ISSN 1446-4896 ISSUE 2, 2000, NUMBER 46
FEBRUARY - MAY 2000

This issue of the newsletter is very late due to the Editors commitments since February, and we apologise and hope that the contents will make up for the lateness!

1) DONATIONS
- Once again we have received donations to assist with the newsletter production. Our donors probably suspect we have taken the money and run, but we hope the production of this newsletter will prove otherwise! Many thanks to those donors.

2) YOUTH SUICIDE IN SYDNEY'S WEST:
In the last issue of the newsletter, Issue 1/2000, we referred to a study which had been done by Ms Anne Fry, senior lecturer in mental health nursing at UWS Nepean. We took Ms Fry to task for not addressing the issue of youth suicide of gays and lesbians in the report in an article in UWS Nepean"s Alumni journal Nepean News dated Spring 1999.

Anne Fry has contacted us to correct our item which we do, with apologies for not having known the full story.

Anne writes: "The Alumni magazine that you saw was a "BRIEF" report of my research report which was about 70,000 words and did indeed contain a chapter on G & L suicide. I have extracted this chapter for you and please feel free to use it in the Newsletter."

Anne advises that it was part of the Blacktown Youth Suicide Prevention Project Report which was funded by the Commonwealth Government.

The following is an edited version of part of that chapter:

         "The pervading influence of a homophobic and heterosexist society automatically defines the gay and lesbian person as other and different. In a heterosexist society, homosexuality is "fair game" for discrimination, prejudice and hate in many parts of our community, Even in children "poofta" and "leso" are used as powerful derogatory ammunition in "name calling" by school children.

            Destructive homophobic behaviour manifested at ----- a young age is embedded in our culture. These homophobic attitudes are at the beginning of a continuum which can culminate in hate crimes of murder and bashings against gays and lesbians, which are not uncommon in Western countries including Australia. An extreme example occurred in the USA in 1998, where many Christian fundamentalists demonstrated against gays at the funeral of Matthew Shepard, an 18 year old student, who was brutally murdered because he was gay. The intensity of their hate and self-righteousness in the name of Christianity was bizarre and alarming. According to the Hate Crimes Prevention Center (1999) in the USA, attacks upon gays and lesbians are increasing in number and severity.

            Of those young gay and lesbian people in the Hershberger, Pilkington and D"Augelli (1997) study, suicide attempters, in contrast with non-attempters, "had disclosed more completely their sexual orientation to others, had lost more friends because of their disclosures, and had experienced more victimisation. The loss of friends due to disclosure of sexual orientation and current suicidal ideation were among the strongest predictors of suicide attempts" (p.477).

            RECOMMENDATIONS  Gay and Lesbian Clients   1) Health workers need to be sensitive to issues of sexual orientation, skilled in assessment and informed about resources available.  2) Education in schools about homosexuality is needed to address homophobia."

            Lesbian and Gay Solidarity (LGS) has attempted, over a period of at least the last 10 years, to induce the NSW Department of Education to make compulsory the module on homosexuality in one of their course where it is compulsory to study the module on racism. At meetings of the Anti Discrimination Board"s Gay and Lesbian Consultation, where members of the NSW Department of Education have been present to help address the issue, we were finally unsuccessful in getting them to make the homosexuality module compulsory. Homophobia continues to bedevil our society to the detriment of all, but particularly young gays and lesbians coming to terms with their sexuality.

3) CHILD MOLESTATION - BURDEN OF PROOF:  
The following letter, by Derek Williams, Randwick Boys High School, appeared in Education, the journal of the New South Wales Teachers Federation in Vol. 134, 29 May 2000:

            "The NSW Teachers Federation is right to oppose any relaxation of the burden of proof required to convict a teacher of the serious offence of child molestation.

            During my nine year convenorship of the Gay and Lesbian Teachers and Students Association which ended in 1998, I had to help a number of distressed teachers deal with false allegations made by students who, with parental support, saw this as an easy way to "roll a faggot."

