The Tel Aviv Party Stops Here

by Naomi Klein

The Nation

This column was first published in The Nation (www.thenation.com)
© 2009 The Nation


When I heard the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) was holding a celebratory "spotlight" on Tel Aviv, I felt ashamed of Toronto, the city where I live. I thought immediately of Mona Al Shawa, a Palestinian women's rights activist I met on a recent trip to Gaza. "We had more hope during the attacks," she told me. "At least then we believed things would change."

Al Shawa explained that while Israeli bombs rained down last December and January, Gazans were glued to their TVs. What they saw, in addition to the carnage, was a world rising up in outrage: global protests, as many as 100,000 on the streets of London, a group of Jewish women in Toronto occupying the Israeli Consulate. "People called it war crimes," Al Shawa recalled. "We felt we were not alone in the world." If Gazans could just survive, it seemed that their suffering could be the catalyst for change.

But today, Al Shawa said, that hope is a bitter memory. The international outrage has evaporated. Gaza has vanished from the news. And it seems that all those deaths-as many as 1,400-were not enough to bring justice. Indeed, Israel is refusing to cooperate even with a UN fact-finding mission headed by respected South African judge Richard Goldstone.

Last spring, while Goldstone's mission was in Gaza gathering devastating testimony, the Toronto International Film Festival was making the final selections for its Tel Aviv spotlight, timed for the Israeli city's hundredth birthday. There are many who would have us believe that there is no connection between Israel's desire to avoid scrutiny for its actions in the occupied territories and the glittering Toronto premieres. I am sure that Cameron Bailey, TIFF's co-director, believes that himself. He is wrong.

For more than a year, Israeli diplomats have been talking openly about their new strategy to counter growing global anger at Israel's defiance of international law. It's no longer enough, they argue, just to invoke Sderot every time someone raises Gaza. The task is also to change the subject to more pleasant topics: film, arts, gay rights-things that underline commonalities between Israel and places like Paris, New York and Toronto. After the Gaza attack, as the protests rose, this strategy went into high gear. "We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits," Arye Mekel, deputy director-general for cultural affairs for Israel's Foreign Ministry, told the New York Times. "This way, you show Israel's prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war." And hip, cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, which has been celebrating its centennial with Israeli-sponsored "beach parties" in New York, Vienna and Copenhagen all summer long, is the best ambassador of all.

Toronto got an early taste of this new cultural mission. A year ago, Amir Gissin, Israeli consul-general in Toronto, explained that the "Brand Israel" campaign would include, according to a report in the Canadian Jewish News, "a major Israeli presence at next year's Toronto International Film Festival, with numerous Israeli, Hollywood and Canadian entertainment luminaries on hand." Gissin pledged, "I'm confident everything we plan to do will happen." Indeed it has.

Let's be clear: no one is claiming the Israeli government is secretly running TIFF's Tel Aviv spotlight, whispering in Bailey's ear about which films to program. The point is that the festival's decision to give Israel pride of place, holding up Tel Aviv as a "young, dynamic city that, like Toronto, celebrates its diversity," matches Israel's stated propaganda goals to a T. Gal Uchovsky, one of the directors in the spotlight, is quoted in the festival catalog saying that Tel Aviv is "a haven [Israelis] can run away to when they want to forget about wars and the burdens of daily life."

Partly in response, Udi Aloni, the wonderful Israeli filmmaker whose film Local Angel premiered at TIFF, sent a video message to the festival, challenging its programmers to resist political escapism and instead "go to the places where it's hard to go." It's ironic that TIFF's Tel Aviv programming is being called a spotlight, because celebrating that city in isolation - without looking at Gaza, without looking at what is on the other side of the towering concrete walls, barbed wire and checkpoints - actually obscures far more than it illuminates. There are some wonderful Israeli films included in the program. They deserve to be shown as a regular part of the festival, liberated from this highly politicized frame.

