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: http://www.zipworld.com.au/~josken
ISSN 1446-4896
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ISSUE 2, 2004 NUMBER 58 APRIL-JUNE 2004
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1) SPAIDS: The first SPAIDS planting was on 15 May 1994, when Sydney Park was bare, roughly laid out for development as a park on the old BrickWorks and garbage dump. We are having our 30th planting on Sunday 25 July 2004 - between 11am and 3pm - also National Tree Day, and we now look out on our Groves with a park developed in every sense of the word, maturing into its surroundings, and providing a lung in a rapidly encroaching urban landscape. SPAIDS has become an accepted feature of the park as it commemorates people who have died of HIV/AIDS. It is thus a Memorial Grove and a place of quiet reflection in a park setting.
2) HOMOPHOBIA IN SCHOOLS: - An article in the Australian of 1 March 2004 by Natasha Robinson is headed “Homophobia: an issue that dare not speak its name”. The article addresses the issue of a particular school boy in Western Australia, and the homophobia he was faced with. Programmes set up to address this still unaddressed issue in schools in Australia led to the production of a book, “A Circle in a Room Full of Squares”. Western Australia now has some of the most progressive laws relating to homosexuality in Australia, but the report continues to detail the homophobia in all states and how the issue for schools is still dominated by the reactionary religious right, and - in South Australia - the neo-Nazi group National Action are rumoured to have been involved in the backlash because of school pilot sex education programmes which generated furores.
3) AIDS WARS IN SOUTH AFRICA - TREATMENT ACTION CAMPAIGN (TAC) VS NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF PEOPLE WITH AIDS (NAPWA): On 30 March 2004 the umbrella organisation in South Africa, the AIDS Consortium, held a General meeting attended by affiliated AIDS organisations. Amongst the items on the agenda, one was: The role of the AIDS Consortium in the implementation of the National Treatment Plan. In an unprecedented outburst, NAPWA leaders and members attacked the TAC Treasurer, Mark Heywood verbally, and attempted to attack him physically as well.. The national organiser of NAPWA, Thandoxolo Doro, made an abusive, racist attack on Heywood, and shades of AIDS politics in Australia seem to have emerged in what took place at that meeting. The meeting had to be adjourned because of the outburst. The outcome seems to be that NAPWA is no longer one of the players in the fight against HIV/AIDS in South Africa (their web site has not been updated for several months!) , and TAC has resumed its rightful place as the leader in the fight against Mbeki's government over its handling of the devastating health crisis in South Africa in its response to treatment requirements for the population and the availability of generic drugs. TAC web site:Treatment Action Campaign
4) EVICTION NOTICE SERVED ON WORKERS LIBRARY AND KHANYA COLLEGE BY JOHANNESBURG CITY COUNCIL: The Workers Library and Khanya College are independent NGOs that have worked with the organisations of the working class and the poor since the 1980s. The two organisations are using the old Municipal Compound in Newtown as offices, library, museum and a space for meetings of social movements and trade unions. The Workers Library and Khanya College have developed the Old Municipal Compound without the assistance of the City Council and have also submitted their long-term plans to the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA). Towards the end of 2003 JDA, a company developed by the Johannesburg City Council, unilaterally ordered the Workers Library and Khanya College to vacate the premises in Newtown by the end of March 2004. The eviction order was procedurally illegal because the lease agreement
Khanya College and Workers Library demand: 1) JDA stop the eviction; 2) JDA grant Khanya College and Workers Library a long-term lease; 3) JDA and the Johannesburg City Council stop all forms of evictions and harassment of the poor.
5) ZANZIBAR LAWMAKERS OUTLAW GAY SEX: The following is a report from the South African Mail & Guardian, 14 April 2004:
Lawmakers in Zanzibar have overwhelmingly passed a Bill that outlaws homosexual sex in the semi-autonomous Indian Ocean archipelago.
Legislators approved the Bill, amending Zanzibar's 70-year-old penal code to make gay sex punishable by up to five years' imprisonment.
The Bill has to be signed by Zanzibar's President Amani Karume before it becomes law.
Under Zanzibar's 1934 penal code, sodomy and "unnatural acts" were offences, but the government wanted to update the law to specifically deal with homosexual acts.
"We want to be very specific that this sort of thing is not acceptable in Zanzibar ... people tend to think why now, Zanzibar is predominantly Muslim country and in Islam homosexuality is strictly prohibited," said Adam Mwakanjuki, Zanzibar's Constitutional Affairs Minister. "People might think it's [Zanzibar] all cosmopolitan, but as far as homosexuality goes, it is an offence."
