ISSN 1446-4896 ISSUE 1, 1999, NUMBER 41
JANUARY - MARCH 1999

1) NEW SOUTH WALES STATE ELECTIONS - 27 MARCH 1999:
Bob Carr has not responded to any letters or any other correspondence to him regarding age of consent, promises made in 1995, Order of Perpetual Indulgence tours of the Opera House cancelled at his instigation. He and his party have remained silent on the issues of legal equality for the gay and lesbian communities, yet he wants our votes and expects to be re-elected on 27 March.

The Coalition has been just as unforthcoming - the Leader of the Opposition skirting such issues at a luncheon with the Gay and Lesbian Business Association.

When you go into the polling booth on 27 March, those of you who live in NSW, remember that the major parties are showing no inclination to remove discrimination under the law for those in the communities who still suffer from their lack of response.

There are other parties to vote for and you should look at their policies - and promises - very carefully before you make your decisions. Don"t allow yourselves to be intimidated by all the homophobes standing for election. Promises, promises - we have heard them all before!

There are so many small groups standing in this election that it is important to check where their preferences are being directed before you vote, as many of them have been found to be fronts for some of the major parties.      

NSW Legislative Council (Upper House): Don"t vote above the line despite the "table cloth" size of the Upper House ballot paper. Instead choose the 15 candidates you would prefer and vote 1 to 15 in the order of your preference.

You DO NOT NEED to vote for more than 15 candidates on that huge piece of paper.

Most people do not realise that when they vote "above the line," preferences will be distributed according to tickets previously lodged with the State Electoral Office.


2) RELIGION AND HOMOSEXUALITY:  Fred Nile threatened - as he does every  year - to disrupt the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade. Of course he didn"t succeed, and it would be laughable except for the fact that homosexuals are murdered and tortured by religious fundamentalists throughout the world.

In Iran, 2 alleged homosexuals were murdered by the regime by having a wall bulldozed onto them!

In Israel, an Israeli professor has unleashed a storm of protest from human rights groups who are attempting to prevent him from receiving Israel"s most coveted national award, the Israeli Prize in Biblical Literature (q online January 1999).

Professor Avraham Steinberg was chosen for the prize on the basis of his recently completed medical-halachic encyclopaedia.

In this work, Steinberg attacks homosexuality as criminal deviance, compares the homosexual drive to the unrepressed urges of murderers and thieves, categorizes gays along with prostitutes, condemns the use of condoms as encouraging gay behaviour and campaigns to force gays to undergo compulsory HIV testing (as reported in Kol Ha'ir 22/1/99).

The full article in q online is headlined "Israeli Gays to fight Homophobic Professor."

If you want to take part in the international campaign you can use the following email addresses:

gayj@hotmail.com

Itzhak Levy, Minister of Education at: sar@education.gov.il

or you can visit the Jerusalem Open House web site www.poboxes.com/gayj

In Jamaica (as reported in the Sydney Star Observer [SSO] 24 December 1998), the justice minister has refused to abolish outdated laws banning homosexuality. "No, there"s no plan by the government to repeal the laws relevant to homosexual activities," said justice minister KD Knight. "The law is founded in a moral imperative which has not changed."  Attempts by a Jamaican prison commissioner to introduce condoms into a prison in August last year resulted in guards walking out in protest. Sixteen prisoners suspected of being gay were murdered and another 20 were injured in the riots that followed.

In the Cayman Islands (as reported in the same issue of the SSO, 24 Dec. 1998) in December last year international attention was drawn to these islands when they blocked the berthing of a ship chartered by the gay and lesbian travel company Gay Vacationers. The Cayman"s tourism minister had written to the ship"s owners saying: "Careful research and prior experience has led us to conclude that we cannot count on this group to uphold the standards of appropriate behaviour expected of visitors to the Cayman Islands, so we regrettably cannot offer our hospitality." 

In the USA, that country that criticizes human rights abuses in other countries, Nicholas West was murdered in 1993 in Tyler, Texas, in a gay-bashing murder recorded in a film shown at the 1999 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Film Festival. The film, Lone Star Hate, records interviews with the 3 murderers, and it is a gruesome story indeed.

In 1998 Matthew Shepard was also murdered in a ghastly attack and the two men allegedly responsible are in jail awaiting trial along with their girlfriends.

And then in February 1999, apart from gay murders and bashings which continue unabated in NSW, the Premier of NSW, responding to what were reported to be complaints from the Catholic Church, stopped the Order of Perpetual Indulgence from taking 2 gay/lesbian tourist groups around the Sydney Opera House.

