Homophobia Survey

Everyone is getting very steamed up over the survey that has revealed that two thirds of Australians no longer think homosexuality is immoral - because they're focusing on the one third we still have to win over. Two thirds looks pretty good to me - one third still means there's a long way to go. But........

Rodney Croome has been expressing puzzlement at the news that parts of Tassie are among that recalcitrant one third, yet reporters on the ground can't find anyone to say anything bad about us.

It's no great mystery: it's what's called the limit of tolerance. There's no contradiction. On the one hand, they can - - logically - see that it's wrong to discriminate or to encourage discrimination. So they'll put up with us being around - but that doesn't mean they like us. In fact, in their heart of hearts, they don't. They'll tolerate us the way I tolerate the neighbour's incessantly barking dog, which isn't to say I wouldn't happily go after it with a Kalashnikov if I had one and thought I could get away with it.

That's how 'tolerant' people think of us.

It's a major mistake we and they have made: we thought tolerance was enough, but by itself, it's not. It's only a way station, a truce, some common ground we can occupy while we cautiously get to know each other and take the first steps on the truly hard road - the road to ACCEPTANCE.

That's a very different beast, and it can't be legislated. It's something every one of us has to work for every day in our personal lives, at home, at school, at work, shopping, playing sport . . . as out gay people. Tolerance was relatively easy: we just stayed more or less the same, and asked them to change to meet us. Acceptance means we as individuals and a community have to change, too, to meet each other in the middle.

They tolerate us because they know that BEING gay can't be changed: but if you listen carefully to what they say, what they DON'T like is this thing called 'the gay lifestyle'. Sex-on-site venues, so-called 'dance parties' - actually thinly disguised orgies - casual sex in public toilets, drug use . . . . . need I go on? These are things we as a community have to tackle and probably have to grow out of to achieve acceptance.

Otherwise we can settle for being being tolerated - just - and the Kalashnikov will be waiting under the bed for us. Just in case.

Matthew Shepard Online Resources - Religious Right Hate Speech - Nazi Propagandavs. Religious Right Anti-gay Rhetoric

Well what a surprise_ judge for yourselves, but it looks to me like the New Christians are just another species of Old Nazi.

The Seattle Times: Local News: Born gay? How biology may drive orientation

Being gay is not a ‘lifestyle choice’ – being religious is.

I’m getting a little tired of people arguing over whether we’re born gay, or whether it’s a lifestyle choice that can be changed with the judicious application of just the right amount of brainwashing and electric current. The science is in, and it’s as plain as a pikestaff – for those who want to see –being gay is just part of the normal spectrum of human variation, like green eyes or blonde hair.

The people who steadfastly refuse to see this have all made what really IS a lifestyle choice – to be religious. And even there, the dam is melting. The Revd. Smid of Love in Action in Memphis, the man who locks up gay teenagers to brainwash them with anti-gay guilt, (for a suitably large fee, of course) admits that some people are born gay, and you can’t change them.

This new orthodoxy says you were born that way, but you don’t have to act on your ‘impulses’. You can suppress them, even to the point of being able to function sexually with a woman, marry, and have children. The Rev’d Smid even admits to being one such man himself. Hallalujah!

But Smid says his faith compels him to believe that if he acts on his ‘impulses’, then he’ll never get to heaven and he’ll never rise again at the second coming. Instead he’ll die forever. Better to commit suicide while still pure, he tells his young charges, than give up the struggle and ‘relapse’ into a ‘gay lifestyle’.

What is faith? The irrational belief that something is so, when there is either no supporting evidence, or when what testable evidence there is, all points to the opposite.

So the question is not – did I choose to be gay, or was I born that way?

The real question is – did the Revd Smid choose to be Christian? Of course he did. Religion is not genetic – it is learned. Why does he choose to think in this manifestly dysfunctional manner, live in this fantasy world that is damaging him and dangerous to those he comes into contact with, when there are very fine doctors and therapies that could cure him? And why do we permit it?

I didn’t choose to be gay: but the Revd Smid did choose to be religious, did choose to be Christian, did choose this particularly virulent strain of Christianity, and did choose to foist it on others for his personal profit. But with love and care and appropriate therapy he could be cured. He might feel the occasional irrational urge to pray, but it could be fought down and controlled, with appropriate help. Like a male prostitute who wants to come off the game, he could be taught a trade and become a useful member of society.

