I’VE written a lot about LGBTQI equality in the past 18 months. It’s no wonder – the marriage equality issue has reached boiling point in Australia, and many are wondering if this country is mature enough to leapfrog civil unions (which were an essential step in UK and NZ legislation a decade ago) and go ‘straight’ to full marriage laws.
Some days I think so, some days I waver, although I do have a three-way bet with some friends in New Zealand about when same-sex marriage will arrive on our shores. My odds are about middling, I suspect.
Meanwhile, I write. This poetic rant first appeared on LGBTicons.
SIBLING RIVALRY Christine Forster and her brother, Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
I’m starting to lose it with Australia.
THEY say that I have only two choices here in my homeland: I must either love this place or leave it.
I did try, like many of my brothers and sisters before me, when I took myself to the other side of the world, believing that distance would disguise my self disgust.
But there, in the fold of loneliness, the gay man still showed himself in the mirror when I stopped to look, and so I brought him home.
Oh, the endless fuss that still rumbles from my coming-out homecoming. The silences and the judgements that are held against me behind the smiles.
They wanted me to lie, now they want to punish me for being a liar, but I will not wear it.
No-one asks if you’re gay when you take out a home loan with your same-sex partner.
No-one asks if you feel equal when they tax you at the same rate as those who are free to express their love through marriage.
No-one asks if you’re gay when the bushfires lick every stick in the valley below the rows of precious lives, they only demand, quite rightly, that you help.
And we help. Yet that is never quite enough.
I see the dykes like patient, weathered stones, waiting for this people to realise their help is solid, unflinching and safe.
I see the poofs in caring generations that do not waver, they only want to play when it’s time to play.
I’ve watched us earn our equality. Our stripes are bright and they have nothing left to prove.
But the people elected a man who told them to be very, very afraid of difference.
He has a dyke sister who, we hope, is starting to get very, very angry, the way dykes sometimes can, and while their edge begins to scare you, you know you’re in very good hands, if you’re on their side.
I hope she rips ten colours of rainbow out of him this Christmas, as another year closes on the country he leads, the same country, and the same man, that prevent her marrying her fiancée.
I hope he hides, for even just a moment, in retreat, and has a long hard look at himself in the ensuite bathroom mirror, before he wipes that leering smile back onto his face, and puts on another show for the only people he truly represents: his family.
No more platitudes. No more promises. No more big Aussie smiles to cover our shame.
I am not going to leave this place, until none of its children must leave it in fear.
Despite initial reports from the event focusing understandably on the delegates killed by the missile attack on their flight over eastern Ukraine, the conference agenda hit the airwaves visibly on this week’s episode of QandA.
As a result a range of new and unfamiliar language has been presented to mainstream and social media audiences. From ‘Sero-Discordant Relationship’, ‘PEP’, ‘PrEP’, ‘TasP’, ‘ART’ and ‘PMTCT’ to phrases like ‘heteronormative’ and ‘men who have sex with men’, Australians have been getting a higher-than-average dose of HIV/AIDS-related vocabulary.
Unfortunately the word use is not coming with enough interpretation. ‘Conference-style’ or ‘industry-speak’ acronyms and sound bites occur in every sector, but with its ‘Stepping Up The Pace’ mission statement, this particular conference and its media delegates could have done with more plain talking and less weasel words to get the important messages about HIV/AIDS through to the communities they are seeking to engage.
With new HIV infection levels in Australia at a 20-year high, one of those communities is surely ours. Surprising survey results on Queensland’s high-level ignorance about how HIV is acquired hit the mainstream media just a week after the conference.
The international conference has a focus on tackling new infections and raised questions about the direction new HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns should take, considering the scare-factor of the Grim Reaper ad campaign of the late 1980s, and new data which reveals the 96 per cent protection rate for sero-discordant sexual encounters if one of the partners is being treated with ARV.
If you’re confused it’s no wonder. I thought I knew plenty about HIV/AIDS, but, like writer and HIV activist Nic Holas who was on the QandA panel, I am torn about whether this should be an opinion piece or a community service announcement.
“I believe unlocking the acronyms will help.”