            The consequence of an allegation was for the teachers to be subjected to the humiliation of interviews by the Case Management Unit (CMU) and police, who also interviewed other students and staff. Suicide was often on the minds of such disgraced teachers. By contrast, there were no adverse consequences for the students, once the false allegations were found by the CMU "not substantiated". Nor did the opportunity arise for the wronged teachers to proceed against the students with civil litigation for defamation.

            Teachers are usually expected to continue to teach the class attended by the mischief-makers, although "compassionate" transfers have been known to be offered. Regardless of the outcome, a mark against such teachers remains on their file for life.

            It is far too easy for a group of students to act maliciously against an "unpopular" teacher, hoping that they will enjoy approbation of their peers, and knowing that they will suffer no punishment whatsoever for the bit of fun they had destroying that person"s life."

4) SPAIDS UPDATE:
South Sydney City Council has advised that the next two planting dates for 2000 will be on Sunday 2 July and Sunday 6 August.. During February 2000 Council had a day at the Park to display artwork of the proposed permanent focal point in the AIDS Memorial Groves area, as a place of gathering, or reflection, or whatever other purposes it could be used for, such as a Remembrance Vigil. People were asked to make comments on the proposal and submit them to Council for consideration. The focal point has been approved in principle by the Council and it only remains now for it to be built as soon as possible. For more information on this important development you can contact Simon Shaw, Landscape Architect, Parks Development
Section, South Sydney Council Locked Bag 5000 Strawberry Hills NSW 2012 or phone him: 9288 5000

5) DR LAURA SCHLESSINGER:  
This person is known as Dr Laura in the USA where she has syndicated radio shows in which she addresses a wide range of topics. She is supposedly philosopher, psychologist, counsellor, on any topic you care to mention. This year Dr Laura has come into greater prominence for two reasons - one is that she is about to be given a tv programme for the first time by Paramount, starting in September 2000, and the other is because Dr Laura has started attacking gays and lesbians as biological errors!!!! There are various web sites where information about Dr Laura can be found, but one of the most important ones is www.stopdrlaura.com

This woman is extremely dangerous because she has such a large audience in which she is spreading her homophobic hate messages. Paramount has got to be stopped from allowing her to have a tv programme, and every effort should be made to communicate our opposition to allowing it to go ahead. Her homophobia is of the type that allowed Matthew Shepard and Billy Jack Gaither and others to be brutally assaulted and murdered. This is not just a US problem, it is an international problem, and it requires an effort on the part of all of us to stop this homophobe in her tracks.

On top of everything else, we recently discovered that Dr Laura is Jewish, and this only aggravates the situation, because Jews should understand, better than many other groups, what hate and oppression can lead to as witnessed by the Nazi Holocaust during the 1930s and 1940s.

We have written letters supporting the campaign to stop Dr Laura, and urge you to do the same.

If you are not connected to the Internet, you can write or fax organisations such as the Anti Defamation League 823 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017 USA.


6) VOICE OF AUSTRALIA becomes fundamentalist christian:
Back in 1996-7, the Federal Government cut the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) funds and axed Radio Australia saying shortwave technology was outdated. The main Cox Peninsula shortwave transmitter"s Darwin site was closed. However, Foreign Affairs provided some money to keep a weather transmitter in Victoria functioning which meant limited broadcasting but only to the South Pacific island communities. The rest of the service disappeared from South-East Asia.

Now we learn from the Sydney Morning Herald and Radio National's Australia Talks Back programme the government has sold the powerful Cox Peninsula facilities, which include 5 broadcast channels, to Christian Voice, the radio arm of Christian Vision founded by Bob Edmiston, a self-made millionaire. Raised a Roman Catholic but caught by the Pentecostals at 17, his Christian Vision already operates shortwave services in central southern Africa and Latin America. It also runs a school in Zambia, where gay hate is rife, and funds missionaries in developing countries.

