HOMOPHOBIA CONTINUES UNABATED IN AFL AND OTHER CODES IN AUSTRALIA

This article appeared in the Fairfax media over the weekend of 19 February 2012.

Rob Mitchell tells how there is no change in homophobia in footy games in Australia after years and years of trying to get changes!

AFL needs to man up on homophobia issue
Rob Mitchell
February 19, 2012

Andrew Demetriou: says the AFL is educating players on gay issues. Photo: Paul Rovere

THE head of the AFL, Andrew Demetriou, ought to take his colleague Jeff Kennett out to lunch.

Along with his credit card, Mr Demetriou might want to take a notepad. If events this week are any guide, he could learn a lot from Mr Kennett.

Earlier this week, Mr Kennett was on radio talking about depression. As chairman of the national anti-depression outfit beyondblue, and after a long stint as president of the Hawthorn Football Club, he is adept at using his high media profile to destigmatise depression and suicide.

The interview took an unexpected turn. While talking about depression in professional footballers, Mr Kennett went on to say that approximately 5 per cent of professional AFL footballers are gay, and the fact that none of them were publicly ''out'' was a major cause for concern because having to hide their sexual orientation - particularly in the goldfish bowl of AFL football - was highly detrimental to their mental health.

Mr Kennett's track record with gay issues has been troubled - he ended up at loggerheads with his previous chief executive, Dawn O'Neil, over comments about gay parenting - but his 5 per cent figure is a reasonable assumption. Research undertaken by beyondblue shows that in men aged 25 and under, some 10 per cent will identify as same-sex attracted. Given that half of the 800-odd professional AFL footballers are aged under 25, that would suggest about 40 players are gay in that age group alone. The research also tells us AFL is regarded as the most homophobic of all the football codes.

Naturally, Mr Kennett's comments were later put to Andrew Demetriou, who, as luck would have it, was already well and truly in diversity mode at a function spruiking the AFL's credentials in respect towards women.

Mr Demetriou assured the media that the AFL was ''ahead of the game'' when it came to ensuring the code was inclusive of gay men, not only because discrimination based on sexual orientation was now included in the AFL anti-vilification code, but also due to the fact that all footballers have seen a video of gay Olympic swimmer Daniel Kowalski talking about his own experience in coming out.

Who's he trying to kid? The cold hard reality is that the AFL has as little to do with the gay community as it possibly can. The rule change that Mr Demetriou referred to only occurred after some 18 months of intensive lobbying by the gay community, and when finally sexual orientation was included in the anti-vilification section of the AFL rules, it was 10 years after the same provision was placed in Victoria's Equal Opportunity Act.

And while it's useful for footballers to watch a video on what it is like to be an elite gay swimmer, surely that pulls up well short of the kind of education we can reasonably expect the AFL to give its players.

The AFL has also conveniently forgotten to mention that it is paid more than $400,000 a year from the Australian Sports Commission to make the code more inclusive.

Truth is, there are no ''out'' gay AFL footballers because they refuse to self-identify in an environment that they perceive to be toxic. The responsibility for this rests squarely on the shoulders of the administrators. Not the players. Not the fans. Not the umpires. Not the coaches.

The drivel that is put forward from the AFL about coming out being ''a personal choice'' is precisely that. For the AFL to say that all their gay players are ''choosing'' to remain in the closet is ridiculous.

It beggars belief that a gay AFL footballer would not want his partner to be involved in events like the Brownlows. Not because they are looking to be activists, but because they want to be able to be honest with everyone around them. Why does the AFL not get that?

Further, the AFL as administrators refuse to make any effort to help their gay players, not because they lack the resources - the AFL earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year and pays no income tax - but simply because they don't want to. And they don't want to because, despite the lip service, diversity and inclusion is not regarded as core business.

If the AFL wanted to, it could transform the issue of homophobia in football in a heartbeat. When the AFL Players Association ran a ground-breaking project for the International Day Against Homophobia two years ago, the AFL took notice and was getting ready to run a diversity round to highlight the value of inclusion in sport. Then along came Jason Akermanis with his infamous ''Stay in the closet'' newspaper column, and the wheels fell off. As a result, the AFL decided, again, to put gay in the too-hard basket.

While the AFL refuses to address the issue of homophobia in the code, it's never going to get any better. It's not an unreasonable expectation for the AFL to do equality equally. Now would be a good time to start.

Rob Mitchell is a member of the Victorian Department of Sport governance and inclusion project.

