GOING DOWN, DOWN UNDER
Letter from Attitude UK September 2005
Written by Steve Rolph, Australia
I am an occasional reader of your magazine here in Australia and felt compelled to write after reading your April 2005 issue. I was astonished to see that the leaders of the major parties over there had not only agreed to do an interview with a gay magazine but actually went through with it! My admiration for Tony Blair, already considerable, soared even higher.
Here in Australia we can only dream of having such an open-minded, progressive PM. We are facing our most hostile of governments to date. Instead of moving forward to equality for all, the Howard government, in association with the right wing Assemblies of God party, are currently legislating changes that will ensure the repression of the GLBT community for many years to come. Your readers may well see Australia fairly relaxed, laid back country that is open and accepting to all. This may well have been the case once upon a time but no longer, and as of 1st July things are going to get worse. John Howard has already succeeded in having our constitution changed to state that marriage will only ever be allowed between a man and a woman and he has stated that he will never condone any legal recognition of same-sex couples whatsoever. Indeed, he does not even see us as `couples´. He will be enacting legislation that will make gay content in television shows illegal prior to 11pm, if he even allows it at all. He wishes to remove protection for gay people from all discrimination legislation, whereby making it perfectly legal to discriminate against us because of who we are. We will have no protection under federal law in the area of unfair dismissal. Howard is about to make it law that gay couples can never adopt children under any circumstances, including from overseas and will enact bans on lesbians accessing IVF reproductive technologies.
In fact, the Howard government is so anti-gay that they are in the process of eliminating any positive portrayal of family with same-sex parents from any medium that could be available to children and young people. Also on the agenda is censorship of internet sites with GLBT content and a national Australian gay magazine recently stated that we should not be surprised if public fund programs that will be aimed at converting homosexuals to heterosexuals. I'm just glad my partner is British so if things get too rough here we can escape to burgeoning homosexual Utopia that England is becoming.
Written by Steve Rolph, Australia
I am an occasional reader of your magazine here in Australia and felt compelled to write after reading your April 2005 issue. I was astonished to see that the leaders of the major parties over there had not only agreed to do an interview with a gay magazine but actually went through with it! My admiration for Tony Blair, already considerable, soared even higher.
Here in Australia we can only dream of having such an open-minded, progressive PM. We are facing our most hostile of governments to date. Instead of moving forward to equality for all, the Howard government, in association with the right wing Assemblies of God party, are currently legislating changes that will ensure the repression of the GLBT community for many years to come. Your readers may well see Australia fairly relaxed, laid back country that is open and accepting to all. This may well have been the case once upon a time but no longer, and as of 1st July things are going to get worse. John Howard has already succeeded in having our constitution changed to state that marriage will only ever be allowed between a man and a woman and he has stated that he will never condone any legal recognition of same-sex couples whatsoever. Indeed, he does not even see us as `couples´. He will be enacting legislation that will make gay content in television shows illegal prior to 11pm, if he even allows it at all. He wishes to remove protection for gay people from all discrimination legislation, whereby making it perfectly legal to discriminate against us because of who we are. We will have no protection under federal law in the area of unfair dismissal. Howard is about to make it law that gay couples can never adopt children under any circumstances, including from overseas and will enact bans on lesbians accessing IVF reproductive technologies.
In fact, the Howard government is so anti-gay that they are in the process of eliminating any positive portrayal of family with same-sex parents from any medium that could be available to children and young people. Also on the agenda is censorship of internet sites with GLBT content and a national Australian gay magazine recently stated that we should not be surprised if public fund programs that will be aimed at converting homosexuals to heterosexuals. I'm just glad my partner is British so if things get too rough here we can escape to burgeoning homosexual Utopia that England is becoming.
posted by AdZ at 10:27 PM
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