Doug PollardSHAMESHAME TOP 25 Part II
November 1st 2009 09:05
Ellen & Portia
It’s that time of year again, time to nominate the 25 allegedly most influential fags and dykes in Australia.
I like the idea of celebrating success in environments where it’s tough and challenging to be out and gay. But looking back over previous lists, some inclusions seem, well, strange.
Like Portia De Rossi, holding down a really challenging gig as a same-sex celebrity wife.
Of course some clearly deserve celebrating, like Love Makes a Family’s Felicity Marlowe, or GLLO Melinda Edwards.
And Matthew Mitcham clearly had some influence, even though Olympic pool sports are already as gay as ice-dancing, or ballroom dancing (with only marginally skimpier costumes).
And please don’t try to make me call the latter ‘dance sports’, or I shall have to start calling three-act ballets ‘triathlons’ – it’s a gay sport, get over it. We let you join in, if you can camp it up enough, don’t we?
But to get back to the subject: there are ‘influential’ out gays and lesbians – even on the SameSame lists - who refuse to use their influence. Won’t front up at rallies to say a few words, sing a song, or just be there, except maybe for a fat fee. Who resent the suggestion that ‘just because they’re gay,’ they have an obligation to ‘give back’ to their own people. Who trot out the line that they ‘don’t want to become a gay poster boy/girl’.
I have my own list of these selfish freeloaders, but I thought it would be more fun to ask people, who’s on yours? So last week on my radio program Freshly Doug (Thursday 9 till Noon, Joy 94.9 Melbourne, streaming live over the web) I launched “The ShameShame Top 25 Influential Gays & Lesbians Who Do Jack Schitt for GLBTI.”
It was an interesting exercise. There were nominees who divided opinion, like Molly Meldrum, who was liked for no discernible reason, but also criticised for saying nothing. At least, nothing anyone could understand.
On the one hand John Michael Howson was panned as ‘simply awful’, a ‘tame poofter’ on shock-jock station 3AW, while others were proud to have him on our side.
Alan Jones was a somewhat less divisive nominee – no-one had a good word for him, with or without his prostate.
Nor for Penny Wong, for putting her career before her community, and for being an out lesbian cabinet member, yet refusing to speak out publicly in support of our rights, and even endorsing the governments ‘separate but equal’ policies.
And Bob Brown may be Green but we think he should be Pinker, leading a pro-gay party but not using that party’s Senate strength effectively on our behalf.
Jonathan Welch and Julie McCrossin each got a serve for ‘pretending to care about the poor’, as one unhappy listener put it, refusing to speak out against the governments failure to grandfather the changes to aged pensions that hit elderly gay couples hard.
High Court Justice Virginia Bell copped it for being ‘a poor replacement for Michael Kirby’ who seems ‘uncomfortable publicly acknowledging her sexuality, let alone advocating for it’.
Some people nominated the Lobbies, for dropping everything else and homing in blindly on gay marriage to the exclusion of almost all else. Others disliked wasting time on 'Orwellian' ideas like 'hate crime' and 'hate speech'. Better call it 'thoughtcrime' and be honest about it.
Do these lists really matter? Isn’t the SameSame awards ceremony just another of those feel-good intra-community events like Divas, Rainbows, Prides, which like all circle-jerks are fun at the time but ultimately a wasted opportunity? Is it anything more than a self-serving publicity stunt to drive web traffic to a not especially interesting website that sources most of its content second hand, unacknowledged and unpaid?
Why else include out, gay and influential nominees who refuse to use their influence for our benefit, like Wong and Brown, or who are simply celebrities who happen to be gay, like Tony Sheldon. He’s a wonderful performer and a lovely man, but really, does being a gay man in musical theatre who leaps into drag at the drop of a handbag really make him ‘influential’?
These cynical inclusions diminish the honour being done to those who really do work hard on our behalf and achieve their influence by doing so. They are the ones really worth celebrating.
(You can see the original ShameShame nominations and comments to date – and add your own - on the Freshly Doug blog at Really Long Link or add a comment below)
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