{"id":1071,"date":"2008-03-09T03:09:45","date_gmt":"2008-03-08T17:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=1071"},"modified":"2008-03-09T03:09:45","modified_gmt":"2008-03-08T17:09:45","slug":"what-is-this-gay-community-shit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=1071","title":{"rendered":"What is this gay community shit?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On June 24, 1978 in Sydney, a thousand or so people gathered to attend the first Gay Mardi Gras, held on the ninth anniversary of Stonewall, declared a day of international gay solidarity. The day’s events consisted of a rally and march at Sydney Town Hall in the morning, a public meeting at Paddington Town Hall in the afternoon, and a festival that night at Taylor Square. Despite having obtained a permit to hold a rally in the streets, police decided to join in the celebrations by attacking those attending that night’s party, which in turn became a protest over such repressive acts. Or as Aysha Leo and Will Temple (Is it time to say sorry?<\/a>, NEWS.com.au, February 29, 2008) put it:<\/p>\n

The Mardi Gras had started as a legal pride parade down Sydney\u2019s Oxford St for a few hundred people in commemoration of the Stonewall riots that marked the start of the fight for gay liberation in the US a decade earlier. But when the marchers arrived at Hyde Park at the bottom of the street police confiscated the sound system. The gathering, which was now numbered about 2000, started marching towards neighbouring Kings Cross until police blocked two ends of the main thoroughfare – Darlinghurst Rd – and started arresting those involved. 53 marchers \u2013 including Peter Murphy \u2013 were charged variously with being in an illegal procession, hindering police and resisting police from the night of June 24, 1978.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

gaymatchmaker paid tribute to the boys and grrls of ’78, but it appears that politics is about appearances, and the situation facing a Pakistani man, Ali Humayun<\/a>, is apparently “too political” for the hundreds of thousands of people who now watch the passing parade in Sydney each year. Sadly, because he has come out as a queer man, Ali, who is currently imprisoned in Villawood<\/a>, faces being murdered by members of his own family should he be deported to Pakistan. Given the recent change in Federal Government, one might expect a change in policy with regards the imprisonment of asylum seekers, but as yet, despite the official abandonment (February 8, 2008<\/a>) of the $300 million<\/a> ‘Pacific Solution’, the HoWARd Government’s decision to excise<\/a> islands from Australia’s territory remains seemingly in place, as well as the policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers — first introduced, of course, by the previous ALP Government.<\/p>\n