What did Edmiston pay for Radio Australia"s powerful Darwin shortwave transmission facility? He"s not saying and the government remains tightlipped.

Edmiston maintains his christian radio is evangelistic not fundamentalist. Of course, but we don"t see the difference. Whatever one calls its bias or emphasis, it"s anti-gay, anti-lesbian and the underlying prejudice which manifests in gay hate and homophobia.

Lesbians and gays ought to be outraged, and harassing federal members over this deal.

7) GAY AND LESBIAN HATE CRIMES - INTERNATIONAL:  
An IN MEMORIAM  site on the web lists gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered hate crime murder victims in the United States. The list does not give the time span, but judging by some of the names listed, it would seem that the period covered would be about the last 4 to 5 years. The list has 224 names on it, and gets longer every day. There is talk both in the USA and elsewhere about introducing hate crimes legislation, but this skirts the issue. The issue is homophobia in the community, where the religious right and the neo-Nazi hate groups regurgitate their messages of hate on the web, on the radio and on television, where Paramount in the USA is about to provide the homophobe, Dr Laura Schlessinger, with her own tv programme. The numbers of gay and lesbian and transgender hate crimes in Australia is not currently known, but the numbers of which we are aware, are unacceptably high.

            What needs to be done is to have concerted education campaigns, but even this has problems, because many of our school teachers are themselves homophobes and do a great amount of damage in and out of their schools.

            We can start to do something about the horrendous situation ourselves, by writing letters to Education, the journal of the NSW Teachers Federation, at 23-33 Mary Street, Surry Hills, NSW 2010, or by email to journal@nswtf.org.au  Those who are not members of the Federation should get teacher friends to submit letters on their behalf.


8) GAY AND LESBIAN HATE CRIMES - AUSTRALIAN:
We are attempting to compile records of gay and lesbian hate crimes in Australia in order to have figures with which to challenge homophobia in our society. If any of you or your friends have any information on this issue, please send it to the Editors to help in the compilation of statistics.

9) DEPORTATION CASES IN AUSTRALIA:
The Canberra Times of 23 March 2000 reported the case of a Sri Lankan student, whose application for refugee status here in Australia , based on his homosexuality and his country"s homophobic attitudes, was rejected by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. A case reported in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH)  of 19 January 2000 reported that a paraplegic Ethiopian man faced a death sentence after the Federal Government rejected his application for refugee status,  his doctors said. The following day the SMH reported that the Federal Opposition spokesman on Immigration had sent a second letter of appeal to the Minister for Immigration, Mr Ruddock, but a spokesman for the Minister said the application for refugee status was refused, and Mr Ruddock was "not inclined to intervene using his discretionary powers."

A gay Chinese man, Guo Ping Gui, (as reported in the SMH and the Sydney Star Observer in May/June 2000) originally from Shanghai, fled to Australia in 1996 after being arrested by Chinese authorities for kissing and cuddling his boy friend in a public park. Gui claimed that he would be imprisoned for his homosexuality if he was made to return to China. Judge Hely of the Federal Court upheld his argument to remain in Australia but the Immigration Minister successfully appealed the judge"s decision. Gui tried to appeal to the High Court but was refused leave. He is now to be deported, no doubt secretly, which is the Commonwealth"s usual form.

This same Federal Government recently deported a Chinese woman, 9 months pregnant with her second child, back to China, stating at the time that she would assuredly be allowed to complete her pregnancy in China. However, as soon as the woman arrived in China, the authorities terminated pregnancy. So much for China"s human rights record, and so much for Australia"s ongoing violation of human rights, despite being a signatory to various United Nations human rights statutes.

10) NUCLEAR MADNESS:
It never goes away! The latest nuke recklessness was divulged in an SMH news article, 7 June 2000. A state-owned Argentine company, INVAP, has now been chosen as the preferred tenderer ro build the replacement Lucas Heights nuclear reactor. A $300 million plus contract could be signed with INVAP by the end of July.

