LGS HOME PAGES: http://www.josken.net

ISSN 1446-4896

This is the fourth issue of GSN. Since the 5th National Homosexual Conference when the previous Newsletter appeared, the energy, time and personnel resources of the Gay Solidarity Group have been stretched to the limit. Ideas and initiatives have always existed within the Group but our problem, like so many other activist groups, lies in the lack of enough gay people to put them into practice effectively without over-extending the few.

The National Summer Offensive for Gay Rights was initiated within the Sydney GSG and endorsed by the 5th Conference in Melbourne and by the Coalition in New Zealand.

Looking back at the Summer Offensive Canpaign those of us who were so committed feel to a certain degree pleased with the overall results evidenced at the Trans Tasman Day of Action on March 22. We saw a lot of new faces, a lot of renewed enthusiasm and an excellent response to the NSO initiative. But where will they go with their enthusiasm, their skills and their power? The wheel is only just beginning to move forward. There's Stonewall Day in June. There's the 6th National Conference in August. Both need effective gay skills to get then rolling.

At the beginning of January we lost our GSG Centre at St. Peters. We could Not afford to renew the lease so the Centre had to go. GSG now meets each Thursday night at 6.30 p.m. in the Glebe Town Hall, St. Johns Road, Glebe. Sydney lesbians and gay men who recognise the need for continued gay political agitation can lend their support and skills by meeting with us and increasing our working power.

In February GSG was also involved in tho Sydney action to publicise tho plight of Tony Sullivan, an Australian resident in the USA since 1972, who faces deportation simply because he is an open homosexual. GSG was well represented when a deputation visited the US Consulate in Sydney to deliver a letter of protest against the deportation of Tony and the discriminatory nature of US Immigration laws against lesbians and gay men.

In the last issue a further instalment in the series of interviews with a lesbian mother who last year gained custody of her daughter was promised. For a number of reasons the instalment is being held over for a future issue of GSN. In its place, however, we are reprinting the text of the Child Custody leaflet from the NSO Gay Information Kit. The Kit was compiled and released by the Sydney Planning Collective of the National Summer Offensive and provides solid facts to refute the myths and lies which prevail about homosexuality, lesbians and gay men.

A limited number of the Kits are still available from NSO, c/o Box 380, P.O., Broadway, NSW 2007, for $2.50 posted.

After seven months of intense organising six public gay forums, a daylong lesbian convention, a churches gay symposium, the production of a gay info kit (the foregoing just in Sydney), a multi-lingual leaflet on homophobia in Adelaide, tens of thousands of publicity leaflets distributed and several major headaches, the Australia-New Zealand Summer Offensive for Gay Rights culminated in a series of rallies, street marches, concerts and dances on March 22.

Here in Sydney a brief rally was held at Town Hall Square followed by a march of about 1000 representing the diversity of the gay community and our supporters: political, religious and social groups, lesbians and male homosexuals united around gay rights demands. Even if the march wasn't as large as we had hoped, what it lacked in numbers it certainly made up in spirit and militancy. Led off by the Gay Trade Unionists' float and the NSO lead banner, we marched down George Street. Special notice must go to the League of Library Lesbians contingent.

After marching through the city's streets we made our way back to the Town Hall and down into the railway station. But make no mistake, gay liberation certainly had not gone underground as our emergence 10 minutes later at Bondi Junction proved. We "hijacked" several buses and commandeered them to Bondi Pavilion for the next step on our agenda, an open air concert.

Anyone who was present that afternoon couldn't fail to be impressed by the high degree of entertainment we had lined up. Thanks to Jane Alquist, Mary Jane Carpenter, Hen's Teeth, Maree Cunnington and Peter Weston not to mention our madly gay link sister who flew in especially for the occasion from a well-known country centre ... apologies to anyone missed out, sorry. After a break for dinner the final event of the day was on. The Boll Weevils opened the set Followed by the Widgies an all women band playing some of the best rock I've heard in a while. With the drop in wind and the increase in attendance the dance was the perfect end to the day. Many thanks to the people at the Bondi Pavilion especially Jan and Ros for their help, experience and advice.

