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 3, 2003 NUMBER 56 JULY - NOVEMBER 2003
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VALE HELEN WHITECHURCH - LONG-TIME LESBIAN ACTIVIST: We were shocked when late in August news reached us that one of the women who had been active in lesbian and gay politics since the seventies had died suddenly and unexpectedly in Sydney. Helen Whitechurch was a fulltime worker in education and held a Masters Degree in Educational Administration. We shall miss her quiet, reserved friendship and, conversely, her strong, open support for equality and human rights and her opposition to the war in Iraq.
1) SPAIDS: The 29th Sydney Park AIDS Memorial Groves tree planting took place on Sunday 21 September. We would like to thank our regular attendees for looking after the planting. We are discussing whether we should have only one planting each year - the July one - and would like to hear what you think. Please let us know. Those looking after the plantings are happy to continue with all three, May, July and September, with the two of us from Melbourne coming to Sydney for the July planting.
2) DONATIONS: We have been sent further donations for the newsletter and would like to thank those people who made the donations.
3) AIDS IN SOUTH AFRICA - THE STORY CONTINUES: Positive Living (Oct-Nov 2003) carries the following report from the BBC: “I don't know anyone with AIDS”: Mbeki. His country has more people living with HIV/AIDS than any other, but the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, claims not to know any of them. “Personally, I don't know anybody who has died of AIDS,” Mr Mbeki said in a controversial interview with the Washington Post. Nor, he added, does he know anyone living with HIV. The comments drew sharp criticism from the Treatment Action Campaign, which accused Mbeki of “not living in the real South Africa” where more than one person in ten is infected. Mbeki has previously caused controversy by claiming that HIV does not cause AIDS.
4) AIDS IN THE PACIFIC REGION, OMINOUS SIGNS EMERGING: Countries such as Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, where the problem is concentrated in Papua, are said to be at the point where Africa was ten years ago. PNG’s number of cases might already be double that of Australia, which has nearly five times the population of PNG. AIDS-related diseases are the leading cause of death at Port Moresby general hospital. In Papua the infection rate is, by some estimates, already 5 per cent, but the population remains largely ignorant of AIDS and its prevention. Cultures of denial, lack of leadership and resources were key factors in Africa’s failure to avert an epidemic. A meeting in Melbourne in October 2001 on AIDS attracted 31 ministers from the Asia/Pacific region but despite rising infection rates HIV/AIDS remains low on the scale of concerns. Australia could help countries like PNG and Indonesia to take up Brazil’s offer of technology to set up HIV drug factories if it had a mind to instead of the spending on border protection and mindless fears of refugee penetration.
ASYLUM: Voices behind the razor wire -by Heather Tyler. This is a timely book, but a discomforting one. It shows what we have become. Paperback, published by Thomas C. Lothian, South Melbourne in 2003. Most good bookshops.
MANUFACTURING CONSENT - The Political Economy of the Mass Media -by Edward S.Herman and Noam Chomsky: Paperback, published by Vintage, $27.95
POSITIVE by David Menadue, about the impact of HIV/AIDS on his life over years and that of his friends. Reviewer Deborah Zion in The Age wrote:”Positive is a book about the power of political engagement, a testament to the way in which ordinary people can influence the course of history in which they play a part.” Paperback, published by Allen & Unwin, $22.95
DON’T WORRY IT’S SAFE TO EAT - by Andrew Rowell. The title is a familiar phrase spouted by politicians and scientists... an informative read for those who wish to break the chains of corporate control of the food system and for those who don’t know about the global agribusiness machine. Hardcover, published by Earthscan UK in 2003.
6) CENSORSHIP: SSO BOARD and article NOT IN OUR NAME: We have been informed that the editor of the Sydney Star Observer was taken to task over the front cover and article about the war in Iraq. If this is so, we object in the strongest possible terms to this attempt at censorship on the part of the Board. As shareholders in the organisation we anticipate that the editor has carte blanche to publish what he sees fit, subject to the rules and regulations governing publications in this country. It is not the business of the Board to impose its will on the editor. We would like to hope that this is not a true story, but hope that those of our readers who have further information on this vital issue will contact us and give us the relevant information.
7) INTERSECTION MELBOURNE - THE LATEST ON OUR WEB PAGES: We have increased the scope and content of our web pages. Listed now are issues in which we are involved or in which we are doing some research. Gay and lesbian ageing issues are part of this ongoing development and we have recorded our own independent reports of meetings we have attended for the benefit of friends unable to attend. Check out the list of issues on the LGS title page in Mannie’s and Ken’s Web Pages.
8) VATICAN CONDOM CLAIM angers AIDS educators: Health officials around the world as well as the South African Council of Churches have reacted angrily to the latest pronouncement by the president of the Vatican’s pontifical council for the family, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, that condoms will not prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. The Vatican’s absolute opposition to contraception is well documented but now it is arguing that particles of the AIDS virus can pass through natural microscopic holes found in every latex condom.
US scientific research and the WTO reveal intact condoms are essentially impermeable to particles the size of STD pathogens including the smallest sexually transmitted virus. Condoms provide a highly effective barrier to transmission of particles of similar size to those of the smallest STD viruses the research found. (BBC Panorama programme, Sex and the Holy City.)
9) YOUTH POLICY is a vague concept --so wrote Ryan Heath, communications student at the University of Technology in Sydney, in the Sydney Morning Herald, 12 August 2003. His article pointed out there’s a whole industry devoted to youth policy. Not a week goes by without another conference on youth issues. But does an active youth sector equal an effective one? As the Herald reported almost one-quarter of young Australian adults do not have a full-time job or study.