The Zanzibar archipelago, which elects its own president and legislature, is a popular tourist destination and some Muslim leaders have expressed concern about the influence of Western practices on the islands.
“Under the Bill, adults convicted of attempting to seduce minors into homosexual acts could face up to 25 years in prison, while those convicted of engaging in homosexual acts with minors would face life imprisonment,” Mwakanjuki said.
"There has been increasing homosexual behaviour in this part of East Africa," Mwakanjuki said.
Zanzibar, a 19th-century hub for the Indian Ocean slave trade, was ruled by an Omani sultan until independence in 1963.
The archipelago united with Tanzania a year later when the sultan was deposed in a violent revolution.
Sodomy and unnatural acts are also prohibited in mainland Tanzania, as well as neighbouring Kenya and Uganda. -- Sapa-AP
6) CENSORSHIP: Censorship in Australia is getting worse now in 2004 than it has been at any time since the end of the Whitlam government in 1975. Books, films, magazines, videos - the list is endless. It now appears as if ”Angels in America”, the television version, (see item 12 below), has had some censorship too! There is a sex scene between two of the main protagonists - a homosexual scene between two men - which seems to have been censored out of the version screened on ABC tv. Homosexuality is now equal in age of consent to heterosexuality, 16 years of age in most Australian states, so any censorship which has taken place is because of ongoing religious prudery on the part of the censors and those controlling censorship, the Federal government.
An organisation called “Watch on Censorship” which started with some promise about 10 years ago, charges for membership, thus making it out of reach of many concerned people in this country. Fortunately there are still organisations such as Electronic Frontiers Australia, and the UK Index on Censorship, where a great amount of information is freely available to tell you about what is happening under our noses and which is otherwise difficult to find out about.
web sites:
andElectronic Frontiers Australia
7) HIV/AIDS IN AUSTRALIA - BAREBACKING - RISE IN VENEREAL DISEASES: Epidemiological reports in the last few years in Australia show a rise in the incidence of HIV infection and at the same time highlight the rise in venereal diseases that had shown declines in the years since HIV/AIDS arrived on the scene and condom use reduced the infection rates of HIV and other sexually transmissible diseases. Because there are now drugs available for people with HIV and AIDS, it appears that many men in homosexual communities have decided they are tired of using condoms and are now “barebacking” to use the vernacular - in other words, having unprotected sex. When taken to task over their irresponsible behaviour, many of these men respond with “Butt out - it is our business what we do with our lives”. As a consequence, at a time when it looked like education campaigns from AIDS councils about HIV infection had diminished somewhat, we now have a time when they will have to return to the drawing board and devise new strategies to deal with a renewed crisis. Bring back the Safe Sex Sluts!
8) GEORGE DUNCAN MEMORIAL PRIZE: Congratulations to Peter de Waal who, jointly with an Adelaide based law reform project, has been awarded the 2004 George Duncan Memorial award for the Gay and Lesbian Immigration Task Force (GLITF) book project, a huge two-volume compilation of the history of GLITF.
Lesbian and Gay Solidarity banner at World Refugee Day Rally and March, Melbourne, 20 June 2004 - photo by kind permission of PC
9) “YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TO HIDE TO BE SAFE - A REPORT ON HOMOPHOBIC HOSTILITIES AND VIOLENCE AGAINST GAY MEN AND LESBIANS IN NEW SOUTH WALES: The report, prepared by the Crime Prevention Department of the Attorney General's Department of New South Wales, was released in December 2003. In his foreword to the report, the Attorney General of NSW, Bob Debus stated: “This report is provocative and challenging, reflecting the courage and passion of all those who participated.” He goes on to say, “The descriptions of homophobic abuse and violence provided by the focus groups suggest a depth and complexity that has not, until now, been well documented. For instance, the 'trade-off' between openness and safety facing many lesbians and gay men underlies numerous decisions made in daily living - decisions that are often taken for granted by other members of the community such as where we live, which school we send our children to, what we wear out at night. Much of this information is new and potentially groundbreaking, so we decided to begin the report with Stage 2 results: Focus group research.” Debus concludes his foreword as follows: “Violence in any form, perpetrated against any indiviual or group has no place in our community. There is no acceptable motivation for violence. I trust that all relevant Government agencies will take the information in this report as a matter of priority to their planning and policy development meetings to inform their work in this area.”