Of course everything has its drawbacks. The small team organising the Offensive was overworked and except for activities such as some specific forums and the symposium, we didn't get much support from others in the community. Because of this we weren't able to put the sort of effort we envisaged into gaining labour movement support for the Offensive. Yet considering all these problems March 22 still came out a success.

Briefly, action in other States ...
MELBOURNE: On March 22 well over 300 lesbians, gay men and our supporters led by a large contingent of Young Gays marched through the city following a rally in the City Square out to the Floral Clock in St. Kilda Road with a picnic afterwards and a dance in the evening. Many new people became involved and a new depth for the movement appears to have begun.
PERTH: March 21 in the evening saw a picket outside one of the beats highlighting the demand: end police harassment and intimidation. On March 22 a large gay rally extracted from ALP speakers an assurance to raise homosexual law reform by the end of this year. Then followed a street march in absolute silence as a visible testimony of the oppression of lesbians and male homosexuals.
ADELAIDE; Late night shoppers on March 21 witnessed a rally and procession to Angus Street Police Headquarters where the following demands were put: open the Duncan file, end police entrapment of gay men, stop police harassment of lesbians. On March 22 the NSO action was tied into an unemployment rally which had also been arranged for that date. The right of a gay speaker on the platform was denied despite a previous assurance from the organizers. However, there was a visible and loud contingent of gays highlighting the demand: end discrimination in employment and for Trade Union support for gays. Media coverage though concentrated on the gay contingent.
NEW ZEALAND: At publication time no report was available on campaign results but the four main centres —Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin— had planned .public demonstrations each highlighting a separate gay rights demand. D.F.

The most pressing need for gay people power at the moment is in planning for the 6th National Homosexual Conference. The Sydney Collective io still in the formative stage and AUGUST 30 is only 4 months off.

Last year SYDNEY 1980 with the theme: GAYS TAKING THE OFFENSIVE was the unanimous choice of over 600 gays who attended tho 5th National Homosexual Conference.

There has been an immense amount of criticism of the content and organisation of past conferences. It was probably thought that with its resources Sydney was the obvious place for it this year. But even though the resources exist in Sydney the response has been anything but supportive and practical from gay groups and individual lesbians and gay men. Sydney gays can still meet the challenge though but 40 or more committed lesbians and homosexual men are needed now.

The venue has yet to be chosen, a fair registration fee agreed upon, accommodation arrangements worked out, organising, workshops, speakers, entertainment, fundraising, catering decided upon, advance publicity commenced, media liaison begun, progress bulletins, registration forms, posters, handouts designed and written, printing put in hand. In fact a full scale national campaign embarked upon to gain support from all sections of the movement. Politically-orientated gays or those more socially-orientated have parts to play in the planning.

Since the first was held in Melbourne in 1975, National Conferences have contributed significantly to the general awareness of gay power. The truth is that gays are everywhere and cannot continue to be ignored in the electorate, in the workplace or in the home.

"Gays taking the offensive" can mean a positive step forward. The Conference can therefore be seen in terms of learning how to advance collectively to have all anti-homosexual laws repealed, an end to discrimination against gay teachers and gay students, an end to discrimination against lesbian mothers in child custody cases, freedom to be as open as heteros are in the workplace without fear of dis- criminatory action, freedom to move openly on the gay scene without cop harass- ment, and acceptance of a gay lifestyle as a legitimate alternative to hetero models

But like conferences changes just don't happen. People have to do something to help them occur.

There's to be a Planning Collective meeting at the CAMP (NSW) CENTRE at 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 4. The Centre is at 33A Glebe Point Road (Broadway end), Glebe. If you can't make it to that meeting and want to help, 'phone CAMP after May 4 between 6pm and 10pm on 660 0061, for details of future meetings. K.L.