Gays and lesbians don’t choose to be what they are – but Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Pagans, Wiccans DID choose their lifestyle. They chose to live this way. And they could - and should – be helped to choose to change.

A Gay American Teen Reveals the Hell Some Can be Put Through by Parents and Others

Ugh! What sickos these self-styled Christians can be, locking up teenagers to brainwash them!

As a sample of the kind of thing they tell these kids:

I would rather you commit suicide than have you leave Love In Action wanting to return to the gay lifestyle. In a physical death you could still have a spiritual resurrection; whereas, returning to homosexuality you are yielding yourself to a spiritual death from which there is no recovery.
- John Smid, who runs the Love in Action programme in Memphis that claims to "cure" gays

Condom Fatigue

Condom manufacturer Trojan says young people are engaging in risky sex by not using condoms during oral sex.

Pardon my cynicism, but my first reaction to this was that it was a grab for greater sales by the manufacturer.

Now I don't know about you, but I detest condoms. The sight of a condom pack - let alone the sound of one being ripped open - induces instant flaccidity. And I am not alone - studies show one of the reasons for the increase in risky sex among gay men is condom droop, leading men to either top without one, or turn bottom when their erection is lost, or both.

Since I'm as scared as the next fag of catching HIV, and since negotiating condomless anal sex is about as exciting as listening to my partner rattle off AFL stats - anal sex has been off my menu for the last few years. Sex is the most intimate possible skin-on-skin contact - a rubber destroys that.

Now I'm being told to use a condom during oral sex. So what do I do now? Give up sex altogether?

The Trojan report says more than 60% of gay men won't use a condom during oral sex because they don't like the taste - no argument there - and says that can be overcome by using one of their flavoured varieties.

Well, to put it crudely, when I suck a dick, I want to taste dick, not rubber, nor even strawberry, mint, citrus, salt'n'vinegar or roast chicken. I want skin on skin, mucous membrane on mucous membrane.

Reports suggest more than a third of men feel - and react - as I do when it a condom appears on the menu.

We're starting to see ads for mentholated condoms - cool on contact, heating up with friction, pleasant flavour - in an attempt to overcome both condom droop and the yuck taste factor.

Durex is said to be going one stage further, developing a condom impregnated with a viagra-like chemical to stimulate and maintain hardness, which is due for relase in a few months.

Bully for them - but in the meantime, what do we do? What do YOU do?

We have liftoff

After many false starts my plans for a daily half-hour GLBTI news and current affairs show on Joy Melbourne 94.9fm (www.joy.org.au) have finally come to fruition.

Start date is 6.30 - 7.00 pm AEST Monday May 30th.

Is marriage what we want?

I'm not a desperately social animal, so it was something of an adventure for me to get out to a farewell party for a friend who is off to work on radio in Vietnam for the next couple of years. There I met a charming group of young lesbians - not listeners to Joy 'because the music's crap' (well it is mostly chosen by dance-party gay bois), but very interested in GLBTI news from around the world and my Rainbow Report.

"So what's the big gay news right now?" challenged one. So I gave a rundown on the Fiji case, and mentioned the ongoing battles over gay marriage around the world.

I was asked what I thought about gay marriage, and I gave the standard answer - it's important that we should have the same rights, responsibilities and opportunities as anyone else, so although I was somewhat personally ambivalent about gay marriage, I thought it was essential.

"I don't agree," said my questioner, "I think we should be campaigning to abolish marriage and have civil unions for everyone."

I don't think I'd go that far, but I immediately thought of France, where they introduced "Civil Solidarity Pacts" (civil unions to you and me), but made them available to anyone regardless of sexual orientation. Marriage remains reserved for hetero's.

Since they were introduced, lot's of heterosexual couples have chosen them instead of maarriage - either as a stepping stone on the way, or as a genuine and more egalitarian alternative, without all the religious and ownership overtones of matrimony.

