LESBIAN AND GAY SOLIDARITY
NEWSLETTER
PO BOX 1675 PRESTON SOUTH, VIC 3072 AUSTRALIA PHONE(03)9471 4878
Formerly: GAY SOLIDARITY GROUP Est. 1978 email: josken_at_zipworld_com_au
LGS HOME PAGES: www.zipworld.com.au/~josken
ISSN 1446-4896
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ISSUE 2, 2003 NUMBER 55 APRIL - JUNE 2003
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1) MCCARTHY ERA TRANSCRIPTS - GAY BAITING: (PlanetOut news, gay.com 7 may 2003): Transcripts released in the USA in May 2003 of hearings held as part of Senator McCarthy's probe 50 years ago into anti-American conspiracies have revealed a degree of homophobia and scare tactics that until now could only be surmised. McCarthy and his closeted chief counsel, Roy Cohn, subpoenaed dozens of gay men, mainly in the Arts and entertainment and badgered (bullied might be more appropriate!) them to reveal the names of communist spies, threatening to out them if they didn't cooperate. Cohn, whose homosexuality was unknown to McCarthy, was disbarred for unethical and unprofessional conduct and died of AIDS in 1986.
2) NEW SOUTH WALES AND AGE OF CONSENT: New South Wales has finally entered the 21st century - in some respects! - and has passed legislation - Sexual Amendment (Sexual Offences) Bill - to lower the age of consent for gay men from 18 to 16 - the same as for heterosexuals and lesbians. The Legislative Assembly (lower house) voted 54 to 32 to lower the gay age of consent, and the Legislative Council (upper house) passed the Bill with 23 voting for, and 16 voting against. Now the NSW Carr ALP government needs to pass legislation removing any discriminatory laws relating to gay men and lesbians which still exist on the statute books.
3) TASMANIA UPPER HOUSE ELECTIONS - MORAL ISSUES AND CHRISTIANITY: It should NEVER be assumed by gays and lesbians that the human rights we have fought for and achieved are inalienable and will be there forever entrenched in legislation. In May 2003 Tasmania had elections for certain legislative council seats. The christians in Tasmania, ever ready to do battle against those evil sodomites, the homosexual rights lobbies, were involved in a public forum in the Mersey area. The five candidates were quizzed about moral issues by the predominantly christian audience ahead of the elections due on 3 May 2003, as reported in The Advocate (1 May 2003). The event was organised by the conservative Australian Christian Lobby and was attended by more than 150 people. Questions from the audience covered such issues as the rights of homosexuals, sex industry legislation, and IVF and stem cell research. The first question posed was :Do you support adoption by same-sex couples?”
Every candidate said they did not with the exception of the Greens party-endorsed candidate Patrick Johnson. Norma Jamieson, one of the five candidates, questioned in her opening address whether it was right for government to legislate on matters of personal morality, was later applauded for saying it was not right for homosexual couples to have their relationship “sanctified by a marriage service of any sort at all.” Jamieson won a seat as an Independent. She is a euthanasia advocate. (Mercury 5 May 2003).
4) LESBIAN AND GAY AGEING ISSUES: A gay couple from the Melbourne division of InterSection recently attended two public meetings for senior citizens in that city. This is an edited version from the website (www.zipworld.com.au/~josken/inters2.htm).
Convened by the Council on the Ageing (COTA), the Seminar on “What must be done to make Community Services work better” was held on 24 June and opened by the Vic Minister for Aged Care, Gavin Jennings, who departed before the 100+ audience could comment or question him about statements in his speech. Audience participation was limited to a period after the other four speakers who comprised the panel finished their presentations. Nevertheless, in question time the same sex couple from InterSection identified themselves and asked the panel what training did community service workers receive about the needs of older lesbians and gay men. The answer was brief and to the point: NONE as far as was known. Others in the audience let it be known that it was an issue requiring attention and even prompted a lesbian in the audience to identify herself. InterSection intends to keep on nudging mainstream organisations on the issue.
The second meeting attended was hosted by the ALSO Foundation in its Community Forums Project on “The Needs of Older Gay, Lesbian and Transgender People.” It was held in Heidelberg on 28 June, the third and last at different locations around Melbourne. The Foundation plans to issue a comprehensive report on its findings revealed by the project within a couple of months.
