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TV equality popular culture - Rainbow Reporter

Moscow gay rights violently supressed - video

May 16th 2009 21:30
UPDATE

Moscow police violently prevented the gay pride demonstration:



Please ask the organisers of Eurovision to halt the contest.

Eurovision Director General - Jean Reveillon - ebu@ebu.ch

Stefan Kuerten - Eurovision Operations Department - kuerten@eurovision.net
Jeff Dubin - News & events - dubin@eurovision.net
Svante Stockselius - Song contests unit - stockselius@ebu.ch

END UPDATE

According to daily paper Moskovski Komsomolets (MK), Moscow police are planning to arrest the Moscow Pride leader Nikolai Alekseev today, Friday.

Nikolai has organised a gay pride march for Saturday, one day before IDAHO, the International Day Against Homophobia.

Australian/British activist Peter Tatchell is in Moscow to attend the pride march despite bing bashed at last years march.

Peter Tatchell assaulted in Moscow 2008
Peter Tatchell under attack, Moscow Pride 2008



I spoke with Nikolai on Wednesday for the Rainbow Report: you can download the podcasts parts one and two here.

Part One
Nikolai talks about the gay pride march planned for Saturday, Eurovision Song Contest Final day.
Really Long Link

Russian fascists
Russian rightwingers opposing Moscow Gay Pride 2008


Part Two
Nikolai talks about what it's like to be gay in Putin's Russia.
Really Long Link

Please ask the organisers of Eurovision to halt the contest unless Nikolai is allowed to protest freely, as is his democratic right. Oppose the Mayors ban.

Eurovision Director General - Jean Reveillon - ebu@ebu.ch
Stefan Kuerten - Eurovision Operations Department - kuerten@eurovision.net
Jeff Dubin - News & events - dubin@eurovision.net
Svante Stockselius - Song contests unit - stockselius@ebu.ch

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Homos Away in Summer Bay storm

March 29th 2009 05:28
Stormy weather
"Take the lesbian below, Mr Christian!"


Two female characters snogging in a disposable bit of moving wallpaper called ‘Home & Away’ created a tsunami of manufactured outrage last week, redoubled when Channel 7 ‘caved in’ and censored the lezzo liplock.

First a pseudo-Christian nano-group decried the promotion of homosexuality, then gay groups leaped in berating the TV station for its spineless capitulation. Channel 7’s publicity department must be creaming their jeans.

The two soapy characters are called Charlie and Joey, a policewoman and a trawler deckhand: subtle hints that these two ladies might have interests other than those motivating the rest of the women in Summer Bay.

With jobs like that they ought to be quite strong, but their clingy singlets reveal no hint of the muscles needed to haul in nets full of prawns, or subdue determined criminals. And surely their attractively tousled shoulder length manes would be a safety hazard? Not to mention those nails . . . .

No, Charlie and Joey are fantasy porno-lezzos, the sort Mr Hetero imagines sliding between for a hot night of conversion therapy.

Not that the show is exactly a beacon of social realism anyway. Summer Bay is very bleached-blond, Anglo-Saxon and heterosexual – dubbed into German it would have been all the rage in 1940’s Berlin.

It’s annoying to find oneself forced to defend this sort of stereotypical trash, especially when the whole story is just a media beat-up.

The only person truly ‘outraged’ by Charlie and Joey was one Angela Conway, the ‘spokeswoman’ for a previously little-known organisation “Pro Family Perspectives”. Ms Conway is also a leading member of the Australian Family Association, the National Civic Council, and the Festival of Light – all minuscule Christian front groups who big-note themselves with grandiose names, when in reality they are just threadbare Australian glove-puppets spouting the shop-worn bigotry of their American parent organisations.

Conway complained of the sexualisation of the storylines in Home and Away. Clearly teen romance, stalking, unplanned pregnancy, elopement and illicit affairs don’t count. Either that or she doesn’t watch the show.

I don’t watch the show either. In the words of a close friend, I am ‘not the target market’. So why should I care?

In the first place, I detest censorship, of which there is already far too much in Australian television. Programs you would see around 8.30 pm in any civilised country are here banished to the small hours or to pay TV. And if Senator Conroy gets his way, there’s soon to be even more censorship, this time of the internet.

Secondly, a million Australians, not to mention millions more around the world, do watch Home and Away. The program is particularly popular with young people. Even a soft-focus, unrealistic, depiction of love between two members of the same sex would be an improvement on complete invisibility.

Though for a really good storyline, I reckon the producers ought to pop Alf Stewart into Xavier Austin’s bed. Now that really would be worth talking about!
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The Tsunami of Sport

August 12th 2008 01:34
Get your runners on
Get your kit on!


If anyone wonders why I bother to involve myself with the RJM Trust, the tsunami of Olympics coverage provides the perfect answer.

Australia is a country where everything else takes a back seat to sport. Politics, health, war, education, business, finance – all get swept off the front pages and relegated to the ‘also’ bits of news bulletins the minute some footballer pees on a restaurant window.

If you want to get the publics attention, get involved in sport. If you want to change the publics mind, get into sport. If you want to find the last bastions of all kinds of prejudice – the ones that dare not speak their name in public – look in the club rooms of any sporting organization.

There, it’s still OK for a coach wanting to fire up his team to accuse them of being a bunch of poofs, of playing like fairies. OK to tell them to stick it up the opposition. It’s still OK for cricketers and footballers of all codes to ‘sledge’ their opponents on the field with homosexual innuendoes.

They used to do it with race. They used to call one another ‘half-breeds’ and worse if they wanted to put someone off their game. That’s not acceptable any more – but calling them a ‘pansy’ still is. That’s got to end.

That’s where the RJM Trust comes in. Football/netball clubs are the heart of most small Victorian towns – and small town Australia is still a very unsafe place to be gay.

Literally hundreds of same-sex attracted kids try to kill themselves in rural Australia every year, and many succeed, because there is nowhere – not at home, at school, not at church, not on the street – where they feel safe and accepted, as in depth research by La Trobe University (“Writing themselves in again”) makes plain. And the place where they feel the least safe is sporting events and venues.

I’m working with founder Rob Mitchell to turn local footy and netball clubs from centres of ignorance and prejudice into safe havens for people of all sexualities and genders. That’s why we’ve been working with bisexual Ken Campagnolo in his fight with the Bonnie Doon Football Club, and transsexual Tess Emery with her problems at Northern Saints.

And it’s why we’re working with the Victorian Country Football League and the Victorian AFL to launch diversity procedures, policies and training into every VCFL club. And why Rob has taken a seat on the Victorian Sports ministry committee working on the sporting clubs governance manual.

The Olympics may have swamped everything else for now, but the work has to go on, even if it’s temporarily invisible. The Olympics have allowed Jeff Kennett to slide out of responsibility for his remarks that appeared to say that a bisexual trainer among junior footballers presents the same risk profile as a paedophile priest among choirboys.

He still hasn’t given any satisfactory response on that one, but state politicians have shown interest in taking up the issue.

Sue Pennicuik of the Greens is more than happy to raise the matter in State Parliament, and there are some in the Liberal and Labor parties who are equally as unhappy with Mr Kennett.

It’s not all downside: the Olympics also allows me to have some time out here in Queensland. But don’t think I’ve gone away for long. I will be back!
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