MICHELLE GRATTAN DAMAGES GILLARD YET AGAIN!

Michell Grattan is a journalist of long standing, but, as with so many other people of uncertain age, they reach a situation where their politics take a turn to the right with disastrous consequences, particularly if they are journalists and/or politicians.

Julia Gillard is not my favourite politican, and the Australia Labor Party (sic) is not my favourite political party, but to her credit Gillard has stood firm against the non-stop negativity of the attacks by Abbott and his gang and Grattan and her gang, and to date she has actually had a few political breakthroughs.

It may not occur to Grattan, or perhaps she hopes her attacks on Gillard will bring it about, but does she realise that with each of her assaults she brings Tony Abbott closer to becoming the next Australian prime minister.

It is to be hoped that the Coalition will wake up to the fact that Abbott is actually one of their biggest liabilities and that without him they may actually achieve much better electoral results., but one has to hope that this is just a nightmare scenario from which we will all wake up one day and we achieve a more democratic parliament thatn the one we currently have.

HOMOSEXUALITY IS THE NEW COMMUNISM IN THE USA!

Have you noticed how homosexuality has taken over as the most hated feature in political life in the USA, particularly for the conservative parties who are even to the right of the Democrats and its allies.

Hate pours out of the utterances of all those who would become the next president of the United States, and althought there have been significant advances for gay, lesbian, transgender and HIV/AIDS (GLTH) communities in that country, homophobic hatred is rampant.

More and more young people are bullied at schools with the authorities closing a blind eye to what is going on and these young people between the ages of 12 to 20 being driven to suicide under frightful circumstances.

Equality is still a long way off and we have a great deal more work to do.

The situation is just as bad for older people in the GLTH communities who are driven back into the closet when they have to enter aged care or hospitalisation and suicide becomes an option for many of them who are lonely, ill, poor and desperate.

The situation will become much worse with the election of a right-wing reactionary conservative. religious bigot to the White House.

The challenges are enormous, but "La Luta Continua" or words to that effect!

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN PASSES HIS USE-BY DATE!

There comes a time when one discovers that those one thought were sound in their political analyses actually let one down completely by losing the plot and in effect shouting over the top of those trying to have rational discussions with them.

A few days ago I received my usual daily email from Mondoweiss which always has some very intersting items listed.

This particular one had a video of Norman Fikelstein doing an "interview" with a man called Frank, I believe. The "interview" lasted half an hour and was full of Finkelstein trying to talk down the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as being related to a cult.

This is not only insulting but it is also false. Whatever ultimately brought down the South African apartheid regime, BDS was a major contributor and helped in a major way to bring to the world's attentions the brutality and evil of the police state regime in South Africa.

The modern BDS movement, started by a Palestinian group which saw that the armed struggle against the brutality of Apartheid Israel's ongoing attacks on Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem was not making sufficient progress and needed another focus to help the world realise the evils of the Israeli zionist regime.

There have been some significant achievements in the few years during which the campaign has been running, with some large companies and orgnisations leaving Israel and divesting from the state.

Finkelstin suddenly argues about the lawfulness of Israel's right to exist as a state and defends a great deal of the zionist state's abuses of Palestine and its indigenous inhabitants and states that there is no possibility of a one-state solution, nor a two-state solution and retain the viability of the Jewish "democratic" state of Israel.

It is not possible for Israel to be Jewish and democratic because a Jewish state would turn the country into a theocracy, a poit which it is rapidly reaching with an influx during the last 20 to 30 years of fanatical religious Jews from the USA. Most of these are now living in settlements stolen from the Palestinians who are daily treated to appalling conditions in thioe own country by the colonisers.

The origins of the BDS movement against South Africa are fascinating.

The paragraph detailing the story comes from:

No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000 Edited by William Minter,
Gail Hovey, and Charles Cobb Jr.
Published by Africa World Press.

"The Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement (PRWM), in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was founded by workers at Polaroid in 1970 who discovered that Polaroid film was being used for the pass system in South Africa. The two key activists were Ken Williams and Caroline Hunter, and their protest gained national prominence."

Finkelstein should be aware, with his intellectual ability and academic experience that mass movements do not happen overnight and a great deal of grassroots activism takes place before issues become public and attract the attention of masses of people world-wide.

IF BDS started in 1970 in the USA, it took until 1990, 40 years later, for the dramatic collapse of the South African apartheid regime and even then another 4 years passed before South Africa's first ever democratic elections were held for all its citizens, black, white and everything in between.

