employer and work colleagues? [I do, because it was just last week!] Who remembers watching Priscilla over and over and wanting to learning Finally’s lyrics? [I do, because for me it wasn’t fifteen years ago — it was this month!] Who remembers ostentatiously reading a copy of SSO in a deserted mid-week mid-afternoon Stonewall Hotel — to tell the whole world you were gay? [Who remembers sending letters just like this one to the SSO because having a letter published in SSO seemed a homosexual rite of passage? Who remembers trying to get strangers to visit your gay website by forcing the URL on them, like this:
http://home.mysoul.com.au/dgwyn
Who remembers the first time a young thug followed you off a train; the terrifying experience forcing you to make alternative travel arrangements? Who remembers hoping to meet Mr Right, or The Unmet Friend? Who remembers needing community? Who remembers wanting to wear a ring on your left index finger, like Quentin Crisp? Who remembers growing their nails long the first time? Who remembers wanting a man to hold you in his arms? Who remembers pining for what little love you had already received to be repeated? Who remembers being lonely and afraid? Who remembers the simultanious joy & trepidation you felt each day, shortly after you had just came out to everybody you hoped to still count as friends? Who remembers crying? Who remembers conducting a lonely monologue like this, and how sad it really was? Who remembers being gay and having no gay friends at all. Not one. Who remembers living in the suburbs and having to travel on the dangerous trains and walk the dangerous streets to reach a refuge like the Stonewall Hotel; so you could sit awhile among men who would regard you as homosexual and therefore peacefully accept you as one of them? And, who remembers how important and necessary those brief visits to The Stonewall were for you? Who remembers how necessary an anthem like Its Not Right (but its OK) by Dennis Christopher was (playing it loud and over and over) — to ward-off the terror of something NOT being OK. And how confused you were, when you found out Nana Mouskouri — whom you loved as a mortal MUST love an angel — voted AGAINST GLBT rights.