It was in this context that a small group of filmmakers, writers and activists, of which I was a part, drafted The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration Under Occupation. It has been signed by the likes of Danny Glover, Viggo Mortensen, Howard Zinn, Alice Walker, Jane Fonda, Eve Ensler, Ken Loach and more than a thousand others. Among them is revered Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, as well as many Israeli filmmakers.

The counterattacks-spearheaded by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the extremist Jewish Defense League - have been at once predictable and inventive. The most frequently repeated claim is that the letter's signatories are censors, calling for a boycott of the festival. In fact, many of the signatories have much-anticipated films at this year's festival, and we are not boycotting it: we are objecting to the Tel Aviv spotlight portion of it. More inventive has been the assertion that by declining to celebrate Tel Aviv as just another cool metropolis, we are questioning the city's "right to exist." (The Republican actor Jon Voight even accused Jane Fonda of "aiding and abetting those who seek the destruction of Israel.") The letter does no such thing. It is, instead, a simple message of solidarity, one that says: We don't feel like partying with Israel this year. It is also a small way of saying to Mona Al Shawa and millions of other Palestinians living under occupation and siege that we have not forgotten them.

This column was first published in The Nation (www.thenation.com)
© 2009 The Nation

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, now out in paperback. Her earlier books include the international best-seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies; and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (2002).