So it seems to me the best all-round discrimination-free solution is to craft civil unions open to all as the only state-sanctioned legal-coupling mechanism, and let marriage be a purely religious event with no state involvement. Relationships would be recognised on the signing of a civil union contract, and those who wanted the additional frills and furbelows of marriage could go to church/mosque/synagogue/temple and have a marriage as the icing on the wedding-cake.

After all, aren't church and state supposed to be separate anyway? What are these religious people doing usurping a state function - the legal sanctioning of a domestic partnership - anyway?

Not in my name

Another of those "wish I'd said this" columns. The Guardian can be tediously PC at times but hits the nail firmly on the head with this one.

How dare Tony Blair genuflect on our behalf before the corpse of a man whose edicts killed millions?
Polly Toynbee / Friday April 8, 2005

With the clash of two state funerals and a wedding, unreason is in full flood this week. Yet again, rationalists who thought they understood this secular, sceptical age have been shocked at the coverage from Rome. The BBC airwaves have disgraced themselves. The Mail went mad with its front-page headlines, "Safe in Heaven" and the next day "Amen". Even this august organ, which sprang from the loins of nonconformist dissent, astounded many readers with its broad acres of Pope reverencing. Poor old Prince Rainier of that squalid little tax haven missed his full Hello! death rites through bad timing.

The arcane flummery brings forth dusty academics in Vaticanology, the Act of Settlement and laws of Monegasque succession. These pantomimes of power fascinate in their quaintness, but they signify nothing beyond momentary frisson. The millions pouring into Rome (pray there is no Mecca-style disaster) herald no resurgence of atholicism. The devout are there, but this is essentially a Diana moment, a Queen Mother's catafalque. People queue to join great public spectacles, hoping it's a tell-my-grandchildren event. Communing with public emotion is easy now travel is cheap. These things are driven by rolling, unctuous television telling people a great event is unfolding, focusing on the few hysterics in tears and not the many who come to feel their pain.

Bill Clinton had it right yesterday: "The man knows how to build a crowd." Curiously, the celebrity nature of this event - a must-do for 200 world leaders - signifies the opposite of what it seems. It shows how far people have forgotten what the church really is, how profoundly ignorant and indifferent they have become to history and theology. Hell, he was just a good ol' boy, wore white, blessed folk, prayed for peace - why not?

In Europe church attendance is plummeting, even in Poland, the heart of reactionary Catholicism. Here the young are clueless about the most basic Christian stories. How about the DJ who opened his show with "Happy Good Friday!" Art galleries now need to explain the agony in the garden, the raising of Lazarus and even the nnunciation. In surveys, half the population couldn't say what Easter meant. It is precisely this insouciant ignorance that lets people emote with the flow; they know not what they do.

The Vatican is not a charming Monaco for tourists collecting Ruritanian stamps or gazing at past glories in the Sistine Chapel. It is a modern, potent force for cruelty and hypocrisy. It has weak temporal power, so George Bush can safely pray at the corpse of the man who criticised the Iraq war and capital punishment; it simply didn't matter as the Pope never made a serious issue of it or ordered the US church to take strong action.

The Vatican's deeper power is in its personal authority over 1.3 billion worshippers, which is strongest over the poorest, most helpless devotees. With its ban on condoms the church has caused the death of millions of Catholics and others in areas dominated by Catholic missionaries, in Africa and right across the world. In countries where 50% are infected, millions of very young Aids orphans are today's immediate victims of the curia. Refusing support to all who offer condoms, spreading the lie that the Aids virus passes easily through microscopic holes in condoms - this irresponsibility is beyond all comprehension.

This is said often, even in this unctuous week - and yet still it does not permeate. He was a good, caring man nevertheless, they say, as if it were a minor aberration. But genuflecting before this corpse is scarcely different to parading past Lenin: they both put extreme ideology before human life and happiness, at unimaginable human cost. How dare our prime minister go there in our name to give the Vatican our approval for this? Will he think of Africa when on his knees today? I trust history will some day express astonishment at moral outrage wasted on sexual trivia while papal celebrity and charisma cloaked this great Vatican crime.