One of the terms the conference has chosen to focus on is ‘Men who have Sex with Men’ (MSM), although the focus is mainly on this HIV/AIDS risk group overseas.
“It is a key objective of the 20th International AIDS Conference to shine a light on those men who have sex with men, sex workers, transgender people and people who use drugs who do not have the same access to treatment, care and prevention as their western colleagues may do,” UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé said at the start of the conference.
Ever since the phrase was coined in the 1990s as a means of de-stigmatising HIV infections which were the result of heterosexual men who engaged in sex with other men, it has sat rather uninterpreted outside the HIV/AIDS community.
But is it effective when addressing Australians in the media? To answer that it’s important to underline that MSM does not mean ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’, in fact the term was invented to shield MSMs from any hint of ‘gay’.
Many in the gay community have sexual encounters with MSMs in sex-on-premises businesses (read: ‘saunas’ and/or ‘bathhouses’) or at beats (read: ‘public toilets’, although beats are also located at road-stops, sports fields, and can often crop-up right in the high street at bookshops or other businesses).
SHINING A LIGHT On HIV/AIDS in Melbourne.
It doesn’t take long at a gathering of gay men for the stories about baby seats in the backs of cars at beats, or wives dropping husbands at saunas, to enter the conversation with an awkward mixture of laughter and understanding. MSM do not identify as ‘gay’ and they (and therefore their heterosexual sexual partners) remain at very high risk of HIV infection, in part because they tend not to get tested regularly.
Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) is a mouthful, but it’s also something the Australian community could develop a greater understanding of. Available at most hospital emergency departments, and essential to start before 72 hours have passed since exposure to the HIV virus, PEP is a four-week course of anti-HIV medication with a decent success rate.
Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) is similar, but it’s engaged as a means of preventing HIV infection. Sero-discordant couples (when one partner is HIV positive and the other is HIV negative) are in the demographic which can benefit from PrEP, including couples who are trying conceive a child while protecting the uninfected partner from contracting HIV.
Treatment as Prevention (TasP) is an approach to HIV prevention which acknowledges that a sexual partner taking antiretroviral (ARV) medication has a greatly-reduced viral load (the amount of HIV virus in body fluids). It’s important to acknowledge that ARV’s side-effects means this form of treatment program is not for everyone. TasP has made a significant difference in Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) of HIV during breastfeeding.
‘Heteronormative’ is a term that has often cropped-up in HIV/AIDS debates, generally at the queer theory end of the spectrum, and it’s used to tackle the assumption that gender and sexual orientation fall into fixed categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ according to abstract ‘laws of nature’ that have led to the shaming of same-sex attracted people.
Such stigmatising only increases the conditions in which higher rates of HIV infection occur, no matter which country you live in.
There are many other new elements to HIV/AIDS, from home testing and rapid testing at clinics (which have the potential to ensure a higher rate of MSM testing), to new measures for assisting the ongoing health of long-infected PLWHA (‘People Living With HIV/AIDS’).
It’s a veritable alphabet of acronyms which many LGBTQI (there we go again) remain grateful for because this kind of language aims to avoid assumptions of ‘victims’ and blame.
While it’s tempting for Australians to believe that HIV/AIDS in a third-world issue, that we have tackled the problem, and there is plenty of good news to get our heads around, the issue of how to communicate that message without an increase in new HIV infections is now one of the main HIV/AIDS challenges facing Australia. I believe unlocking the acronyms will help.
IN July 2013 I started contributing to independent Australian news site No Fibs, a journey which began with the controversial issue of marriage equality.
The 2013 federal election was yet to be called, but former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had toppled Julia Gillard and done something totally unexpected – he’d come out in support of same-sex marriage.
When I approached former Fairfax journalist and one-time editor of pioneer online news site Webdiary, and editor-in-chief of No Fibs,Margo Kingston, I felt in my gut that marriage equality was going to be pivotal election policy ground, and asked her why there was nothing on it at No Fibs.
In her generous, proactive manner, Margo asked me to step-up and write something for the site.
What’s interesting about this piece, written a year ago, is that not much has changed for marriage equality in the interim: it’s still a political football.
