Lobby gets male co-convenor

Lobby gets male co-convenor

The NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby will return to being headed by two co-convenors after Ben Keats was nominated and accepted by its committee.

Keats, 28, who joins Emily Gray at the helm, said he intended to reform the Lobby’s methods of community fundraising by holding regular events, possibly monthly, for members and supporters, to boost involvement from volunteers.

I’ve identified it as a problem we need to work on. We need to increase our volunteer pool. We need people who are creative, those who can build banners, people with IT skills, marketing, finance, he said.

Keats has a commerce background, and is now studying law at UTS. He stressed that policy and legal expertise was only one set of skills the Lobby needs.

Diversifying the Lobby’s sources of funding was also a priority, he said. Gearing up for a long-term same-sex marriage campaign, the Lobby has begun negotiations with the Berg Foundation to renew its three-year grant-”the Lobby’s largest-”for its Policy Development Officer position.

The Lobby will also be approaching potential supporters for grants tied to specific campaigns, like same-sex marriage.

We need to become more sophisticated with our fundraising. Supporters like to see what their money is going towards, Keats said.

Keats said marriage equality and full parenting rights were the issues that most concerned him. He grew up on the Central Coast and said it was difficult coming out until he was entrenched in university life in Sydney.

Since becoming a volunteer in 2007 and working on the Lobby’s federal election and 58’08 campaigns, he said he’s learned so much more about the level of discrimination that remains in the law.

The Lobby ran into trouble filling the volunteer convenor positions for the first time in 2006. For more than a year the policy development coordinator -” a paid employee -” filled the role of spokesperson.

Equivalent organisations in the UK and US, such as Stonewall and the Human Rights Campaign, have long had a paid CEO as their spokesperson. However, both organisations have much more significant grants, bequests and membership bases.

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One response to “Lobby gets male co-convenor”

  1. Good to hear. But these covenors come & go, yet all the while “Jenni Milbank” who personally & publicly hates marriage seems to always dominate the NSW GLRL website year after year, in content & perhaps even behind-the-scenes direction. I think she needs to go, & alot of thier problems might disappear overnight… then maybe these great young talents who do state a belief in equality might stick around longer, with thier beliefs not ending up being incongruent with perhaps what Jenni thinks is right (she is a university professor).
    I’ll never forget seeing Jenni speak at a forum at the Newtown RSL & she basically said that instead of reforming marriage with the times like all other countries are now doing, she wanted to get rid of it…. for gays and for straights. It was her personal mission. One great way for her to acheive this I guess would be to get a 2nd class aparteid system going for gays, but open it to straights as well, then convince lots of straight people to switch over to it instead of marriage, so marriage would eventually die out & disappear completely. Isn’t that just using gays for perhaps one’s own personal mission? A mission that I don’t think will even work. Get rid of her! so the NSW GLRL can move on with the times without that kind of baggage.
    Marriage is not going to disappear from Australia, but it can be reformed/updated to allow divorce, to allow blacks to marry whites, and it can be reformed to allow equality in same gender marriages.

    Editor’s Note: D, can I suggest if you feel so strongly about this you get involved in the GLRL yourself. The organisation is always looking for skilled and motivated people to play an active role in its policy formation and lobbying activities. You can phone the office on 9571 5501 or visit http://glrl.org.au and volunteer.