When women talk of sexism we do not simply refer to discrimination on the basis of sex. Soxism is about power. The question of oppression of women is one of power and powerlessness. Women in patriarchal society are culturally and socio-economically powerless. Men by virtue of their sex enjoy automatic power benofits which women miss out on because they are female. This male power has been institutionalized and is perpetuated in all our social structures. Our social structure is thus "patriarchal"--, the rule of the male.

Homosexual men can enjoy all the power benefits of being male in a patriarchal society. They are only potentially victims of oppression; they can, and often do, choose to pass as straight. Of course this dishonesty male homosexuals are often forced to choose represents a lack of personal freedom and is thus oppressive. But the benefits of being male are still there. As lesbian women we can choose to hide our lesbianism, but we cannot hide our womanhood. L.B.&M.L.

A comedy about a night club in St. Tropez,

Directed by EDOUARD MOLINARO with HUGO TOGNAZZI, MICHEL SERRAULT and MICHEL GALABRU, screening at HOYTS ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE, George Street, Sydney.

The afternoon I went to see this film there were less than a hundred in the audience, and most looked like almost anybody you would pass at random in the street, mainly women but a few depressed looking men. Apart from a couple of fellers sitting near me I could see no evidence of a "gay" interest in the audience.

From the few opening frames, certainly within the first minute of the film, the audience was laughing immoderately. I resisted laughing with them for some time as the situation and characters presented were those stereotypes of two. middle-aged queens, one running the gay night club and the other the main female impersonator, Albin played by Michel Serrault.

The two men have been living together for some twenty years. The situation at the beginning is one of persuading the impersonator to get on stage in time for "her" entrance in the show. Having got his loved one, whose temperament needs the reassurance of flattery and the protestations of love from him, on stage Renato (Hugo Tognazzi) prepares to receive a visitor tete-a-tete. We are not surprised when the visitor is a young handsome man half his age. This charming boy turns out to be not a lover but his son thus forcing confrontation with the "respectable" upper class conservative world and setting the plot which takes the film along in its continuous comparison with the "straight" world and the shriekingly wholehearted "gay" world.

The film presents these people and shows that there is more genuine honesty and indeed morality among the "camp" than in those people who are continually trying to put them down or make little of them.

After some ten minutes into the film I relaxed and laughed along with the rest of the audience as the delicacy and honesty of the acting from the two leads was so persuasive and the general atmosphere of the film so good natured.

This is the film you can recommend your most straight-laced aunt or crooked-balled footy-playing uncle to see and they could not but get the message.

The extraordinary occurrence at the end of the film was one that this very ordinary audience applauded. J.C.

Peter Kemp in NEWSWIT (NSW Institute of Technology) ..."a joyous satire ... that exposes and mocks such age-old societal targets as bourgeois pretensions, sex-roles and the double standard ... a film that feeds merrily on mainstream cultural preconceptions and prejudices."

Gerald Hannon in The BODY POLITIC (gay Canadian newspaper} ... " Somewhere in the middle of this frequently hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking film, a baroquely effeminate character called Albin throws up his hands in exasperation at his inability to appear even modestly conventional, and cries, 'I am a monsterl A Monster! ' He isn't. As played by Michel Serrault, Albin is a wonderfully camp confection, as warmly played as never to be entirely ludicrous, and so certain of his comic powers that even his eyebrows can put a whole scene on hold.

There IS a monster in this movie, however, though he will not be recognised as such. Because one cares, actions that would otherwise simply impel the plot along its antic way seem curiously harsh and wounding, and the son, an otherwise bland, stock character, becomes the monster I mentioned ... the ease with which he dismantles the apartment (and the relationship), the contempt as he slowly smears along the wall make-up he has rubbed from his father's face. Renato and Albin protest ... but at every point they surrender. In those brief and almost unbearably painful moments, one understands much of our social history —a history of small accommodations, concessions, sacrifices made by us so that their world might have its way ... Not even a brilliant farce can make me feel good about that."