If Finkelstein believes in Israel as a viable demacratic entity he should leave the comforts of the USA and move to live there to defend his Jewish homeland. Reality might then hit him in the face and he might wake from his current stupor!

The interview on video is insulting and degrading to the person doing the interview and Finkelstein needs to make a public apology to him.

GILLARD'S ATTACKERS DOING THE WRONG THINGS FOR THE WRONG REASONS!

I am not a supporter of Julia Gillard. She represents a political party which has lost its way, is allied to the United States of America for all the wrong reasons, and is guilty of everything which is wrong with the Liberal/National Coalition.

Journalists from Michelle Grattan onwards on all sides of the so-called political spectrum are attacking Gillard in ways which would be unthinkable if Gillard was a male.

Gillard was put in the position she is in by a party which has lost its way, and is thus subject to vituperation from so-called left, right, centre and all shades between.

The personal attacks are unwarranted because they are none of them giving reasons why she is being attacked and the so-called elephant in the room is the media's fondness for saying Rudd is in the wings waiting for the next opportunity to challenge for the leadership once more.

This is the media's and Opposition's attempts to keep up the attack in the hope of destabilising an already very fragile coalition which is holding together by the skin of its teeth.

It is possible that all this negative assault will have a reverse effect and backfire on all those who are gearing up for an Abbott win at the next election.

Even for those on the Coalition side of politics, the idea of Abbott as the next prime minister of Australia must be a prospect too horrifying to contemplate.

Gillard should be attacked for the Australian Labor Party's policies on practically everything from asylum seekers to uranium, but not for what she looks like, how she sounds, what clothes she wears and other personal nonsenses which Rudd, Howard, Keating and Hawke were never subjected to.

If our governments are a reflection of the population at large, then once again, as Alan Paton could have said in an Australian context, "Cry the beloved country"!

If you think we have been subjected to a media beat-up over the events of invasion day and a political beat-up by the Opposition, taking place over a period of the last 18 months, then you are right.

A beat-up which is a waste of time, money and resources, which could be better spent on fixing the economy and the policies which are failing this country so lamentably!

The letters below were in the Sunday Age on 12 February 2012 in response to the hypercritical - or should that be hypocritical - Julia Gillard articles in the Sunday Age on 5 February 2012.

Shallow approach

THE article ''Julia Gillard is the least impressive prime minister since Billy McMahon. Discuss'' (5/2), illustrates the obsession we have with image, appearance and impressions rather than achievements, accomplishments and outcomes.

We use the ''image'' of a person and how we ''feel'' about them as a measure of their success or capacity to deal with problems (in this case the prime minister). This indicates a serious misconception about what is needed to solve current problems at home and abroad. Having the ''right look'' does not guarantee the job is done. Rather, employing an intellect and applying unfashionable scientific approaches such as analysing, measuring, calculating and quantifying are what will solve problems.

LEIGH ACKLAND, Deepdene

Negativity triumphs

LAST week's front-page story by Misha Schubert deliberately gives the impression that Julia Gillard is ineffective and out of touch. Like Michael Duffy and Michelle Grattan, Schubert has continued the negative reporting which seems designed to undermine our elected government … When will you start reviewing and contrasting opposition policy rather than just playing the man? The tall poppy syndrome is alive and well. What a pity our first female prime minister has to endure the media's wish to see her dragged down.

BILL NEALE, Ferntree Gully

Ragbag of opinions

THE article on Julia Gillard was dismaying for a national newspaper. Made up of a ragbag of opinions masquerading as measured argument, it maintains the male Australian tradition of breaking on the wheel those women who dare to aspire to high office. Robert Manne's statement about the need for the Prime Minister to create ''a narrative compellingly told about how Australia should chart its course'' harks back to another era.

Unsurprisingly, Tony Abbott, that ''ordinary'' man (Extra, 29/1), applies Manne's dictum to promote his own depleted and deprived ''narrative'' for Australia. Gillard's leadership, in fact, signifies a shift into a new era of more mature politics, one in which flexibility and negotiation have already achieved some remarkable outcomes. This is a sign of her political strength, not weakness.

RUTH SCHMIDT NEVEN, Camberwell

Open Letter to LGBTIQ Communities and Allies on the Israeli Occupation of Palestine

An Open Letter to LGBTIQ Communities and Allies on the Israeli Occupation of Palestine - received from Mondoweiss on 28 JANUARY 2012

We are a diverse group of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and trans activists, academics, artists, and cultural workers from the United States who participated in a solidarity tour in the West Bank of Palestine and Israel from January 7-13, 2012.