The editor of the Catholic Herald was somewhat Jesuitical when I argued with him in a BBC studio yesterday. He asked how the Pope could be blamed when all the church calls for is sex within marriage and abstinence. But abstinence and celibacy are not the human condition. If the Vatican learned anything about humanity, it would humbly meditate on 4,450 Catholic clergy in the US alone accused of molesting children since 1950, and no doubt as many in Catholic churches elsewhere still in denial.

The scale of it is breathtaking yet not at all surprising: most humans are sexual beings. A Vatican edict in the 1960s threatened to excommunicate anyone breaking secrecy on child sex allegations, and guaranteed that ever more children continued to suffer. And within its walls the Vatican shields an American priest from allegations.

Still the Vatican turns a blind eye to this most repugnant and damaging of all sexual practices, the suffering little children whose priests come unto them. Yet at the same time it thunders disapproval of sex in every other more innocent circumstance, blighting the lives of millions with its teaching on gays, divorce, abortion and unrealistic self-denial. There is no reckoning how many of the world's poorest women have died giving birth to more children than they can survive; contraception is women's true saviour.

In 1971 I interviewed Mother Teresa and asked how she justified letting starving babies be born to die on Calcutta streets for lack of contraception. She said sublimely that every baby entering the world was another soul created in praise of God, even if it lived only a few hours. She was never keen on cures: suffering was a gift of God that enabled those who cared for the afflicted to demonstrate their love. She was beatified by John Paul II for their shared religious mania. Those who met them talk of an aura of love, power, listening and intensity. But goodness is in doing good; good intent is no excuse for murderous error.

Today's saccharine sanctimony will try to whiten the sepulchre of yet another Pope whose obscurantist faith has caused pointless suffering; it is no defence that he was only obeying higher orders.

At the funeral will be a convocation of mullahs, rabbis and all the other medieval faiths that increasingly conspire together against modernity. Islamic groups are sternly warning the Vatican to stand firm against liberal influences on homosexuality, abortion, contraception and the ordination of women. What is it about religion that unites them all on sex? It always expresses itself as disgust for women's bodies, leading to a need to suppress women ltogether. Why is controlling women's bodies the shared battle flag of every faith?

Disgracefully, the European rich quietly ignore the church's outlandish teachings on contraception without rebelling on behalf of the helpless third-world poor who die for their misplaced faith. Those "civilised" Catholics have as much blood on their hands as the Vatican they support. They are like the Bollinger Bolsheviks who defended the USSR and a murderous ideology that they could do much to change. For today, just remember what lies beneath all this magnificent display.

Rex Wockner nails the gayisms we could - and should - do without

There are certain 'markers' which are taken to be indispensable to a gay identity, such as cruising saunas, doing circuit parties and so on, but in reality these are only the self-centred indulgences of a narcissistic minority. An honest gay identity isn't defined that way, says Rex Wockner, and I agree with him. As he says, be true to your self - there's nothing as sexy as authenticity.

Some years ago - too many to count - I remember a conversation with an older queen - the age I am now - who looked at me in surprise when I said I didn't cruise beats. What about saunas? No. What about parks? Backrooms? No. No.

Hmph! she snorted, so you're not really gay then, are you!!

Oh yes I am :-)

An Antidote to Grief

The instant hagiography being created around the late Pope makes me want to puke. This was not a great and good man, but a throwback to the era of medieval despots, the Inquisition, and the rule of theocracy.

Paul Varnell of the Chicago Free Press provides a salutuary counterbalance to all the current nonsense.

Watching the hordes pouring out their superficial self-indulgent grief over this person is strongly reminiscent of the orgy of self-flagallation that accompanied the death and funeral of another modern media 'saint' - Princess Diana.

Thankfully that orgasm of lachrymosity seemed to get Dubious Di out of everyone's system: since then she has more or less disappeared off the radar, her shrine unvisited, her memorial a joke, except to a faithful few.

I suspect the same thing will happen with JP2: once people are over the shock he'll be bundled off into the filing cabinet of history with a sense of profound releif. People loved them both, in the same way they loved Lisa McCune's character in Blue Heelers, but deep down, everyone is profoundly, if guiltily, glad they're gone. Hence the excessive ME ME ME LOOK HOW SAD I AM mourning. The prevailing underlying sentiment is actually one of THANK GOD THAT'S OVER!!!

Amen to that