Doug PollardWe're so grateful - not!
August 4th 2009 04:10
I finally got my hands on some transcripts of ALP conference speeches, so I can dispense with the sleeping pills for a while.
But one little doozey had me bolting back to the laptop in rage.
“I should specifically place on the record that I have absolutely no doubt, as you would appreciate, that the anti-discrimination reforms that have been passed by the Federal Parliament would not have been achieved without the support of Australia’s faith-based communities. The support of Australia’s faith-based communities . . . . . . was based on those reforms not undermining the institution of marriage.” Attorney General Robert McClelland.
I am sick to death of being told to be grateful to the Labor government for what they have done for us. How dare they suggest we ought to be grateful to the pseduo-Christians, too.
We have been monumentally patient while Labor has lumbered through the complex, cumbersome procedure of painfully identifying and amending each and every piece of legislation that treated our families unfairly. What a mammoth task. What a total waste of time and effort in the midst of a global financial crisis.
Only one piece of legislation – the Marriage Act – really needed amendment, and that is more in the nature of cosmetic surgery to remove Howards carbuncle from it’s otherwise acceptable face.
We gritted our teeth on being told ‘tough’, when we complained that the changes to social security weren’t being grandfathered and would hurt some of the most vulnerable members of our community.
Now we’re being told we ought to be thankful to the self-righteous minority who keep shoving us and the administration through these unnecessary hoops -
Enough is enough. I no longer care if these smug, superior, moralising individuals are offended. Let me lay it on the line on behalf of people like me and those who came before me.
Within living memory – within my memory - gay people were driven mad by psychological and physical tortures inflicted by the medical profession in the name of a cure.
Aversion therapy delivered painful electric shocks whenever the patient showed signs of an attraction to a member of their own sex.
Gay people were driven mad, drugged, given electro-shock therapy, confined in mental hospitals, basically because they were gay.
Some were castrated, chemically or physically.
Many were separated from their spouses, children, and communities. Thrown out of work, expelled from the armed forces, jailed, ruined, cast into poverty – simply for being gay.
When they were assaulted on the streets, people turned a blind eye. Police mysteriously failed to find their attackers. Courts accepted flimsy defences.
“He made a sexual advance by putting his hand on my knee, so I bashed him to death.”
“Oh you poor thing. Fined five pounds.”
Just as this monstrous tide was abating, AIDS arrived, and with it, the bigotry returned full force. Medical help was denied. People were left to die untended. “Serves you right, you brought it on yourself,” was the attitude.
Although many did show great compassion, many others did not. Time and again, comfort and care was not offered, but rather, had to be wrenched from fearful, grudging and judgemental hands.
Slowly, and at great personal cost, we have begun to drag ourselves out from under this great and ancient weight of persecution. We are now being accepted by a slim majority of the population.
And through all this, our greatest persecutors, our most fervent tormentors, have been those Pharisees, those whited sepulchres, that smug totalitarian minority of ‘Christians’ (and other religions) who – and let us be clear about this – have always viscerally loathed us and still do, despite all their hypocritical posturing about ‘loving the sinner.’
And now the Attorney-General, no less, asks us to pass a vote of thanks for their generosity and condescension. Pardon me while I puke.
Life for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, trangenders and intersex people has improved a lot in recent times. Not enough, but a lot.
But this has not been ‘given’ or ‘granted’ by anyone. It has been wrestled out of unwilling hands by honest, brave and forthright people – not all of them gay – who have been strong enough, and fortunate enough, to be able to take a stand. It owes less than nothing to these people we are now being asked to thank.
We have begun to gain a measure of respect and equality, but the context of the horrors of what has been inflicted on us in the past must be acknowledged. You, the majority still have a huge distance to travel to mend your fences with us. If you want to know what tolerance truly is, we are the tolerant ones, not you.
We have found our pride, and that is good. That is why we do not rub your noses in your guilt, or call for compensation for past wrongs. We do not ask for restitution for the persecution we have endured and, especially in rural areas, continue to endure. We do not expect a Sorry Day.
But we would take it very kindly if you would cut the condescending crap and instead politely ask what else still needs to be done.
And there is much. A random sample. There is AIDS still to be fought. Homelessness among gay and lesbian youth . Proper aged care for our seniors. An epidemic of depression and self harm, especially among the young, the elderly, and the transgendered. Not to mention the little matter of equal rights and respect for our relationships, on exactly the same terms as your.
Did you not know that G.A.Y. stands for Good As You?
Yet we must still bust a gut to even get these issues on your agenda. It’s time that changed. It’s time you came asking us what you can do to put things right. You’ll be amazed at the love that’s waiting for you, if you only do the right thing.
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Comment by Greg Adkins
Nowhere is he asking anyone to pass a "vote of thanks" - your words.
He's entitled to his opinion, just as I and many like me are entitled to have a different opinion to him, and in some ways, to you.
Deep breath Doug, back on track: how to bring the divided gay and lesbian community in as one on relationship recognition so the word "marriage" and its religious overtones don't divide us and keep us from having true equality through state-sanctioned and secular relationship recognition where same-gender partners have identical rights to opposite-gender partners.
Cheers!
Comment by Doug Pollard
Current Affairs
Rainbow Reporter
But it still sticks in my craw that these people should be thanked in any way shape or form.
Down the years, all the while they were - and this is not hyperbole - persecuting us, we were doctoring and nursing them,entertaining and sustaining them, even marrying, christening and burying them, despite their appalling behaviour towards us.
That's a damn sight more 'Christian' than any of this bunch will ever be.
Comment by Greg Adkins
Maybe a young man somewhere, emerging within his sexual orientation, took a moment to reflect on the rise of gays and the evolution of real and tangible role models and found them to be based on a newly found partnership between gays and heterosexuals. And maybe he parked or better still forgot his sense of helplessness and desire to end it all.
And now, just when we should be pulling together for equality, uniting the 99% (gay and straight) against the homophobes and religious zealots making up the 1%, a vocal, hateful and spiteful minority - just as we could be giving those that should be WITH us the reason TO BE with us - we instead fail to negotiate the simplest use of language to allow this powerful and lasting unification to take place.
Language based on ANY wording that unites instead of divides, that in any culture or political belief system allows for the equation "equal means equal" to be true, and language that further shrinks the hate in the 1%, and the 1% itself.
I'm not sure exactly what these words are. I am certain these words must recognise ALL relationships with equality, regardless of the sexual orientation or gender of the prospective life partners who choose to negotiate that course or who may to choose to do so in the future.
I am also certain so far in these discussions that the "m" word and the people from both poles who wield IT, rather than the equality it symbolises, have managed to widen the gap within our community instead of pulling the threads together. The use of the "m" word risks unpicking the tenuous stitching that hoped to bring the two seams of straight and gay together to once again show we are from the same cloth and are indeed equal.
And that young gay man and others like him, may too soon, again, feel the hate and division. The bullies and homophobes are fortified and the 1% begins to grow.
WE have a bigger responsibility than individual agendas. Bigger now than we have ever had.
Our obligation is to find the language that binds us not divides us. Our shared responsibility is to bring the 99% together and prove that equal IS equal.
Comment by Doug Pollard
Current Affairs
Rainbow Reporter