What we witnessed was devastating and created a sense of urgency around doing our part to end this occupation and share our experience across a broad cross-section of the LGBTIQ community. We saw with our own eyes the walls—literally and metaphorically—separating villages, families and land. From this, we gained a profound appreciation for how deeply embedded and far reaching this occupation is through every aspect of Palestinian daily life.

So too, we gained new insights into how Israeli civil society is profoundly affected by the dehumanizing effects of Israeli state policy toward Palestinians in Israel and in the West Bank. We were moved by the immense struggle being waged by some Israelis in resistance to state policies that dehumanize and deny the human rights of Palestinians.

We ended our trip in solidarity with Palestinian and Israeli people struggling to end the occupation of Palestine, and working for Palestinian independence and self-sovereignty.

Among the things we saw were:

* the 760 km (470 mi) separation wall (jidar) partitioning and imprisoning the Palestinian people;

* how the wall’s placement works to confiscate large swaths of Palestinian land, splits villages and families in two, impedes Palestinians from working their agricultural land, and in many cases does not advance the ostensible security interests of Israel;

* a segregated road system (one set of roads for cars with Israeli plates, and another much inferior one for cars with Palestinian plates) throughout the West Bank, constructed by the Israeli state and enforced by the Israeli army; these roads ease Israeli travel to and from illegal settlements in the West Bank and severely impede Palestinian travel between villages, to agricultural land, and throughout a territory which is and has been their homeland;

* a system of permits (identification cards) that limits the travel of Palestinian people and functionally imprisons them, separating them from family, health care, jobs and other necessities;

* militarized checkpoints with barbed wire and soldiers armed with automatic rifles and the humiliation and harassment the Palestinian people experience daily in order to travel from one place to another;

* the reconfiguration of maps to render invisible Palestinian villages/homelands;

* harmful living conditions created and enforced by Israeli law and policy such as limited access to water and electricity in many Palestinian homes;

* violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, and the ongoing growth of illegal settlements facilitated by the Israeli military;

* homelessness as a result of the razing of Palestinian homes by the Israeli state;

* home invasions, tear gas attacks, “skunk water” attacks, and the arrest of Palestinian children by the Israeli military as part of ongoing harassment designed to force Palestinian villagers to give up their land;

While travel restrictions prevented us from directly witnessing the state of things in the Gaza Strip, we believe the blockade of the Gaza Strip has produced a humanitarian crisis of monumental proportion.

Our time together in Palestine has led us to understand that we have a responsibility to share with our US based LGBTIQ communities what we saw and heard so that we can do more together to end this occupation. In that spirit, we offer the following summary points in solidarity with the Palestinian people:

The liberation of the Palestinian people from the project of Israeli occupation is the foremost goal of the Palestinian people and we fully support this aim. We also understand that liberation from this form of colonization and apartheid goes hand in hand with the liberation of queer Palestinians from the project of global heterosexism.

We call out and reject the state of Israel’s practice of pinkwashing, that is, a well-funded, cynical publicity campaign marketing a purportedly gay-friendly Israel to an international audience so as to distract attention from the devastating human rights abuses it commits on a daily basis against the Palestinian people. Key to Israel’s pinkwashing campaign is the manipulative and false labeling of Israeli culture as gay-friendly and Palestinian culture as homophobic. It is our view that comparisons of this sort are both inaccurate – homophobia and transphobia are to be found throughout Palestinian and Israeli society – and that this is beside the point: Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine cannot be somehow justified or excused by its purportedly tolerant treatment of some sectors of its own population. We stand in solidarity with Palestinian queer organizations like Al Qaws and Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (PQBDS) whose work continues to impact queer Palestinians and all Palestinians. (http://www.alqaws.org, http://www.pqbds.com/)

We urge LGBTIQ individuals and communities to resist replicating the practice of pinkwashing that insists on elevating the sexual freedom of Palestinian people over their economic, environmental, social, and psychological freedom. Like the Palestinian activists we met, we view heterosexism and sexism as colonial projects and, therefore, see both as interrelated and interconnected regimes that must end.

We stand in solidarity with queer Palestinian activists who are working to end the occupation, and also with Israeli activists, both queer and others, who are resisting the occupation that is being maintained and extended in their name.

We name the complicity of the United States in this human rights catastrophe and call on our government to end its participation in an unjust regime that places it and us on the wrong side of peace and justice.