Yet this same Attorney General, under whose departmental umbrella the Anti-Discrimination Board falls, does not grant that body the power to remove discrimination exemption to one of the most homophobic organisations in the country, the religious organisations. It is this granting of exemption to such large organisations that allows homophobia to be preached and practised to the extent it is, and to therefore perpetuate Homophobic Hostilities and Violence against Gay Men and Lesbians in New South Wales.
10) SECRET REPORT DETAILS RAMPANT HOMOPHOBIA IN AUSTRALIAN MILITARY - REPORT FROM SOUTH AFRICA'S LESBIAN AND GAY EQUALITY PROJECT:
News
by Peter Hacker, 365Gay.com Newscenter, Sydney, Australia Bureau.
Originally published: 8 June 2004.
(Sydney, Australia) A secret government report details soaring rates of gay harassment in the Australian Defense Forces and says the government is doing little to combat the problem.
The report was obtained by the newspaper The Australian under the Freedom of Information Act. It shows that the number of complaints based on homophobia lodged by members of the military against other soldiers and officers grew over the past year from 12 to 51. The complaints ranged from verbal abuse to sexual assault. The report also details a growing number of sexual assaults by male officers against women in the service.
The greatest number of complaints was within the Navy, the least in the Air Force.
The internal report seriously questions the response of Defense Department officials to victims' complaints, saying "there is still a significant number of sexual offence complaints where management inaction or uncertainty has significantly drawn out the length of the case".
It comments that many victims withdrew their complaint due to the stress of the legal process, and "their unwillingness to be subjected to further trauma".
A spokesperson for the Defense Department said the service had encouraged the reporting of unacceptable behavior and the increase in complaints might indicate a heightened level of awareness due to increased familiarity with new reporting mechanisms.
This story provided by our International News Partners 365gay.com.The Lesbian & Gay Equality Project, 36 Grafton Road, Yeoville, Johannesburg, South Africa. Email info@equality.org.zaPhone 27 + 11 487-3810/1/2 Fax +27 11 648-4204 Office hours 9am to 4.30pm GMT +02:00 | webmaster
11) BOOKS: RADICAL MELBOURNE II has just been published by Vulgar Press in 2004, again by the same authors as Radical Melbourne - a secret history - Jeff Sparrow and Jill Sparrow (Melbourne's first 100 years of radical activism and published by Vulgar Press in 2001 with a foreword by Stuart Macintyre). The new volume is subtitled “The Enemy Within” and documents the years between 1940 and 2000. The orignial history was fascinating, and this new volume is as absorbing as the first! The second history has a foreword by Guy Rundle. All good booksellers.
RADICAL BRISBANE - an unruly history, has also just been published in 2004 by Vulgar Press. Edited by Raymond Evans and Carole Ferrier, the foreword is by Humphry McQueen. The days of radical Brisbane started from penal settlement days and carries us through to the present. A timely history, and one that will help to fill the gaps in some of the untold parts of Australia's radical history not taught in schools. All good booksellers. We await a radical Sydney with great interest!
“NOT HAPPY, JOHN!” by Margo Kingston, a Penguin Paperback, $24.95 at all good booksellers. The Sydney Morning Herald political journalist with a deadly serious purpose: to lay bare the insidious ways in which John Howard's government has profoundly undermined our freedoms and civil rights. Includes a chapter by Antony Loewenstein in Part 4: Their Australia, titled Taking back the power: Hanan Ashrawi - which analysed the reactions of the Australian Jewish/zionist communities' reactions to Ashrawi's receipt of the Sydney Peace Prize award. Since the book's publication the zionist community's outrage can be heard from one end of Australia to the other.
12) ANGELS IN AMERICA: Three nights in June 2004 saw a fantastic programme shown on ABC television, two hours each night, of Tony Kushner's own six-hour adaptation for television of his marathon Broadway play staged over two years in 1993 and 1994. Angels in America is set in the mid-'80s at the height of the US AIDS epidemic, and shows the never-ending hypocrisy of those in US government circles - in this instance Roy Cohn, who helped prosecute the Rosenbergs for treason. Cohn is dying of AIDS but insists he has liver cancer! Superb acting by a fantastic cast including Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, Emma Thompson, Justin Kirk, Mary-Louise Parker and others, and the outcome is superb television and story-telling of the best on offer!
