Time to get nasty

Now that I’ve finished my on-air duties for the week, I wanted to have a rant about the despicable craven piece of advice masquerading as 'being realistic' in MCV last week, on how to deal with the Howard government.

In essence it said that the gay community had to pick some new leaders willing to engage with ministers and bureaucrats, not activists who want said ministers etc. thrown out, and who embarrass them in public by holding nasty things like demonstrations, mouthing off about their homophobia etc. etc. We have to accept we can only work for little changes, give up on our dreams, accept whatever crumbs they condescend to drop.

Well, as my good mate Kaye Sera would say, “Pardon Me, Mary!”

You can dress up in your Armani suits, pack your shiny black leather briefcases with glossy position papers, and make all the smooth and soothing noises you like: the minute we hit Canberra it’ll be “Down on your knees boy, and give me tongue.” And then they’ll walk away with a grin, having given nothing in return, except a bad taste in our mouths.

This government isn’t interested in us. Never mind gay marriage – it won’t even fund AIDS tests. The Minister for Health said on World Aids Day – if I may paraphrase, “It’s your own stupid fault, just stop fucking each other and it’ll go away.” We can bow and scrape all we like, the message is clear – fuck off and die, faggots.

Instead of sitting around wondering how best to grovel, we should take a leaf out of America’s book. Yes, I know all the gay marriage constitutional bans got up. Yes, I know George Bush got elected. And I can hear from here the cries of “cultural cringe” and “ Australia’s not America”. No, it bloody isn’t, more's the pity. Do you see the Yanks sitting around whining about how to make people like them? Trying to work out the most appealing way to crawl to their enemies?

No – they conduct earnest symposia, such as the recent one for young activists, studying the strategy and tactics of the Christian groups that defeated us and said, OK, the God Squad were very successful. Let’s learn from that – borrow some of the same tactics for our side.

Did couples wanting to marry in Oregon, New York, California etc. etc. cry into their beers saying, “It’s no good, they’ll never give it to us, boo hoo.” ? Maybe for about five minutes – then they were back in the press, on TV, in the courts, battling on.

Did the HRC stick with the strategy their chair had fashioned? No, they booted her out and got in some fresh thinkers.

We have to get off our butts and sue, attack, embarrass, upset, out and damage this bunch of smug murderous idiots with all the power at our disposal, not queue up to beg for a job wiping their bums. We don’t have the Democrats – they imploded. We don’t have the Greens – they didn’t get up. We don’t have Labor – they’re in thrall to the Catholics and the Aspirational Assholes. We only have ourselves.

The gloves have to come off.

If there are any closet gay pollies we know of in Canberra who won’t speak up for us, any gay journalist, lawyer, professor who won’t go to bat for us, out them. If media tarts badmouth us, sue their tits off. If lunatic clergymen gut up on their hind legs and call us pagans on a par with wife-stranglers and widow burners, as one opponent of NZ civil unions did, sue them, ridicule them, make their lives hell. Pay them back in their own coin. It’s time to stop being nice: that’s what got us where we are, ignored and left to rot. Now it’s time to get nasty.