We support efforts on the part of Palestinians to achieve full self-determination, such as building an international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement which calls for the fulfillment of three fundamental demands:

(http://www.bdsmovement.net/call)

The end of the Occupation and the dismantling of the Wall (jidar).

The right of return for displaced Palestinians.

The recognition and restoration of the equal rights of citizenship for Israeli citizens of Palestinian descent.

We call upon all of our academic and activist colleagues in the US and elsewhere to join us by supporting all Palestinian efforts that center these three demands and by working to end US financial support, at $8.2 million daily, for the Israeli state and its occupation.

Signed, January 25, 2012:

Katherine Franke Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Director, Center for Gender & Sexuality Law, Columbia University; Board Member Center for Constitutional Rights

Barbara Hammer Filmmaker, Faculty at European Graduate School

Tom Léger Editor, PrettyQueer.com

Darnell L. Moore writer and activist

Vani Natarajan Humanities and Area Studies Librarian, Barnard College

Pauline Park Chair, New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)

Jasbir K. Puar Rutgers University, Board Member Audre Lorde Project

Roya Rastegar Independent artist and scholar

Dean Spade Assistant Professor, Seattle University School of Law and Collective Member, Sylvia Rivera Law Project

Kendall Thomas Nash Professor of Law, Columbia University

Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz intersections/intersecciones consulting

Juliet Widoff, MD Callen-Lorde Community Health Center

All organizational affiliations are listed for identification purposes only and in no way indicate a position taken by such organizations on the issues raised in this statement.

SIGN THE PETITION

I join the call to stand in solidarity with queer and other Palestinians and progressive Israelis who are working to end the occupation; oppose the state of Israel's practice of pinkwashing; and support efforts on the part of Palestinians to achieve full self-determination including building an international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Name:

E-mail address:

Affiliation (optional):

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Bob Olivarez Jr.

Anabela Rocha

Hima B.

Filmmaker & member of Park Slope Food Coop BDS

Adifah Crista Kelly Sadler

Emanuela Bianchi

New York University

Aneil Rallin

Soka University of America

Michael Connors Jackman

York University

James C Faris

University of Connecticut (Emeritus)

Susette Min

UC Davis

Sydney Campos

Jenny Peto

Kyla Schuller

Rutgers Unviersity

Amina Mama

University of California, Davis

Dana

Gayatri Gopinath

New York University

Caroline Picker

T. Berto

university of guelph

Sara Giordano

sue goldstein

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), Canada

Sasha Klein

Honna Veerkamp

Paola Bacchetta

zillah eisenstein

dept. of politics, ithaca college

Ilona Margiotta

Linda Chavez

Anette Ahmed Lebbad

Feministisk Initiativ

Norma Cardenas

Oregon State University

Herman De Ley

Ghent Univ. (Belgium)

Joan Hawkins

Stuart Comer

Marla Erlien

Elena Glasberg

NYU

Kim Ford

Michelle Dallalah

Stanford University

Rosalind Petchesky

City University of New York

Isa Kocher

Rand Carter

Kirk Grisham

Patrick Benitez

Stanford University

Michael Litwack

Brown University

patty ahn

koreans united for equality

Tyrone Boucher

Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance (AORTA)

Johanna Worley

Edwin McCready

Foley Ricchi

Shahla Khan Salter

Muslims for Progressive Values Canada

Millie Wilson

Jess Sundin

MN Anti-War Committee

patricia rodriguez

ithaca college, ny

Stephanie Gilman

Deepti Misri

University of Colorado, Boulder

Martha Wallner

Jewish Voice for Peace Bay Area Chapter

Mary Åberg

David Lloyd

Univ of Southern California

Tanya Aydelott

Mara Conroy Hughes

Rutgers University--Graduate School of Education

Ian Scott Horst

Author of The Cahokian blog; http://thecahokian.blogspot.com/; Occupy Sunset Park activist

John Dickerson

Peter Coviello

april kamilah

Judy Yu

Dana Luciano

Georgetown University

Dr. Joelle Ruby Ryan

TransGender New Hampshire

Eleanor Kilroy

Rüzgår Buschky

Lambdaistanbul LGBT Solidarity Association

Rich Wandel

Mannie De Saxe

Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne (Australia)

BRADLEY MANNING SUPPORTERS ERECT WASHINGTON DC BILLBOARD AHEAD OF PENDING TRIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

MILITARY REFERS ALL CHARGES AGAINST BRADLEY MANNING TO COURT MARTIAL - TRAIL DUE IN JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012