Greenpeace says it"s inappropriate because of INVAP"s record of supplying nuclear technology to Libya, its work in Iran and building nuclear plants in Cuba and Algeria.

The Australian nuclear organisation director denies the Libya claim and insists that the Cuba, Algeria and Iran facilities have all been peaceful ones.

There is still no firm idea on a dump for radio-active waste. However, the Federal Minister Senator Minchin says that the signing of the INVAP contract should stop any future government overturning the decision to go ahead with the new Lucas Heights reactor.

It should be noted with concern that burrowing animals and roadworks are daily digging up uranium tailings from the South Alligator uranium mill in Kakadu National Park (SMH 7/6/00).

That"s only when they mine the wretched stuff. It"s just as treacherous when it"s used nuclear waste from facilities like Lucas Heights.

One has to applaud the protest actions at the Beverley Uranium mine site in South Australia last month when about 80 people were arrested.

11) AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES  and the "Guildford Four":
Remember the Guildford Four, a woman and three men, who spent 15 years in a British prison for 1974 IRA bomb attacks in south-east London and Guidford, Surrey.

In 1989, the Four were exonerated and their convictions overturned, when appeal court judges found police had concocted evidence and lied at the original trial.

The BBC has revealed that Prime Minister Tony Blair this month wrote to the wife of one of the Four "I am very sorry indeed that this should have happened. I believe," he wrote, "that it is an indictment of our system of justice and a matter for the greatest regret when anyone suffers punishment as a result of a miscarriage of justice."

He said "sorry" as British Prime Minister whereas John Howard does not see the injustice of the past and the miscarriage of justice to Aborigines in this country enough for him to say sorry officially from the Australian Prime Minister on behalf of the rest of the Australian people.

12) AIDS AROUND THE WORLD:
 South Africa"s President Thabo Mbeki has caused outrage by his support for the discredited doctors from the USA who said some years ago that HIV does not cause AIDS. At a critical time for the spread of HIV in South Africa, Mbeki"s support for these outmoded ideas is setting the clock back 20 years. South Africa has reached the stage where 1 in 5 people are reported to be HIV positive, and the most urgent issue in that country at the moment is access to cheaper/generic drugs to assist these people and to assist HIV positive mothers who have just had babies to obtain AZT for the babies to help prevent the development of AIDS in the babies.

The National Coalition of Gay and Lesbian Equality's Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) group announced, in equality magazine of May 2000, that there has been a breakthrough on the cheaper drugs front. The drug company Pfizer have agreed to supply Diflucan/fluconazole free to "all people with HIV/AIDS in South Africa who could not afford the drug" and who had cryptococcal meningitis. Zackie Achmet, speaking on behalf of TAC called on all drug companies to follow Pfizer"s example.

Mbeki should listen to the HIV/AIDS activists around the world who have had personal experience and done nearly 20 years of research on the disease. There is no time to lose over the AIDS crisis in South Africa!

13) ITEMS FOR SALE:
We still have some copies of Graham Carbery"s book "A History of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras for $10 (this was published in 1996 and remains the only published history of this event!). Also some copies of It Was a Riot - Sydney"s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras for $2, t-shirts: Stonewall Was a Riot and SPAIDS - AIDS Memorial Grove Tree Planting Project, and (Hunter) Friends of Dorothy - all for $15 each - large sizes (plus a few extra large). These are always on sale at the tree plantings at Sydney Park.

14) NEW BOOK - VERY TOPICAL!:
What does gay Australia know about its near neighbours? "SWEET HORIZONS: A History of the Solomon Islands" by Ian MacNeill is published jointly by Acland Press (Vic) and Mieli Press (NSW). "The past breathes through the present in this evocation of one of Australia"s nearest neighbours." Includes an excellent bibliography and extremely useful index. $24.95 from The Bookshop, Oxford Street, and good bookshops.