Sydney is soon to have thrown up on the "big" screen of cinema Friedkin's violent film, "Cruising." How will Sydney gays react? Scott Tucker in The Body Politic wrote:"Having been censored out of history, do we want our history constructed by the censors? Having been made invisible, can we now appear only as corpses?" Ken Popert also in TBP wrote: "We should not suppress it ...So what can we do about 'Cruising?'"

If a parent is gay who then gets custody of the children?

To date, custody applications have only been made by lesbian mothers and there are no reported cases of custody being sought by gay fathers. The reasons for this are conjecture. The reported trend favouring custody to mothers together with the view that women should be primarily child rearers may be two reasons for the lack of cases concerning gay fathers. These points seem to explain why our leaflet concentrates on custody cases involving lesbian mothers.

Since the formation of the Lesbian Mothers National Defence Fund, it has handled hundreds of cases from the US, Canada and Australia. The most frequent against lesbian mothers are:-

In response to this it is worth remembering:-

Prior to the introduction of the Family Law Act, there had been only one reported case where the issue of lesbianism had been a decisive factor.

In Campbell and Caapbell, Mr. Justice Bright of the South Australian Supreme Court awarded custody of two children to their lesbian mother and accepted the advice of the child psychiatrist that the mother's personality would not cause harm to the children. However, he did require that the mother not engage in acts of a sexual nature with her lover in such a way as the children finding out, and that she not sleep in the sane bedroom as her lover.

Whilst the limitations of such a judgement are obvious, it should be remembered that this was at a time when adultery was ground for divorce and custody was decided with relation to parents' fitness and not the emotional needs of the children.

Since the advent of the Family Law Act, two lesbian mothers (one in WA. and one in Sydney) have been successful in gaining unrestricted child custody, (ii)

Mr. Justice Smithers, before granting custody to a lesbian mother, referred to the moral judgement of Mr. Justice Anderson of the Victorian Supreme Court that: "the community in general is still sufficiently old-fashioned to view with disfavour, and even with abhorrence, unnatural sexual acts." This judgment runs against the grain of all Australian studies on community attitudes on homosexuality. Mr. Justice Smithers allowed custody with the following proviso: "that the mother refrain from any act or word which would reasonably be calculated to suggest to any of the children that she or any friend of hers is a lesbian!" The eldest child was 14 years old. How wasn't she supposed to find out that her mother was a lesbian is beyond us.

Several trends are appearing in the attitudes of the courts towards lesbian mothers.

However, when it's boiled down, three main reasons are being advanced to justify the granting of custody to the father.

Finally, there is a distinct trend in making custody awards conditional on certain undertakings on the part of the lesbian mother. This would appear to go totally against the grain of no fault divorce (a provision of the Family Law Act,1975, divorce being granted on evidence of irretrievable breakdown of the marriage, there is no "guilty party"). It also counters tho idea of maintaining emotional ties between parent and child. The implication of all this is to impute a "nastiness" and "abhorrence" to lesbian sexuality, which is discriminatory, non factual and oppressive.

Please enrol me as a subscriber to the GAY SOLIDARITY NEWSLETTER. Enclosed is $...... ($2 for six issues; Overseas $3)

EDITORIAL COPY DEADLINE for the Gay Solidarity NEWSLETTER is the 15th of the month preceding issue.

Fridays at 8.30 p.m. Sats and Suns, at (Phone: 33 0721) 5-30 and 8.30 p.m.

Produced by Digby Duncan and the "One in Seven" Collective, "Witches and Faggots —Dykes and Poofters" is a film which documents the social and individual oppression of homosexuality in both an historical and present day context ... from the witch hunts of the Middle Ages to the situation in NSW and recent gay activities in Sydney including the brutal attacks on gays in the Kings Cross Mardi Gras of June 1978. Revealing interviews highlight the areas where we suffer discrimination ... within the family, in the workforce, in respect to child custody and by the attitudes of the medical profession.