Even though the government has changed and we have a few more federal MPs who support same-sex marriage, the issue is still being booted up and down the field, waiting for a politician of any stripe to take the free kick this majority-supported human right will be.
SAVVY SENATOR The LNP’s Sue Boyce shows the Senate what an equality conscience looks like.
The chances of marriage equality in Australia.
SUPPORTERS of marriage equality in Australia would have been forgiven for thinking the issue was dead in the water under the 43rd Parliament.
We endured Tony Abbott’s predictable religious opposition. We winced at Julia Gillard’s incomprehensible atheist mantra against relationship freedom. We shed tears as Penny Wong assured us of a more enlightened tomorrow.
Then something happened which nobody predicted. Kevin Rudd, with one cogent blog post, became the highest-profile Australian politician, and Christian, to get behind marriage equality.
Before he was reinstated as Prime Minister, this news remained a hopeful anecdote. Now it’s fast becoming the point of difference which may wedge Rudd into a win at the ballot box.
Galaxy polling from last weekend indicates 11 per cent of polled Coalition voters would back Kevin Rudd and Labor at the election, based on his support for same-sex marriage.
So, what are the chances of marriage equality under the 44th Parliament?
“It does give you anxiety to know that holding hands in public is still considered by some to be a political act.”
This double-edged sword was wielded in 2012, when the Government voted on marriage equality with their consciences, while the Opposition voted with Tony Abbott’s. The bill to amend the Marriage Act was resoundingly, and predictably, lost.
The ALP’s conscience vote on same-sex marriage cannot be changed at party level before their next national conference, which is why Rudd’s new front bench is busy saying Tony Abbott’s grip on his ministers’ views is heavy-handed.
So let’s look at Abbott’s stance. Despite the coming-out of his lesbian sister Christine Forster, Tony Abbott has remained unconvinced by her deeply held desire to see equality in her country, let alone within her own family.
Progressive voters, quite rightly, saw these as so many dangling carrots. When pressed, Abbott dismissed the suggestion there was a need to define marriage equality as an important issue for a potential Coalition government, citing how close his views were to Prime Minister Gillard’s.
Marriage equality never had less of a chance in Australia, until Rudd’s backflip.
Most of the religious themes of his blog post were lost on me.
As someone who gave a live submission to the Human Rights Commission’s 2006 Same Sex: Same Entitlements hearing, which was used by Rudd and his first cabinet to remove almost 100 pieces of legislation discriminating against same-sex couples, I knew he’d long had all he needed to understand that the case for same-sex marriage was already a human rights no-brainer.
TALK ABOUT KEVIN KRudd’s backflip on marriage equality was a surprise.
But it wasn’t what he wrote which held my attention, it was what he said at press conferences, stating a desire to end the “unnecessary angst” amongst a large proportion of the community.
It’s an interesting word, angst, but it’s a great description of the stasis an increasing number of same-sex couples endure while we wait for our leaders to sort out marriage equality.
We are encouraged into joint financial commitments, and all the customs and commitment inherent in extended family life, yet we are denied access to the fundamental legal and symbolic bedrock of loving relationships, if we find we want or need one.
It does give you angst to know that if something happened to your partner, through death or incapacitation, even a distant relative could make a case for financial gain, while you are left chasing statutory declarations warranting what a simple marriage certificate could.
It does give you anxiety to know that holding hands in public is still considered by some to be a political act, knowing that we should have secured marriage equality long ago in order to start the real work: changing hearts and minds, under the protection of full equality enshrined in law.
Kevin also did something which added to my confidence in him on this issue. He stood up to his sister.
If he explained it to her the same way as he explained it to us, I imagine Kevin reminded Loree that Australia is a secular nation in which religious conviction is secondary to social reform. That realisation, matched with his vocal reassurances to Australia’s same-sex community, is what you call leadership by any definition.
Despite many in its ranks making their support for marriage equality public, including self-proclaimed preferred Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull, and Senator Sue Boyce’s decision to cross the floor and vote for it, Tony Abbott and the Coalition remain locked into opposition to same-sex marriage in Australia.
A clear choice has presented itself where there so recently was none.
Michael Burge Media 