BMJ Group blogs

Pat Sidley on South Africa after Mbeki

26 Sep, 08 | by BMJ Group
South Africa’s newly elected president, Mr Kgalemo Mothlante, acted swiftly to end an era of ugly controversy and extreme incompetence in the health ministry by appointing a highly regarded, new health minister and effectively demoting the previous one, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who implemented all of former president Thabo Mbeki’s eccentric AIDS beliefs, which has laid the foundations for the increased burden of disease that South Africa now has.
Within hours of his inauguration he appointed to cabinet, Ms Barbara Hogan, one of very few white women sentenced to a long stretch (10 years) in prison for treason by the apartheid government. Since then, she has chaired parliamentary committees on finance and on the auditor general, as a member of the ruling party, the African National Congress, has been noted not only for efficiency and intellectual astuteness, but for not being afraid to challenge the former president’s views on AIDS and make her own views known by siding with the activist groups trying to change AIDS policies.
As one of very few high-profile changes to government, her appointment signalled the urgency with which the new government needed to rid itself of what has been repeatedly referred to as destructive and divisive era of health policy and care. It has not been limited to a few disgruntled voices to criticise the previous president and his health minister - political commentators, journalists, broadcasters, trade unionists, and others have all clamoured in this recent fortnight of turmoil to be heard noting Mr Mbeki’s AIDS legacy.
It would not have gone without notice either, that on the day of the inauguration, and effective demotion of the previous health minister, yet another TV news item showed a community’s discontent with its large, but ill-equipped hospital. The Carltonville hospital, serving a large and impoverished population outside Johannesburg and close to many gold mines, had seen the deaths of three patients who had fallen out of a broken window with, it was alleged, insufficient reason for this. Protesters and patients outside the hospital complained that a doctor was available only once a month and that nurses beat patients. It is another unfortunate legacy of the Mbeki-era that patients’ complaints of failing services have fallen on deaf ears and resulted in frequent similar stories in the media. In the TB arena, viewers used to thinking of the occupants in hospitals as “patients” have become used to stories in the media, of patients who have “escaped” their quarantine facility and are being hunted down by police, like criminals.
While nobody has diminished the enormity of the task of repairing the damage to the health of all but the small white minority population, caused by apartheid, the small hints at improvements to the country’s vital statistics during the tenure of president Nelson Mandela (among them a small drop in the infant mortality rate) were rapidly undone when Mr Mbeki assumed office in 1999, announcing shortly afterwards his intention to follow up his inquiries into already well accepted AIDS science. His health minister, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, although struck off the professional register in Botswana for her theft of patients’ belongings while in exile, became his loyal hatchet-man when after several years of blunt refusals to listen to wiser counsel, Mr Mbeki was eventually forced to keep quiet on health issues.
Ironically, had he but listened to Mr Mandela in one of several meetings within the ANC on the AIDS issue and anti-retroviral therapy, and heeded a very pointed warning, Mr Mbeki may well have avoided his sacking. On that day, Mr Mandela told the meeting that it was not unprecedented within the ANC for it to depose a leader who had lost favour. He cited the one little known instance when this had happened as a way of warning the president that his party was capable of running out of patience and loyalty and sacking him too . However, it was not only the president who failed to heed the warning, but the majority of his cabinet and the national executive committee of the party. Almost nobody spoke or voted against the president at that time - but this trickle began to develop into what became a torrent of irritation when activists with doctors, trade unionists and others began using the courts and the constitution to force the government to begin providing ARV treatment. More importantly for a president who was fired in part for letting go of the ANC’s policy of alleviating poverty and creating jobs, the government found itself baring the brunt of démarches from Western embassies, deputations from multinational pharmaceutical companies, threats from prospective donors to his pet projects within Africa to withdraw their backing, and finally his own ambassadors and a large and influential grouping of black businessmen. While he became quiet, his health minister took over startling and dismaying local and foreign experts with her preference for beetroot and traditional medicines to treat AIDS.
Mr Mbeki’s legacy, from one of AIDS denialism, also incorporates after the long battle, the fact that the country now has the largest anti-retroviral programme in the world. It took subterfuge within the Treasury and certain people in the health departments to ensure that enough would be found to budget for the programme so that resources could not be used as an excuse to continue to deny ARVs to people in need of them.
However, the health system has been bleeding professionals with doctors and nurses trained in South Africa, leaving the country in droves and doctors from Tunisia and Cuba among other countries, being recruited to work in South Africa. This has left less skilled and sometimes incompetent people in the country. The same pattern has been mirrored in the health department itself with those able to get jobs leaving and those remaining not able to make headway in improving health.
At a recent conference in Cape Town of several United Nations groups on mother and child survival, it was noted that in the area of child deaths, South Africa was one of the 10 worst performing countries in the world and would not meet its Millennium Goals for the Countdown to 1015 for Maternal, Newborn and Child Survival in health.
The conference heard that at least 260 women babies and children died daily in South Africa and no progress had been made to reduce this. Making matters worse, many of these deaths were caused by inadequate care by health care workers. The figures were worse than those during apartheid.
There are few if any experts who would now jump to the defence of former president Mbeki’s health legacy, partly because so many people are part of communities robbed of young lives from AIDS and because it is likely to become as unfashionable to defend his policies as it suddenly became to defend apartheid in 1994.
Pat Sidley is a medical journalist in Johannesburg.
5 Responses to “Pat Sidley on South Africa after Mbeki”
1. Pat Sidley fundamentally misstates how South AFrica’s black government makes its decisions on issues like AIDS. As President Motlanthe said yesterday, these decisions are made by the collective,not by any individual. Sidley confuses the authorities of the President of the United States or some other strong presidential system with the South African system in which the president is basically a prime minister with a presidential title and who is accountable to the cabinet and the party caucus in the National Assembly. To personalize policy decision on Mbeki is to be fundamentally misinformed about how South AFrica’s government is run.
The new minister of health will be part of the same collective decision making system as Tshabalala-Msimang and will have to get a consensus in cabinet for any new policy. It is not even clear that the new minister wants any change in policy. But, being from the white English-speaking community, perhaps the white English speakers who viciously attacked her two black predecessors will lay off. At least for a while.
Paul
September 26th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
2. Pat is spot on in her article. Mbeki imposed his views on government leadership, which he had filled with yes-men. Ministers, such as the former deputy Minister for Health, who disagreed with him didn’t last long in their post. (But no one ever got fired for incompetence.)
Paul needs to get over his race hangups. Mbeki had the same problem hence he mistook AIDS as a race issue and refused to deal with it, with genocidal consequences for South Africa.
Ravi
September 28th, 2008 at 7:03 am
3. Paul states that decisions are made by the “collective”; in the case of the Ministry of Health, this grouping consisted of a small cabal with a bizarre agenda that attempted to politicise science. The steadfast opposition (and forced change that occurred as a result) by a growing number of incensed ordinary South African health workers and activists was one of the major factors that prevents Mbeki and Msimang being remembered as the Pol Pots of the medical world. I very much doubt if they have the insight to be grateful to them.
Andrew
October 2nd, 2008 at 1:00 am
4. Finally after years of Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s poor handling of what is an AIDS crisis in South Africa, we can finally look forward to some sensible national policy which will deliver appropriate care at the grassroot level.
Vishen
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:59 pm
5. Mr Mbeki’s legacy, from one of AIDS denialism, also incorporates after the long battle, the fact that the country now has the largest anti-retroviral programme in the world. It took subterfuge within the Treasury and certain people in the health departments to ensure that enough would be found to budget for the programme so that resources could not be used as an excuse to continue to deny ARVs to people in need of them.
———
Mobin
Promoter
Mobin
October 11th, 2008 at 12:03 am