Interestingly, neither the mainstream seminar nor the gay seniors forum included any Aboriginal or Asian participants and even though the suicide issue in elderly rural communities was brought up there was no worthwhile discussion.
At the forum there were two facilitators, a lesbian and a gay man, and after the introduction and explanation on how it would be structured, the meeting broke into two groups and went to separate rooms, women in one and men in the other.
InterSection observed that at long last gay and lesbian organisations appeared to be recognising that we just don’t simply disappear when our hair turns to silver or we lose our youthful exuberance for flashy lifestyles. People who have been active and open about their same sex relationships should not be forced back into the closet by church-based discrimination because they require to use aged care and support services.
5) AIDS IN SOUTH AFRICA: A colleague has sent us a chronology of the HIV/AIDS Treatment Access Row taking place in South Africa. The report was from allafrica.com and posted to the web on 1 May 2003. This newsletter does not have enough space to reprint the whole document, which can be accessed on: http://allafrica.com/stories/200305010124.html
The final paragraph probably sums up the situation to date:
23 April 2003 - South Africa's AIDS policies are failing and the government urgently needs to make drugs freely available, a report by the South African Human Rights commission (SAHRC) shows. Despite the creation of one of the most comprehensive policies and enabling legislation in the world, the country had not succeeded in implementing these plans sufficiently to make an impact on reducing the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, the SAHRC report said.
6) ------AND AIDS IN THE LAND OF THE FREE (USA): Nicholas D Kristof wrote in an article in the New York Times on 9 May 2003 headed “No Time to Get Squeamish” that most US AIDS scientists are terrified by what they describe as witch hunts by neo-Puritans in and out of the Bush administration. These have made many so nervous that in email and research abstracts they avoid using words like “gays”, “homosexuals”, “anal sex” or “sex-workers”. This has caused scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and elsewhere to devise their own secret code in which one term stands for “gay” or “homosexual”, another for “anal sex” and so on. One scientist warned, “-------assume you are living in Stalinist Russia when communicating with the United States government.” Researchers have been told by NIH project officers to avoid “sensitive language” in grant applications. For a particular researcher working on HIV in gay men, this was a challenge. How could scholars investigate how AIDS spreads without using words that make the religious right blush?
AIDS kills more people in 2 hours than SARS has killed in total. 12,000 people die in the USA annually of AIDS where new HIV infections remain at 40,000 annually.
Kristof concludes his article which discusses Bush's $15 billion AIDS initiative by stating that “The bottom line is that Mr Bush must make it clear that he is on the side of the scientists, not the witch burners. He can't stay on the fence. Too many Americans have already died of AIDS to allow promising fields of research to wither because some Americans get the willies when they see terms like 'anal sex'”.
7) PRIME MINISTER WANTS TO AXE THE SENATE! John Howard says it’s obstructional but like many of us, Alan Ramsey in the Sydney Morning Herald (28.6.03), says people who can’t count pretend that four independents (Tasmania’s Brian Harradine and Shane Murphy, South Australia’s Meg Lees and Queensland’s Len Harris) hold the balance of power. They don’t. They only share it --with two Greens, seven Democrats and 28 Labor senators. The Government, with 35 senators, needs four of the others --any four , whoever-- to join it for a simple Senate majority on any given piece of legislation. Mix and match, if necessary. And if Labor backs the Government, whatever the issue, there isn’t a thing the others, the 13 minor party/independent also-rans, can do about it. Game, set and match. Good for Alan Ramsey for putting it bluntly. Just look at the recent ASIO bill for example. Now that we’re a police state, the last thing we need is to lose the Senate. The Senate may help stop Labor caving in again!
8) SO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY ASIO MAKES US INTO A POLICE STATE? It’s all because Labor got scared and decided the Coalition’s amendments were good enough for it to support the Bill to give ASIO power that no democratic government possesses. Under the new laws, people can be detained who are not suspected of being involved in any crime . The suggestion that they have passively acquired information will be enough. This would cover journalists working on a story, doctors listening to their patients, teachers in the course of their work, priests in the confessional, people surfing the Internet, even lawyers and, of course, political activists.