15) GROWING LIST OF HOMOPHOBIC COUNTRIES TO BOYCOTT:  
Unfortunately, instead of the list diminishing over the years, it continues to grow, with a few of the countries previously listed recording more and more gay and lesbian and transgender hate crimes. Brazil and Mexico are amongst the worst offenders, but the USA - or many of the states in that country  - has a continuing record of homophobic human rights abuses. Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda,  Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, are some of the worst of the African countries, while Serbia/Yugoslavia as well as some of the previous USSR republics have examples of homophobic human rights abuses. Other American countries on the list are El Salvador, Argentina, Chile - although with its present government, it is possible that matters will improve there.

16) RALLY AGAINST HOMOPHOBIA:
The Collective Action Against Homophobia (CAAH) group has organised a rally against homophobia for Saturday 24 June 2000 at Taylor Square to remember Stonewall and to remember Mardi Gras 1978. "The first Mardi Gras in 1978 was a political protest in which many came onto the streets to fight for queer rights, and experienced police brutality and vilification in the media simply for fighting for our right to exist. Mardi Gras today is a force to be reckoned with, but are we still fighting against prejudice, bigotry and hatred? Come and rally on Saturday 24 June against homophobia and heterosexism in our society, and commemorate the past fights in the struggle for lesbian and gay liberation."

"WE DEMAND:  - an end to Homophobia - an end to Queer youth suicide and homelessness - an end to sexism and racism - equal age of consent for homosexuals - more funding for HIV/AIDS research and PLWHA."

17) GERMAN COMPENSATION - BELATEDLY -TO SURVIVING GAY NAZI VICTIMS:
A report from Germany earlier this year stated that German legislators proposed making amends to a long-neglected group of Nazi victims: thousands of men sent to concentration camps for being gay. The governing Social Democratic and Greens parties introduced a bill to acknowledge Nazi persecution of gays and ask the government to review whether to annul convictions under a Nazi-era anti-gay law that remained on the books in West Germany until 1969.

"It"s long overdue," said Volker Beck, the Greens party legal affairs spokesman. "It"s really very shameful that there"s only now a majority (in parliament) for such an apology and a rehabilitation." German gay rights activists tentatively welcomed the initiative, which came as legislators worked on details of a $5 billion fund to compensate victims of Nazi-forced and slave labour programmes.

18) NEWS BRIEFS:  
31 May 2000, Rome officials have withdrawn the City"s backing and financial assistance for the World Gay Pride 2000 festival which is opposed by the Vatican and right wing political groups. Gay festival organisers have said the event would still go ahead - Reuters

29 May 2000, Australia"s Doctor Sue Crockett in New Guinea has warned that life expectancy in PNG would drop to 38 years for women, about 40 for men, within a decade if the country"s AIDS epidemic goes unchecked - AAP.                                                                                 

CENSORSHIP: Given clashing corporate cultures, merger of America On Line (AOL) with Time Warner has analysts questioning free speech issues. Last year AOL deleted the personal profile of a gay man who described himself as a "submissive bottom." AOL members have personal profiles listing hobbies such as killing fags and other anti-gay comments which make AOL a moral arbiter. Time Warner is not, so what happens in a Big Brother clash?

 19) GAYS AND LESBIANS AND TRADE UNIONS:
The Newcastle Herald of 17 February 2000 reported: "Gay and lesbian workers still faced significant discrimination and harassment in the workplace, the NSW Labor Council said yesterday. The council launched a booklet outlining workplace rights for gay and lesbian workers in an attempt to increase union involvement in gay workplace issues. Yesterday"s launch followed a report last year which found gay and lesbian workers did not believe unions were part of the solution to their problems. "The booklet is important because there is still quite significant discrimination against gay and lesbian workers in the workplace," Labor Council secretary Michael Costa said. Mr Costa said the booklet encouraged gay and lesbian workers to organise their own networks within the unions."