Resent-date: Mon, 19 Sep 1994 10:04:49 EST Sender: Information Repository for News of Interest to GLB* Folk From: PMDAtropos Subject: TAS anti-gay forces target schools, use youth [ Send all responses to James.Butler@educ.utas.edu.au. Replies to the list or list editor will be returned ] After a relatively quiet week or two here in Hobart, I was almost getting used to having my morning coffee without "Sodomy"--screamed in the newspaper headlines, to be sure. Thursday morning changed that as the esteemed morning MERCURY proclaimed "New Gay Furore." Although some months previously, the Department of Education and the Arts had forbidden gay groups to post information in the secondary colleges (i.e. schools catering to year 11 and 12 students) under an umbrella policy denying access to groups promoting views on sexuality of any type, it came to light today that state department head Bruce Davis has allowed the anti-gay group Tas-Alert to put material on school notice boards. And it's rich stuff ,too. Most notorious is "An Urgent Appeal to Those who Think They Might Be Gay" which offers counselling and reminds those pensive ones that being gay means being "short-changed" in life. (If we were to extend the metaphor of economic misfortune, I suppose being straight really should be seen as the equivalent of the stock market crash of '29!). Needless to say , many professional educators and the leaders of the Greens are publically appalled at the idea of giving such fly-by-night counsellors any acccess to students. Officials defended discrimination by noting that homosexual acts are ILLEGAL still, while Tas-Alert's work is not (immoral, maybe, but . . .). Tas-Alert's secretary Richard Gibbs noted how his group's advertisments were hardly comparable to "the homosexual lobby's" poster "with two homosexuals kissing, and wording which said there were more young guys than you would think having sex with other young guys." Of course, the present state of affairs, where many of these men get married and have that sex clandestinely in a car park in Moonah or in the (appropriately named) Queen's Domain gardens, is doubtless preferable to an education which stresses acceptance and diversity, a politics which supports vibrant gay institutions capable of communicating a culture to younger members. Think not that the religious right stands idly by, either. Two weekends ago at the bustling Saturday Salamanca Market, boys aged ten or so were going around handing out pamphlets entitled AIDS: WHERE ARE WE GOING--A CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT. In that piece, we read that "Changing the name of sin does not change the sin: to call sodomy homosexuality is to aquiesce [sic] to it." One might imagine that if there were a god, he might provide his faithful followers with a spell checker. Even less charming is the author's exegesis of Genesis: "God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah by fire, and at our present stage of knowledge of the results of sodomy, it requires very little assumption to imagine why--they were rotten with AIDS." The true horror, of course, is the association of this rot and that of Tas-Alert with the formation of young people--and this with the cynical collusion of fairly high-ranking government officials. All queers, though, should be able to take some pride in the measured, poised, logical, and corageous responses of the local leadership. After all, this is what they're up against (from a recent letter to the editor--and there's one like this almost every day of the week): When I read the pamphlet from Labor party senators expressing sympathy for the sodomists in this state, I was appalled. For a few years, I have been a swinging voter [I'm sure you have, honey, I'm sure you have], but this latest effort makes one wonder--reluctantly I will again vote liberal in both arenas. During World War II I spent four years in the Army and gained some knowledge of homosexuals and their noxious habits [Sam Nunn, take note]. It seems appropriate to ask why the brochure whas not headed "the human rights of Tasmanians who are sodomists." For some obscure reason homosexuals and their sympathizers seem to avoid the word "sodomists." --I think you mean "sodomite," mate.