The vulnerable will be those who don’t have access to their own lawyer and legal know-how and that includes 16 year olds who are explicitly included under the new ASIO legislation, one of the “acceptable”amendments --from previously 14 year olds.
The new laws demand that you answer ASIO’s questions. Failure to do so incurs a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Saying “no comment” is not going to get you far --the onus of proof is reversed, leaving it up to you to prove you don’t know the answers. In detention you can be interrogated in three 8-hour blocks over up to seven days.
After the warrant expires another can be issued, and another, continuing the detention indefinitely. The initial warrants are granted by judges but, given that the information presented to the judges is from one source only, ASIO, and YOU don’t have the right to be legally represented before the judges, or to cross-examine your accuser, it is not clear how the judge could do anything but grant the warrant.
There is a sunset clause, meaning that the bill has to be renewed in three years time, hardly comforting when one remembers that the Senate has been fighting this legislation for over fifteen months until the 28 Labor senators caved in. (From several sources including Green Left Weekly, 2.7.03)
9) BOOKS: DARK VICTORY by David Marr and Marian Wilkinson tells the story of the Tampa affair and the “children overboard” lies which enabled the Coalition to be re-elected to office in the Federal Parliament in November 2001. It is a story of coercion and intrigue and is a chilling tale of what governments will do to achieve power at any cost. The Coalition firmly believed that you could fool all of the people all of the time, and were fairly successful in achieving their objectives because of the racism inherent in Australian society in which even those with a laissez fair attitude to life were happy to keep unwanted foreigners out. (Published in 2003 by Allen and Unwin $29.95)
Asylum Seekers - Australia's Response to Refugees by Don McMaster is a related story of Australia's
approach to desperate people seeking refuge in a country other that their own from which they have fled because of persecution of one sort or another. It is a similar story to the previous one in telling how the current and recent Australian governments have sought to keep out ”the other” from obtaining refuge in what appeared to be a safe haven. ( Second printing 2002 - by Melbourne University Press $38.45)
Don't ask don't tell - Hidden in the crowd: the need for documenting links between sexuality and suicidal behaviours among young people. Report of the same-sex attracted youth suicide data collection project. By Sue Dyson, Anne Mitchell, Anthony Smith, Gary Dowsett, Marian Pitts, Lynne Hillier. (published May 2003 by Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society - available free on application)
10) SPAIDS: The next planting in the Sydney Park AIDS Memorial Groves will be on Sunday 27 July 2003 - National Tree planting day. The planting on 25 May went ahead despite a fair amount of rain at the time, but the rain stopped for a few hours and people were able to plant several trees during that time. We hope that those who were unable to be there in May will be able to plant trees in July -with better weather on the day - hopefully!
The final SPAIDS planting for 2003 will be on Sunday 21 September.2003.
11) FAIRFIELD AIDS MEMORIAL GARDEN: We visited the Fairfield AIDS Memorial Garden at the old Infectious Diseases Hospital site and were pleased to see that the Garden was in reasonably good condition and was being looked after and maintained. We hope that by paying regular visits to the Garden we will be able to ensure that it is kept in a properly maintained condition.
12) IRAN AND GAY MURDERS: fridae, Asia's gay and lesbian network, reported on 16 May 2003, that three men were hanged the previous Tuesday morning in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad for a number of offences including ”homosexual acts.” The report states that the men were convicted of abducting women and girls, rape, homosexual acts, sodomy and fornication, but did not name the men. Another five were hanged in the same spot later in the day.
------- and UZBEKISTAN ABUSES: On 31 May 2003 William A. Courson, Executive Director of the MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, sent out the following email around the world for action by gay and lesbian groups:
(from Doug Windsor 365Gay.com Newscenter New York Bureau):
Uzbekistan authorities have arrested human rights defender Ruslan Sharipov on charges of homosexuality in what Human Rights Watch calls purely politically motivated reasons. Human Rights Watch called on the Uzbek government to immediately release Sharipov and two co-workers pending further investigation. On 26 May 2003 police in the Uzbek capital arrested Sharipov, a journalist known for his critical articles on police corruption and human rights abuses. Police also arrested Sharipov's colleagues Oleg Sarapulov and Azamat Mamankulov. Sharipov told Human Rights Watch that police hit him several times, threatened to rape him with a bottle, and put a gas mask on him. He said they also displayed copies of his articles on a table in front of him and shouted at him for long periods.