The Federal Government has to bear most of the responsibility for fixing the issue because it controls most of the money. But sometimes funding can be idealogically driven. Take for
10) 10 MILE CREEK BUSH CAMP and a TOXIC WASTE DUMP: In August, Senior Aboriginal Women of the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta issued an urgent call for a big meeting at the Coober Pedy 10 Mile Creek Bush Camp to talk about the sneaky Maralinga story. The women are demanding that the Federal Government does not proceed with plans to establish a national radioactive waste dump in South Australia’s far north, “the poison is going to come back, like Maralinga, just sneak in.”
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first nuclear bomb detonated at Emu Fields by the British Government. Totem One, tested on 15th October 1953 only 280km north of Coober Pedy, produced a dense radioactive cloud that travelled far beyond the testing range. Members of the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta and their families are survivors of this testing program and the nuclear legacy is becoming increasingly evident in every new generation. Fifty years later the Government is pushing ahead with its plan for a national radioactive waste dump. What did the meetings achieve? Has the Government listened? Why don’t you ask your Federal Member?
11): CURRENT ASIDES -Has anyone kept a record of the Vanstone faux pas or the lies and falsehoods of Howard Govt Ministers, present and past, and the PM? & WHAT LIES BEHIND RUDDOCK’S NEW BRIEF? Australia’s latest Attorney-General has announced his determination to give greater powers of detention and interrogation to ASIO. He claims powers provided by the recently amended ASIO legislation were inadequate for proper interrogation of deported Frenchman Willie Brigitte. Because of Ruddock’s stridency in his previous asylum seekers brief, that Vanstone has now, those of us who have opposed such unnecessary powers, must remain vigilant. He means to get his way by hook or by crook.
12) CALIFORNIA ENACTS HISTORIC GAY COUPLES LAW: On Friday, 19 September 2003, Governor Gray Davis signed a landmark law that gives same-sex domestic partners nearly all of the rights granted in the state to married couples. Some of those new rights and responsibilities include child custody, child and spousal support obligations, access to family court, access to married student housing, funeral arrangement rights, community property and spousal support. The new law makes California the second US state to grant such legal recognition to same-sex couples but many Federal civil marriage protections aren’t covered.
13) EGYPT - The Egyptian government continues its persecution of homosexuals by further arrests, torture and imprisonment of those accused of homosexual acts. As recently as August 28 this year, Egypt’s police force arrested 62 more gay men in a crackdown reminiscent of the Queenboat scandal in 2001.These human rights abuses must be objected to in the strongest posssible terms and on an ongoing basis. Homosexuality is not specifically illegal in Egyptian law. International groups urge people to write to the Egyptian diplomatic representatives in their countries, but if there aren't any, write directly to the Egyptian government calling for the men’s immediate release. Here in Australia write to Embassy of Egypt, 1 Darwin Avenue, Yarralumla, Canberra, ACT 2600.
14) HIGH LEVELS OF HOMOPHOBIA in and out of Victorian schools revealed: A report by the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Gay and Lesbian Health has recommended that the Office of School Education undertake an evaluation of student welfare and anti-bullying policies because there is a need to work actively to combat homophobia and promote diversity. According to the Melbourne Star a gay rights activist told its journalist that it will probably take some brave student to take legal action against the Education Department for failing to protect them, to bring the issue to a head. Victorian schools (government and non-government) have a legal responsibility to provide a safe learning environment for all students. And that certainly includes young lesbians and young gays whether they have come out or not.
15) LESFEST 2004: The organisers of this lesbian festival outside Melbourne gained an exemption from anti-discrimination legislation. They applied to the Victorian Appeals Tribunal which granted them the right to operate the festival in Daylesford free of people who are not lesbians - thus excluding transgender people. An appeal against this decision overturned the original ruling after a public outcry over the issue. It is interesting to note that the organisers complain of being discriminated against because they are lesbians, but themselves become guilty of discrimination when they start looking for exemptions. However, the festival ended up being cancelled by the organisers.
16) UN CONDEMNS ANTI-GAY BIAS: The United Nations Human Rights Committee has accused the Australian federal government of discriminating against a Sydney man who was refused a veterans pension after his partner’s death. Veterans Affairs refused to give a pension to Edward Young, whose partner of 38 years, Larry Cains, died in 1998. Cains served in Borneo during World War II and died from a heart condition. In 1999 Young lost his appeal. Only heterosexual spouses or de facto partners of deceased veterans receive benefits under federal law. The UN ruling means the government must now pay the pension to Young and could force change regarding the legal recognition of gay relationships in the legislation
17) WHAZZUP: THE MAGAZINE OF THE GAYS AND LESBIANS of ZIMBABWE: we have been fortunate to receive copies of the GALZ publication for which we are indeed most grateful. We take this opportunity to pass on a snippet from Whazzup. “In response to the HIV and AIDS pandemic, GALZ broadened its slogan from Gay Rights are Human Rights to Sexual Rights are Human Rights. All of us have a sexuality; very few people are not interested in sex at all. With sexual rights come accompanying responsibilities. The sexual orientation of a person is irrelevant; sexual rights concentrate on principles of good behaviour towards others when it comes to sexual matters. Everyone has the right.” If you would like to support this Zimbabwean group, their email is: galz@mweb.com.zw
18) INDIA PRESSURED OVER ANTI-GAY LAW: The Indian government has come under attack from gay rights groups over its refusal to decriminalise homosexuality. Early in September the government told its courts that it had no intention to ditch Section 377 of the Penal Code, which says gay people can face up to 10 years in prison if apprehended. AIDS welfare groups in India allege that police brutality and illegality of gay sex prevent many men from coming forward to receive information on how to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS.
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