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Newsletter - August 2021

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Newsletter - August 2021
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August 2021
In this August edition of the First Mardi Gras Inc. Newsletter, we have:
  • Rebbell Barnes on our new 78ers Badge and 2021 Raffle
  • Gail Hewison on the OutStanding Short Story Competition
  • Robyn Kennedy on WorldPride 2021 in Copenhagen
  • Diane Minnis on the Stop the "Religious Freedom" bills: No right to discriminate! online rally
  • Robyn Kennedy with an update on CAMP: Australia’s pioneer homosexual rights activist
  • Barry Charles on the The 2021 CENSUS and our Community
  • Diane Minnis on the State Library of NSW Scholar Talk: Lesbian Sydney in the 1990s
  • Robyn Kennedy on the State Library WorldPride 2023 Exhibition
  • Calendar of Events.
Diane Minnis
 
If you are interested in working with First Mardi Gras Inc. on our Committee or in a Working Group, please call one of our Co-Chairs:
Diane Minnis 0411 213 019 and Ken Davis 0417 398 167.
 
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It has been a few years since First Mardi Gras Inc. sold the last of the badges we produced for the 40th Anniversary of the first Mardi Gras. So we decided to produce a badge that we could use every year.

Our new badges cost $5 each and postage is $3.09 (total $8.09). If you want to order more than one badge, the postage is only $3.09 for up to five badges.

To order your badges email your name, postal address and the number of badges required to info@78ers.org.au. Please also contact us for payment details.
 
Rebbell Barnes
78er and First Mardi Gras Inc. Committee Member
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The First Mardi Gras Inc. fundraising team are running a year-long raffle. We started selling tickets at the 2 May Dog Park Picnic and planned to sell more during the year.

But now with lockdown, we have opened up raffle ticket sales so that you can order by email. First make your payment, using the bank details in the badges article above, and then email your name and number of tickets. We will then email you a photo of your ticket numbers and your name on the stub.

The raffle will be drawn just prior to the 2022 Mardi Gras Parade. Thanks to prize donors: Rebbell Barnes, Garry Case, Mazz Image and Wanda Kluke.
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If you would like to enter this year’s OutStanding LGBTIQA+ Short Story Competition, the theme is Oops! and entries need to be 750 words and in by 1 September 2021. See www.outstandingstories.net for details.

The short story competition also has a long history. It was started in the late 80s by Gary Dunne and Lauren McKinnon who also started Blackwattle Press, the first gay press in Australia. Gary and Lauren were also instigators of the early Queer Lit Conferences where I was involved via The Feminist Bookshop which I ran from 1982-2011 with my sisters.

Because of my interest in writing and writers, I was invited to be on the committee running the competition and later asked to be a judge. For some years the competition was called Mardi Gras Short Story Competition. Around 2011, with the support of Mardi Gras, the competition was passed back to the committee and became an autonomous competition called OutStanding. The name was suggested by Lauren McKinnon who had retired because of ill health.

The committee members are all volunteers, there is no fee to enter, and all funds raised are used as either prize money or for expenses. At different times the competition has received funding from LINC and Aurora, but mostly the committee raises funds with other prizes being donated by Mardi Gras, The Bookshop Darlinghurst and WritingNSW.

The current committee is Gail Hewison, Robert Tait, Stafford Hamilton, Nikki Bryson, and our annual guest judge Sophie Robinson.

We all love our community of writers, and love giving back to our larger queer community by encouraging creativity and fun. Several years ago our winner was 78er Garry Wotherspoon at the time aged 78, and in that same year the Youth Prize was won by a Year 12 school student. Diana King, another 78er has also several times been in the prize winners list.

Our Facebook page has 1500+ followers and we run two competitions each year. Our main competition from June to September is open now, and our summer competition, Miniature, is held in February alongside Mardi Gras. All information, and past winning stories can be read on www.outstandingstories.net. 
 