13) HOMOPHOBIA and MARRIAGE: If ever lesbians and gays are to break down the overt and covert homophobia in the community they have to win the right to choose marriage that will give same-sex unions the protection afforded all heterosexuals who choose it. Lack of marriage rights continues to make second-class citizens of lesbians and gays. Religious zealots claim that normalising lesbian and gay same-sex relationships devalues marriage and family values. What nonsense! Heterosexual marriages produce lesbians and gays in their families. They also produce loving hetero relationships which don’t have children.
In an article in The Australian (1.3.04) Natasha Robinson talked about homophobia being a deep-seated problem that many schools are afraid to name. In her article published just prior to the 2004 Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras she said that it appeared that most of the battles over discrimination had been won. However, she told Fremantle student Jared Porter’s story of the various methods used by his primary school tormentors to reduce him to second-class status. In addition to the usual insults towards students perceived to be gay, such as “AIDS carrier, poof, fag, pansy or homo,” they locked him in a cupboard for two hours, slung dog faeces at him, forced him to the ground and jumped on him, and even attacked him by throwing bricks. Robinson claimed that some teachers criticise programs to combat homophobia as placing the burden of responsibility on the victim. She pointed out that studies show that as many as 30 percent of gay youths attempt suicide.
So how can equal marriage rights for same-sex unions change the situation? Same-sex partners are then on an equal footing with heterosexuals. Immediately the partners have access to a wide range of spousal benefits without having to prove anything. What’s more important, they are entitled to complete equality in law and may not be penalised for being gay or lesbian, or bear the responsibility of being the victims of homophobia.
In the current heated national debate on gay rights to marry and adopt children overseas, Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson remarked that gays and lesbians should accept that their choice of lifestyle meant other life options were closed to them (The Age, 7.6.04). Tackled in a letter on his homophobic fears and ideas stuck in the 19th century, he was challenged to prove that his lifestyle was any more legitimate than that of lesbians and gays. In reply, dated 25 June, he wrote: “It is one of the great attributes of democracy that all opinions can be expressed and respected, yours sincerely, John Anderson MP” –that’s all, literally a one liner! The reason is obvious.
Currently, there’s a Federal Government Bill before a Senate Inquiry. The Howard Government, citing urgency, rushed it through the Lower House but the Senate refused to debate it and instead sent it to committee. The Bill attempts to define marriage in law as “the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life,” and to stop gay couples from adopting overseas children. The Senate Inquiry will present its findings on the Bill in October. The public (meaning you and me) is invited to make submissions to the Inquiry. The closing date is Friday, 30 July 2004. Okay, let’s do it. A submission may simply be in the form of a letter. Details available from Parliament House, Canberra, or on the Parliament website:Senate Inquiry
14) OBITUARY: Gary Stonehouse, 17.9.45 – 26.4.04 –a Sydney gay activist of the 70s and 80s, died in Brisbane after a short illness. Gary was a NIDA graduate and a high school teacher. He had been employed for the past 17 years by the PNG Department of Education in the Curriculum Development Division especially as an Expressive Arts officer. His many friends and colleagues in Sydney will be saddened to learn of his death. Gary was one of those involved in perhaps the very first gay rights street protest in Sydney outside St Clements Anglican Church, Mosman, on Sunday morning, 12 November 1972. Gay Lib organised the demo to protest against the sacking of the church secretary, Peter Bonsall-Boone, who had come out and had kissed his lover on the ABC television programme, Chequerboard. An hour or so beforehand I well remember sitting on the floor of my home in Woolloomooloo with Gary and two lesbian friends, Marg and Trish, writing slogans on placards to take with us to the demo. Gary’s placard said “The Belles of Saint Clements!” It was a day to remember. Gary flew back from Port Moresby to be admitted to the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane. He died three weeks later from cancer, on April 26th.
15) ABOUT TIME! A Strategic Plan for GLBT SENIORS launched in Melbourne: Prepared by Heather Birch of the ALSO Foundation’s Community Development Committee, the plan was launched on June 29th before an invited audience of representatives from service providers to Melbourne seniors and some individual lesbians and gays who had taken part in different stages during the 4 years of ALSO’s Older Persons Project. After a rundown of the history of the project, the audience was invited to comment on the actions outlined in the plan and discuss the service provider’s role in achieving outcomes. The comments were lively and generally welcomed the Foundation’s initiative in investigating ageing issues in the GLBT communities. However, in reporting the launch we have to admit that only the Doutta Galla Aged Services of the providers gave any real hint of understanding the issues that faced lesbian and gay seniors in the autumn of their lives. Its two representatives acknowledged the discrimination and lack of awareness of sexual diversity of the inmates of nursing homes and aged residents of rooming houses. Doutta Galla Services, they said, were prepared to work in collaboration with ALSO on a model that recognised lesbians’ and gays’ needs and to help staff and inmates to understanding and accepting difference.