JUNE 20 to JULY 13 —FlLMMAKERS.

You had a ball at last year's Gay Mardi Gras and you wanted somewhere special to go afterwards with the gay people you danced and sang with in Oxford Street.

Well, this year on Saturday, JUNE 28 ... STONEWALL DAY 1980 ... you can be part of the morning street march, the evening Mardi Gras Fancy Dress Parade and go on to the monster DANCE at Paddington Town Hall at night BUT ...

FIRST the organising committee needs some practical assistance from willing lesbians and gay men. GAYS ARE EVERYWHERE so there must be a lot of gays in the Western Suburbs, eastern, northern, southern and central areas with the particular skills needed to make this a popular, visible event in Sydney for INTERNATIONAL GAY SOLIDARITY DAY.

The small committee has already done a good deal of preliminary work but NOW IT'S TIME to dress up the occasion ... to raise funds to publicise the spectacular actions and entertainments of the day. Peaceful but bright and gay, colourful and happy.

If you are a lesbian or gay man into designing, typing, writing, printing, personal contact with gay groups, telephoning and public relations work and want to help Bruce Belcher will welcome a 'phone call from you on 357 6748 (evenings or leave a message). You don't necessarily have to attend meetings but with your help it will be great

GAY PEOPLE-POWER REQUIRED URGENTLY = DON'T STOP READ ON TO PLAN AND WORK FOR AN EFFECTIVE 1980 NATIONAL HOMOSEXUAL CONFERENCE IN SYDNEY = AUGUST 30-31 = FORTY OR MORE COMMITTED LESBIANS & GAY MEN WORKING TOGETHER ENERGETICALLY ARE NEEDED NOW TO GET THE CONFERENCE ROLLING = ARE YOU A LESBIAN OR ANTI-SEXIST HOMOSEXUAL MAN * A GAY ACCOUNTANT *A GAY SECRETARY * A GAY TYPIST * A GAY ACTIVIST * ARE YOU A GAY FUND-RAISER * A GAY COPYWRITER * A GAY PUBLIC RELATIONS/MEDIA PERSON * ARE YOU A GAY TRADE UNIONIST * A GAY TEACHER * A YOUNG GAY * A GAY WORKSHOP COORDINATOR = SKILLED OR UNSKILLED = THE EMBRYO PLANNING COLLECTIVE NEEDS YOU NOW = COME TO THE PLANNING MEETING ON SUNDAY = MAY 4 at 4 PM IN CAMP (NSW) CENTRE = 33A GLEBE POINT ROAD = GLEBE = BROADWAY END = OR FILL IN THIS URGENT HOMOGRAM AND POST IT OFF TODAY * I AM WILLING TO HELP IN THE PLANNING PROCESS FOR THE 1980 HOMOSEXUAL CONFERENCE AND ATTEND NECESSARY FUTURE MEETINGS OR ACT AS A COUNTRY OR INTERSTATE CONTACT/INFO DISTRIBUTOR =

......................................................'PHONE................(H).................(W)................
POST TO * N.H.C. PO. BOX 380, POST OFFICE, BROADWAY, NSW 2007

---

CURRENT NEWSLETTER AND ARCHIVE OF PREVIOUS NEWSLETTERS

 

Mannie & Kendall Present: LESBIAN AND GAY SOLIDARITY ACTIVISMS

Mannie has a personal web site: RED JOS: HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISM

Mannie's blogs may be accessed by clicking on to the following links:

MannieBlog (from 1 August 2003 to 31 December 2005)

Activist Kicks Backs - Blognow archive re-housed - 2005-2009

RED JOS BLOGSPOT (from January 2009 onwards)

This page updated 18 SEPTEMBER 2014 and again on 26 APRIL 2017

Page 37