A letter in the Sydney Morning Herald on 8 March 1999 by Bruce Hancock of Brushgrove says it all: "In response to Dominic Dunne ("Tolerance cuts both ways", Letters, March 3), it does indeed!                              

The Christian Church has had almost 2 000 years to exercise a little tolerance towards gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, and there"s precious little to show for it, other than hatred, bigotry, violence and rejection.

Why should GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender) people be the ones to lead the way? They"ve been doing so for hundreds of years.

If the Church requires a little tolerance shown towards it, then let it lead the way for a change."

Homophobia is, of course, related to racism and both of these programmes are in the "divide and rule" book of rules for regimes around the world. A racist murder, which shocked the USA recently, had a black man towed behind a truck to his death by his body disintegrating in the process. The murderer of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas, John William King, has been convicted and sentenced to death.

WIK LAW is racially discriminating. That was the finding of the United Nations Race Discrimination Committee. It was also the opinion of the Australian Law Reform Commission back in September 1997 on Prime Minister John Howard"s WIK Ten-Point Plan. But Howard uses the populist argument, so often used under South Africa"s apartheid regime, to deflect UN criticism: "Australian laws are made by Australian parliaments elected by the Australian people, not UN Committees." (Sydney Morning Herald 20.3.99) Someone has to remind Howard of the Australian people"s overwhelming decision on Aboriginal Rights in 1967. Maybe a lot of us can on 28 March, Palm Sunday, at the Jabiluka Protest and March from Sydney"s Hyde Park: assemble 12 noon. Come and join us.

The latest grisly example of homophobic violence, as reported on the Planetout web site  (12 March 1999) has occurred in Alabama when two young men admitted to the brutal murder of Billy Jack Gaither for no other reason than the fact that he was gay. A report in the Sydney Morning Herald (20 March 1999) states that Gaither was beaten to death and set alight on top of a pile of blazing tyres in another horrific hate murder.

Planetout reports that from 12 March to 21 March all across the USA, tens of thousands of gays and lesbians will descend on their state capitals in a variety of civil actions designed to bring lawmakers" attention to the Lesbian and Gay civil rights agenda, and to let them know that equality begins at home. 

These murders are all related in that they emanate from religious teachings which teach hatred of people who are "different or perceived to be different".

Protest whenever possible in whatever way you are able to, by sending emails, letters, faxes, to organisations around the world.

Internationally, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission"s Emergency Response Network Action Alert (email majordomo@gina.iglhrc.org) Vol.VII No.4 1998, lists the following:

Costa Rica Gay Association Fights Discrimination by Church and Government Officials

Brazil - Policemen allegedly execute transvestite in Brazil

Argentina: Gay Bars Get Raided Twice this month in Buenos Aires

Croatia: Ex-soldier persecuted because of Homosexuality

USA: Gay Student (Matthew Shepard) Brutally Murdered: Activists call for action against hate. New York: Police brutality Breaks up Gay and Lesbian Protest Rally

Romania: Human Rights Advocate Found Murdered: Authorities Blame "Homosexual Killing"

Sweden: Restrictive Immigration Policy Threatens Gay and Lesbian Iranians with Deportation, leading to certain death.

For information on letter and email addresses for any or all of the above, contact the editors of LGS Newsletter at either of the  addresses at the top of the newsletter, or through our web site.

3) AGE OF CONSENT: No further information available at this stage but we would urge anybody with information about any countries from and including Venezuela to Zimbabwe to advise us so that we can update our information and the website for age of consent.

4) COUNTRIES TO AVOID VISITING AS TOURISTS BECAUSE OF THEIR CONTINUED HOMOPHOBIA AND ATTACKS ON LESBIANS AND GAYS:
There are now so many countries that it will soon be difficult to list them all, but some include Burma, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Namibia, Romania, Brazil, certain USA States, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, West Indies, Cayman Islands, India. Please let us know of others so that we can list them and have comprehensive information "globally" to use the latest capitalist "buzzword".

5) CENSORSHIP: The latest film version of Lolita has been passed by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) for release in Australia with an R 18+ rating. This has created a storm of protest in the Federal Parliament - the religious right at it again - because it is a story of the relationship of a stepfather with his 14 year-old stepdaughter. Paedophilia!!!! they are all screaming - but there is another reason. The keeper of the country"s morals is an independent Senator in the Federal Parliament, and the Federal Government needs to keep on side with this religious fanatic because he holds the balance of power in the senate until 30 June 1999. In order to get controversial legislation passed in the upper house, the Government has to kowtow to this bigot to the extent that the minister of communications is now threatening to try and censor the Internet! This is the so-called thin end of the wedge - gay and lesbian issues will not be far behind for censoring, and we need to be prepared for a fight to prevent censorship on the grounds that paedophilia and homosexuality are one and the same thing - not that Lolita actually falls into any of these categories.