16) The ABC AND PLAY SCHOOL’s LESBIAN AGENDA?: It is hardly a secret that the Howard Government has no great love of the news and current affairs output of our ABC. So said an Age editorial that added: political interference could have the effect of stifling debate within and worse, it may raise the entirely unwelcome question of whether a staff representative can be trusted to have a seat at the table at all. Which brings us to the ridiculous situation of the Prime Minister and his deputy falling over each other in shock/horror that children should be allowed by the ABC to Look through the Windows segment in Play School at two lesbians and their daughter and her friend enjoying a walk together in a public park. Speaking from Europe, the PM told the Nine Network it was foolish behaviour by the ABC and an example of it “running an agenda” in a children’s programme. You could say it helped precipitate his anti-gay marriage and anti-gay adoptions Bill into federal parliament. It certainly had the Family Association accusing Play School of “indulging in taxpayer-funded indoctrination” to which Wayne Murdoch of the Australian Lesbian & Gay Archives responded in a letter to The Age, “I was raised on a solid diet of heterosexual television and I have to say that all those years of The Sullivans, The Restless Years, The Brady Bunch etc I was exposed to in the 1970s had absolutely no effect on my inborn (homo)sexuality.”
17) NEWS BRIEFS: Controversial conductor Daniel Barenboim has angered Israeli officials by criticising the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as he accepted a prestigious Israeli award. Barenboim said Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians contradicted the humanist values on which the state was founded. “Can a situation of occupation and control of another people be reconciled with (Israel’s) declaration of independence. Is there logic,” he said, “to the independence of one people at the cost of a blow to the basic human rights of another people?” (The Age, 11.05.04)
FOR THE RECORD: In the past month or so LGS has made several submissions to government inquiries: 1) to the Victorian Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee for discrimination in Victoria’s laws; 2) to the Senate Inquiry into the National Security Information (Criminal Proceedings) (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2004; and 3) to the Senate Inquiry into the Anti-Terrorism Bill (No 2) 2004.
MARRIAGE LEGISLATION AMENDMENT BILL 2004: we plan a submission (deadline 30 July 2004) to the Senate Inquiry into this Bill which if passed will further entrench discrimination against same-sex couples. Although lesbians and gays will still be able to adopt as individuals, according to the Gay & Lesbian Rights Lobby (NSW), denying both persons in a same-sex relationship from adopting a child will serve only to deny that child of important rights. The right to child support payments, inheritance rights etc, for instance, would be denied. The Bill punishes the child for the adopter’s sexuality.
COMING EVENTS on lesbian, gay and transgender ageing issues: In Newcastle, Sat. 17 July, Community Forum hosted by Rainbow Visions Hunter at Alice Ferguson Centre; In Sydney, Wed. evening 21st July, discussion at Anti-Discrimination Board Consultation.
18) AIDS BRIEFS: The Age newspaper of 11 May 2004 carries a New York Times report from Beijing stating that the Chinese government has warned that AIDS is continuing to spread rapidly and announced ”urgent measures” to improve prevention and education that include holding local officials directly responsible for curbing the disease. Government statistics estimate that 840,000 people in China are HIV carriers, while 80,000 have tested positive for AIDS. More than 100,000 people are already believed to have died of the disease.
365Gay.com reported on 4 July 2004 from New Delhi that shocking new statistics showing the number of HIV/AIDS cases in India had risen above 5 million and were leading to accusations the government was dragging its feet in combatting the spread of AIDS in the subcontinent. The new numbers put India just slightly below South Africa, the country with the highest number of HIV/AIDS cases in the world. Last year (2003) for the first time the government launched a massive anti-AIDS campaign, but little information is reaching the country's millions of poor. The government is stressing the need for condoms, but few are distributed, and even then go to more affluent areas. Activists also accuse the government of refusing to acknowledge the need for a frank open discussion of gay sex. Homosexual acts remain illegal in India and most gays are underground.
19) DONATIONS: Once again we would like to thank those who have made donations to assist us with printing and postage for the production of our newsletters.
+++SPAIDS 30th PLANTING SINCE 1994+++
celebrate with us at Sydney Park, St Peters, in the AIDS Memorial Groves on National Tree Day, Sunday 25 July 2004
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