Gail Hewison, 78er
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Despite COVID-19, WorldPride 2021 in Copenhagen went ahead with the first events taking place on 14th August. The EuroGames in Malmo Sweden scheduled events from 17th August.

Key events like the Human Rights Conference; the Refugees, Borders and Immigration Summit; and the Democracy Festival as well as several concerts, EuroGames tournaments and the Fluid Festival are available to watch as recordings.

You can see the three days of the Human Rights Conference on YouTube:
WorldPride 2021 can be accessed via https://copenhagen2021.com.
 
Robyn Kennedy
78er and First Mardi Gras Inc. Committee Member
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Community Action for Rainbow Rights (CARR) had a good rollup of around 160 people to their online protest: Stop the "Religious Freedom" bills: No right to Discriminate! on Saturday 14 August. About a dozen 78ers participated in the rally.

The federal Liberal government will introduce legislation this year that gives bigots more powers to discriminate against employees, patients, students, clients, and customers. Attorney General Michaelia Cash has been consulting with extreme right-wing groups like the Australian Christian Lobby on the contents of the bill.

Under previous drafts of the "Religious Discrimination" bill:
  • every pharmacist, doctor and nurse in the country could deny contraceptive or morning-after pills, abortions, or hormone therapy to any patient
  • any boss could tell their transgender employees that they are a crime against god and are going to hell
  • all religious schools, aged care providers, and businesses could sack any LGBTI employee
  • religious charities could deny shelter, clothes or food to LGBTI people in need
  • day-care providers could tell single mothers that raising a child without a father is child abuse
  • all strong protections in state-based legislation for LGBTI people, such as in Tasmania, would be annulled.
At the rally, we heard from a strong panel of speakers from around Australia:
  • Dr Mehreen Faruqi, Greens Senator for NSW
  • Roz Ward, founder of the Safe Schools program and a co-founder of Rainbow Rebellion Melbourne
  • Lydia Shelley, a lawyer and member of the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties
  • Rodney Croome, spokesperson for the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights group and Just.Equal
  • Sel Dowd, Co-Convenor Equal Love Brisbane.
CARR Co-Convenor April Holcombe chaired the rally and asked for support for those arrested at the anti-trans bills protest on 10 October 2020. NSW allowed large, unmasked sporting events at that time, yet opposed a small, masked protest. The link is: https://chuffed.org/project/lgbti-campaign-fundraiser

The rally was a great call to action and reminded us all that we need to continue to fight against these so-called "Religious Freedom" bills.
 
Diane Minnis
78er and First Mardi Gras Inc. Co-Chair
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An upcoming book, CAMP: Australia’s pioneer homosexual rights activists is being produced by 78ers Robyn Kennedy and Robyn Plaister has now reached an advanced stage of development. The book includes interviews with and portraits of CAMP pioneers such as former Co-President Sue Wills.

Copy is close to finalisation and graphic design has commenced. The size of the book has grown along with its ambitions and will now be published as a 300 page high quality product – in both hard and ecopy and be available to order on-demand indefinitely through major outlets.

Thanks to sponsors and donors estimated production costs are close to being met but a final push is needed to get over the line. All donations are welcome and can be made via the following link: gofundme.com/f/help-commemorate-the-camp-pioneers. The link also provides more information about this unique project.
 
Robyn Kennedy
78er and First Mardi Gras Inc. Committee Member
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The Census for 2021 was a missed opportunity for properly identifying the true composition of our nation and our needs.
LGBTIQ Health held a webinar with representatives of the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Monday 2 August 2021 to advise the implications for our community of the Census questions.

The ABS explained that they had held extensive consultations on how to best record the diversity of our community in census data. They established standards (see the link to the Webinar) on how to frame questions to achieve this and made suggestions to the Federal Government for this year. The current government saw fit to ignore these recommendations for 2021.