6) INTERSECTION:
The group has had its first meeting in 1999 and reported on progress from local government councils around New South Wales in response to an email sent to them asking what they were doing for sexual minorities in their council areas to comply with the Social/Community Planning and Reporting Manual and Guidelines issued by the NSW Department of Local Government in May 1998. There are approximately 170 local government areas in NSW and so far only about 12 have responded. This means that InterSection still has a lot of work to do to make a breakthrough in retrieving information from all of them. The NSW Department of Local Government has set a deadline of June 1999 for the councils to comply with the requirements of the NSW Government.

InterSection has also been trying to arrange a joint meeting with the recently formed Anti-Homophobia and Access Alliance Group from Western Sydney because the two groups have similar aims and need to work together to achieve success for sexual minorities in the community. We are hoping to meet together on 29 March 1999 and hope some useful plans of action will come out of a joint meeting.

7) HIV "ATTACK":
A Paddington (Sydney) artist was charged on 18 March 1999 in Downing Central Local Court with attempting to infect two men with HIV. Gregory Blacker (44) is believed to be the first person in NSW to be charged with attempting to inflict a grievous bodily disease. He is to appear again on 1 April 1999. (SMH, 19.3.99)

8) DON DUNSTAN REMEMBERED:
All thinking Australians of diverse political persuasions will remember Don (who died on 6 February 1999, aged 72, after a long battle with lung cancer) for his vision and understanding, who led his State (South Australia) through some great social changes. In his period as Premier of his State, 1970-1979, his role in Aboriginal Land Rights and anti-discrimination legislation led to the reform of homosexual laws, amongst other reforms. Later, whilst chairman of the Victorian Tourist Commission, many of us will remember his willingness to be photoghraphed with author Garry Wotherspoon and some other gay men including Monsignor Porcamadonna (aka Fabian Lo Schiavo) after he had launched "Being Different," stories of nine men growing up gay in Australia, in 1986 in Sydney Town Hall. This cost him dearly after The Australian newspaper published the photograph. He was forced to resign after heavy pressure from many people, some of the Italian community included, who were outraged by the event. Dunstan is survived by his long-time male partner, a person who was largely ignored by the mainstream media, and his first wife and three children who were NOT ignored by the mainstream media. Just another example of the media"s total hypocrisy when dealing with gay issues. The Sydney Morning Herald in particular, needs to be singled out because of its point- blank refusal to publish an obituary on the death of Simon Nkoli who, in his 41 short years, accomplished possibly as much as Don Dunstan did in his 72 years!

9) SUICIDE ANALYSIS:
Last year researchers from Macquarie University, the Prince of Wales Hospital and the University of NSW published a State-by-State analysis of suicide figures. Their findings suggested that over the past 30 years male suicide rates have increased substantially for those between 15 and 24 in all States, especially in small rural towns. Hanging rates had increased and access to firearms and alcohol were particular issues, the study found. The report"s author, in an interview, said: "Young men are never very good at presenting for help and probably young men in rural areas are even less so." No mention appears to have been made of any breakdown in specific issues such as rural male attitudes to sexual orientation and inherited religious homophobia.

10) A VICTORY FOR SOUTH AFRICAN GAYS:
In February 1999, the South African High Court handed down a judgement in which it found that the Department of Home Affairs failed to recognise the rights of same-sex couples, especially if one of the partners was a foreigner. The case now goes to the South African Constitutional Court for its final decision which appears to be simply procedural.

Until Parliament changes the law all lesbian and gay people will be covered by exemptions from the Act.

11) ACTIONS:

MARCH WITH US on Palm Sunday, 28 March 1999: 12 noon from Hyde Park and protest uranium mining at JABILUKA AND BEVERLEY, the new South Australian uranium mine. Your opportunity to show your anger at all four unpopular uranium mining operations in Australia. Every stage of the nuclear cycle is unsafe, from digging it out to digging it in as nuclear waste. To check assembly point - phone JAG  (Sydney)9514-1190

SPAIDS: Come and help us plant trees in memory of those who have died from HIV/AIDS, and from violent hate crimes. Our first 1999 planting day at Sydney Park, St Peters, is likely to be Sunday 6 June 1999 (World Environment Day) but has yet to be confirmed by South Sydney City Council.

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

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