Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor

ON CHILDREN
The gay community has spent nearly three decades mocking and ridiculing society and the ideals of heterosexuality through the Mardi Gras.
Now you want to openly embrace and live the heterosexual life.
The gay community is about The Human Ecology. It is not our role to have children.  At a time of global overpopulation, by not having children, gay couples contribute to population stabilisation and thereby reduce pressure on over-strained natural resources. We are an ecological asset to humanity.
So, why is the gay community wanting to embrace and adopt population and contribute to overpopulation? Very irresponsible.
The world cannot sustain the population it has.
You cannot use children to prolong or give substance to your relationships, however much you try. There is too much child abuse in society, and most should never have children. The DOCS report handed down [recently] has recommended more than 100 changes. More than 90 children a week are taken into care by DOCS, which is so wrong.
It is time to legislate and licence people to have children.
-” John
THANK YOU
Last Wednesday I lost my mobile phone while at Stonewall. Losing the phone was a big deal to me and I thought it was gone for good.
Not feeling optimistic I went back to the club the day after to ask about the phone. Turns out that someone handed it in to management!
Thank you to the anonymous Good Samaritan who found the phone and handed it in, and thanks to Stonewall staff for keeping it for me.
Rare thing these days to find such acts of consideration and goodwill.  All the best to you.
-” Peter
BORING PARADE
I have read all the usual stories as to how wonderful the Parade was.  I found it more boring than usual. Why must there be so many representatives of groups and organisations?
Dykes on Bikes could be reduced to no more than 20 representatives.  Organisations such as the police, fire brigade, ambulance service, etc could have a nominal number of marchers and a limit on  vehicles.
This year the signage for groups was appalling as was illumination -” with the result that many groups were unidentified -” and most showed little festive life!
The printed program was a great idea -” however it could not be read when the Parade came by.
Where has the fun gone and where are the drag queens ?
The Parade has become so political and tedious to watch. I doubt we shall bother next year !
-” Stephen
APOLOGY NEEDED
In a recent editorial, nude activist Gerald Ganglbauer describes gay people as riffraff (Councillor’s kiddie scare at Congwong, Southern Courier 07.01.2009).
As convenor of Freebeach, his comments are completely unacceptable and require an immediate apology. A minority himself, he risks alienating the community and being viewed as undeserving of nude-bathing on Sydney’s beaches.
-” Stuart
TOKENISM
Re: Gay Arabs won’t march in Parade (SSO 960).
I am deeply concerned and troubled by Mardi Gras’ failure as an organisation to genuinely reflect our GLBTQ communities.
What was the intention behind the theme -˜Nations United’?
New Mardi Gras Chair David Imrie in his welcome message in the festival guide isn’t able to give us any context for the theme except to make reference to far-flung lands where people like us simply aren’t tolerated.
In the festival guide the culturally diverse events come from independent artists and promoters, not from New Mardi Gras.
Mardi Gras’ wants ethnics to represent their home countries with a national costume and a flag at minimum in the parade. Did anyone bother to ask us? No.
As a woman of colour I am absolutely sick and tired of this shameful tokenism, racism and disrespect.
It’s 2009, why do we still need to be having these discussions? I am exhausted and I refuse to continue to have to educate the dominant culture.
I want to be part of a community and a queer movement that is about mutual respect, one that is genuinely inclusive, respectful and accepting of everyone. A community that can challenge its own privileges in whatever form they may come. I want to march in the parade on my own terms!
Wake up and smell the ahweh Mardi Gras.
-” Nicole
BLOOD BAN
Couldn’t our friends in Tasmania find something else to do apart from
provoking the lunar right with their misconceived campaign against the Red Cross and its policy on blood donors (Gays -˜blood terrorists’ , SSO 960)?
Australian data published in 2007 in The Medical Journal of Australia indicate that the most frequent route of HIV exposure was male-to-male sex, accounting for 70 percent of diagnoses.
Assuming that Australia has roughly equal numbers of men and women, and  taking Kinsey’s probably generous figure of 10 percent as the lifetime proportion of men who have sex with another man, this means that 70 percent of the infections are occurring in 5 percent of the population, and only 30 percent of infections are occurring in the other 95 percent of the population.
Given that most of these infections are presumably the result of slip-ups of one sort or another by people who believe they are being safe, how can the Red Cross rely on the belief of the donor? The chance of someone from the higher-risk 5 percent being in the infectious window period between exposure to HIV and the development of detectable antibodies, while small, is statistically many times higher than in the lower-risk 95 percent.
If gay guys want to make a contribution to the community, there are hundreds of other ways to do it apart from giving blood. It’s not a gay rights issue.
Who knows -” we might even manage to break down some of the prejudices of the lunar right.
-” Bill and William

HERITAGE ROUTE
The new Mardi Gras route should retain its heritage (Youth to explore parade options, SSO 961).
It should travel up Oxford Street, turn left into Darlinghurst Rd and pass through Kings Cross ending at the El-Alamein fountain park, where the ’78ers were arrested. Lest we forget.
This will be longer for marchers but will enable more people to get a better view as crowds will be thinner overall.
-” Andrew

You May Also Like

3 responses to “Letters to the Editor”

  1. I think John (the original letter writer) has a point. I truly believe that being gay is completely natural and that nature put us here for a reason.

    That reason is to (a) not have children of our own and (b) to be “spare” parents for orphaned children.

    It makes sense from an evolutionary point of view not to have everyone in the tribe having children so that when the inevitable accident happens to biological parents, orphaned children are not left to fend for themselves, but automatically have foster parents ready and waiting for them (ie. us!!!).

    Having biological children of our own defeats this purpose. And it is such a waste of energy considering how many children who are already here in the world are in need of a loving family to raise them to become productive members of our community.

    Yes, alot of the children in need of foster care come with complex needs, but there is no gurantee that your biological child won’t come with complex needs either. Being a foster parent to a child in need is one of the most rewarding things you can ever do in this life.

  2. John states that “the Gay community has spent nearly 3 decades mocking… heterosexuality” (SSO P15 18 Mar 09). Actually the GLBTQI community has always striven for equality of treatment including freedom for self expression. Therefore, having children is the untimate expression of both equality and freedom for both gays and lesbians.

    I have never read so many generalisations, bigoted ideas and misplaced science as this John has paraded before us.

    I, as a sperm donor to the lesbian community (9 babies and 5 on the way) have observed the profound happines that motherhood has brought to so many wonderful wimmin and their extended families. Parenthood is, I agree, not for everyone, either straight or gay! However, for those who desperately want children to complete their family, children are the ultimate expression of their love for each other and their committment to their relationship. Especially where they share a donor and the children of the both of them are biological as well as social siblings.
    JohnLindsay