In regard to the diversity in gender identity, we are left with only one question under Sex which asks us to choose Male/Female/Non-Binary. This hardly meets the wide variety of ways we may choose to describe our gender identity. The ABS recommended that those wishing to more fully describe their gender identity use the on-line version of the Census rather than the paper version. On-line under Non-Binary you could check a box to add text to describe yourself more accurately. This was not possible on the paper version.

Marriage and relationship status is also inadequately addressed though some data can be obtained by the ABS by putting parts of the Household question and relationship to principal questions together. The issue here is the wide variety of relationship/marriage arrangements in the queer community. This Census will not provide data on people who are in an equal marriage/de-facto but not living together.

Normally data collected from the Census is published in June/July the following year. By not addressing these questions adequately at this Census; the ABS and other researchers will have to conduct follow up surveys or make assumptions from the data.

It is hoped that the ABS can convince a future government to improve the data collection on our community and we have a role here. Preparations and submissions on the content of the next Census will begin as soon as the 2021 one has been published.

So once again it is something we have to campaign for, to ensure that a future government responds to the need to have accurate data on the LGBTIQ+ Community.  For more information visit the LGBTIQ Health website for the full recording: https://www.lgbtiqhealth.org.au/census_webinar_and_faqs
 
Barry Charles
78er and First Mardi Gras Inc. Secretary
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It’s a little disconcerting when you listen to a young researcher speak about a period you lived through. Yet I gained some new perspectives from Dr Sophie Robinson’s State Library of NSW Scholar Talk Lesbian Sydney in the 1990s on 3 August 2021.

Sophie spoke at our 2020 Salon78 forum A Lavender Menace? Australia’s Early Lesbian Movement and is a Committee member of the Pride History Group. She was the recipient of a Nancy Keesing Fellowship from the State Library and this Scholar Talk is based on her research conducted during the fellowship. 

Sophie’s project explored Sydney’s lesbian sub-culture as it became increasingly politically active and organised, drawing on the Library’s archives and two key publications of the time: Lesbians on the Loose (LOTL) and Wicked Women.

Both publications reflect the distinctly Australian lesbian feminist politics of the 70s coming through to the entrepreneurial, events oriented lesbian cultures of the 90s. These cultures were not monolithic and included anti-violence, sex positive and lesbian health groups.

While LOTL focussed on expanding the lesbian presence in the gay and lesbian scene and continuing the activist feminist agenda, Wicked Women aimed to connect kink and BDSM sub-cultures.

LOTL was free in order to reach the widest audience and to do this, they sold ads and received some financial support from Mardi Gras. Wicked Women also went into the performance space, with the Ms Wicked competitions which provided an alternative space to the more conservative bars. And by the early 90s, debate in both magazines overlapped with coverage of power and desire in lesbian communities.

During the 90s more lesbians got involved in coalition movements. It was an important time for expanding lesbian visibility and women’s leadership roles in Mardi Gras, ACON and the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby.

Once the talk is transcribed, the recording and transcription will be available on the State Library website. Search for Scholar Talks.
 
Diane Minnis
78er and First Mardi Gras Inc. Co-Chair
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As the State Library’s Coming out in the 70s Exhibition concluded, work began on an exhibition to coincide with Sydney WorldPride 2023. The Advisory Committee for the first exhibition has continued on and includes 78ers Robert French, Garry Wotherspoon, Robyn Kennedy and Pam Stein, along with community photographer C. Moore Hardy.

With a working title of Pride 2023, the exhibition is intended to be thematically based. Potential themes under discussion focus on diverse identities and the cultural infrastructure of queer lives. Some examples include:
  • the emergence of a distinct lesbian culture
  • gender diverse Indigenous people
  • being CALD and queer
  • queer scenes, events and subcultures and their importance in building resilience
  • celebration in the face of widespread discrimination and silencing, and how this has changed over time.
 
Robyn Kennedy
78er and First Mardi Gras Inc. Committee Member
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Calendar of Events