Register objections with: Hon. Alisher Vohidov, Ambassador, Permanent Mission of the Republic of Uzbekistan to the United Nations, 866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 326, New York, NY 10017 USA
13) REPORT DETAILS ANTI-GAY ABUSE IN AFRICA: Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network issued the following report on 14 May 2003:
Government-sanctioned harassment and violence against GLBT people in Southern Africa is pervasive, according to the report released today (14 May 2003).
The report was compiled and released by two human rights groups, Human Rights Watch and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC). The 298-page report, “More Than a Name: State-Sponsored Homophobia and Its Consequences in Southern
Africa” documents widespread anti-gay violence in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.“Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have been vilified by presidents and political leaders, which has led to a culture of intolerance,”said Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of IGLHRC. “These attacks are just the first step in creating a climate in which all rights are at risk.”The report is based on interviews with numerous people in each country and includes first-person accounts of police brutality and mob beatings, among other anti-gay violence. The two human rights groups called on the African countries to stop anti-gay abuse by repealing sodomy laws, enacting protections against discrimination and creating mechanisms for dealing with incidents of anti-gay violence.
The report is available on: http://www.iglhrc.org/files/iglhrc/reports/safriglhrc0303.pdf
14) ZIMBABWE - MUGABE USES MALE RAPE FOR POLITICAL CONTROL: The Sydney Star Observer reported on 5 June 2003 that Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, is using male rape as a means of controlling the opposition to his regime.
Coming from a dictator who has stated that homosexuals are pigs and dogs and should be treated like animals and put down, it is rather an irony that he should choose to make his henchmen do just exactly what he has condemned for many years.
The report states that men as young as 15 are being raped at youth-training centres across Zimbabwe in what the opposition claims is a concerted effort by the Mugabe government to crush dissent. Of the 52 male torture victims interviewed by journalist Geoff Hill in Johannesburg, 38 claimed to have been raped or forced to engage in gay sex with other victims. One man, who refused to take part in an orgy, had his eardrums punctured with a screwdriver.
British gay campaigner Peter Tatchell stated that the Zimbabwe government was guilty of “outrageous hypocrisy and homophobia”. Tatchell said, “Rape by state agents is a crime against humanity under international law. The International Criminal Court should interdict the perpetrators. They cannot be allowed to commit these crimes with impunity.”
As Zimbabwe doesn't have oil resources as does Iraq, it is unlikely that the president of the USA, George W Bush will intervene in Zimbabwe to topple this brutal dictator, whose regime is no less vicious than that of Saddam Hussein's in Iraq, but on a smaller scale because of the relative sizes of the respective populations.
Mugabe has to go, and it is necessary for the pressure to be maintained from outside that country to ensure that the collapse is sooner rather than later. Protests should be directed at the Zimbabwe High Commission, 11 Culgoa Circuit, O'Malley, ACT 2606.
15) EGYPT CONTINUES TO TORTURE GAY MEN: Alarming reports continue to emerge from Egypt about that country's ongoing oppression of, and discrimination against gay men. A recent report from Outlook dated 9 April 2003 states that since the beginning of 2003, the Egyptian police have made an average of one arrest a week. But Scott Long, Egypt researcher for Human Rights Watch, said he suspected the number of arrests was much higher than the almost 70 tracked since the 52 on the Queen Boat, Nile disco arrests after a police raid in May 2001. At the end of March 2003 a Cairo court convicted 21 of the Queen Boat defendants for ”debauchery” and sentenced each to three years in jail, after two highly publicised trials that were widely criticised by human rights groups and Western governments.
Homosexuality is not explicitly outlawed in Egypt. Those arrested have been charged with debauchery, a section of the penal code that is rooted in Islamic law and has been used to prosecute gay Egyptians.
After the recent disgraceful behaviour of the Anglican church hierarchy because a gay Canon was appointed as a bishop with the approval of the Archbishop of Canterbury, it is becoming increasingly understandable why people are finding out that all religions are oppressive and work in close collaboration with capitalist governments to try and maintain the “family” unit for reproductive purposes. Ultimately the religions will all fail, and we can get on with our lives without the discrimination and stigma which has marked the homosexual state for the last few centuries.
16) SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS INFAMOUS U.S. SODOMY LAWS: On June 26 this year the U.S. Supreme Court delivered the most powerful gay rights opinion in the country’s history when it struck down sodomy laws by finding the Texas Homosexual Conduct Law to be invalid and served only to oppress. It said that the petitioners were entitled to respect for their private lives and that the State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. The case in question, Lawrence v. Texas, stemmed from the 1998 arrest of two Houston gay men who were having sex in their own bedroom when police entered their home on a false emergency call. The two men, John Lawrence and Tyron Garner, were arrested and jailed for a night (planetout.com/news).
The International G&L Human Rights Commission says the decision finally brings the U.S. into line with well-established obligations under international law. The Commission recalled the 1994 U.N. ruling in Toonen v. Australia which struck down the Tasmanian sodomy law on the grounds that it violated privacy and equality provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Australia was a signatory. It also pointed out that the European Union requires countries to repeal their sodomy laws as a condition of admittance to the E.U. As well it notes that the Constitutions of South Africa and Ecuador explicitly bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation but that there are still 77 world countries that maintain enforceable sodomy laws.
17) CHRISTIAN COLLEGE DIRECTORS JAILED OVER $4M SCAM: The Australian Securities & Investments Commission uncovered a $4 million scam linked to a christian school in regional Victoria. Two men will each serve six months in prison after pleading guilty to charges of misusing more than $4.5 million, acquired from about 50 Australian and New Zealand investors. Graeme Milner, was school bursar and Terrence Hunter, chairman of the Board, of the now-closed Bendigo Ascension College. Both were ministers of religion. Investors have lost most of their money. --The Age 23.6.03.
18) LETTERS TO THE MELBOURNE AGE: Here is a selection of letters from readers following the passing of the ASIO bill in Federal Parliament, 26 June 2003.
Deja vu: I grew up in apartheid South Africa. I am well aware of what the regime deemed to be a “terrorist” --anyone who actively opposed apartheid. With the Howard-Ruddock-Abbott team, who will be deemed to be a terrorist in Australia? Shame on Labor for giving the green light. --Melanie Lazarow, Brunswick.
Aung San Suu Kyi: It’s interesting to note that Aung San Suu Kyi is being held under Burma’s 1975 “state protection law.” No doubt “in the national interest,” it allows for detention without access to lawyers or family members for 180 days at a time and for a total of five years. Such draconian law clearly doesn’t only thwart terrorism, does it ASIO? --Garry Bickley, Elizabeth Downs, Sth Aust.
And another thing... If the aim of the war against terrorism was to preserve democracy, our Government has just done the terrorists’ work for them. A democracy that legislates itself out of existence is laughable. --John Frazer, Thornbury; Thanks, ALP and Coalition, for tying up loose ends of the ASIO bill before the parliamentary winter recess. Never mind that human rights were sold out in the process.--Ruth Martin, Brunswick; The ASIO bill passed by the two Liberal parties in Parliament, now opens the way to McCarthyism in this country.--J. Hutton, North Fitzroy; Labor squibs it, yet again. --Stephen Yolland, Doncaster; all appeared on Friday 27 June 2003.
Rule by fear: Australians have been conned by a government that appears to want to turn this country into a tinpot dictatorship under the guise of a real or perceived terrorism threat. Our civil liberties are eroded on a daily basis as we are fed a constant diet of this fear-generated threat to our security. All this is happening without effective federal opposition to this craziness, and people have been conditioned into not questioning the slide into a paranoid and fear-driven society. Those who do question this craziness have every possibility of coming under scrutiny of those who are pushing the agenda of fear, paranoia and xenophobia; and of having the law used against them in the name of national security. --Dallas Fraser, Mudgeerraba, Qld. The Sunday Age, 6 July 2003, and no doubt other States newspapers have received & published plenty of the same. The Rule by fear letter was prompted by a news-piece on June 29 concerning missing Australian passports which might be used by terrorists in countries without equipment capable of recognising cancelled passports!!!
19) DONATIONS: We would once again like to thank those who have given us donations to assist with the costs of producing our newsletter and you know who you are.
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