Give us time to adjust to same-sex law reform

Same-sex law reform and pension changes are long overdue, but time is needed for transition to prevent harm for those most vulnerable, say community advocates.

From 1 July 2009, changes to Australian legislation will be enacted recognizing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) relationships in many (but not all) areas of law.

Whilst these changes are welcome, there are real concerns that negative consequences of social security reform will disproportionately impact the community’s most vulnerable members, including the elderly, people with a disability and people living with HIV or other chronic illnesses. All previous major Australian social security reforms have had transitional arrangements.

The Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO) and 23 other community health organizations have signed a statement advocating for provisions including exempting vulnerable community members from being treated as a couple, a delay of implementation until July 2010 to allow for preparation and education, and saving provisions for pensioners.
“Reprinted from Volume 7 No 2 of HIV Australia, published by the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations.”

Long past time for the government to respond to the problems they have caused so many pensioners and their partners since 1 July 2009.

NEW SOUTH WALES POLICE DO WHAT THEY KNOW BEST - HOMOPHOBIA!

It is to be expected that the NSW police would say what they did in relation to this case, but the evidence points in the other direction. In an ongoing display of homophobia, ably aided and abetted by the NSW government, the NSW Police have not yet got the message that their brutality and indifference to a minority group in the community is unacceptable, and gays, lesbians, transgenders and people living with HIV/AIDS are just as worthy of protection as any other group.

It is necessary to protest, at every opportunity, at this gross dereliction of duty on the part of governments, that it is their duty to protect those who are most vulnerable in the community. This means many minority groups. The NSW government and its police force are amongst the worst in the country and deserve censure at every opportunity, of which this brutal attack is just another symptom of what is rotten in the state of NSW.

From the Sydney Star Observer:
Bashed couple get AVO
by Ani Lamont

Blacktown Police have refuted claims homophobia played a part in the investigation of a gay bashing.

Local Area Commander Supt Mark Wright denied any mismanagement in the case of Aaron Warnecke and Greg Harland — a couple attacked with metal poles in May.

“I would strenuously deny any suggestion that this investigation has been treated differently because of the sexual preference of those injured. Nothing could be further from the truth,” Wright said.

“As is often the case in these types of investigations, we are dealing with a variety of different versions and conflicting information, which always makes an investigation more difficult.

“The most important consideration for police is to ensure our investigations and our briefs of evidence are as complete as possible. We want to get this right and not face a situation where an offender could walk free because of a rushed or incomplete investigation.

“With this in mind, my investigations manager is reviewing the investigation and seeking legal advice.”

Warnecke and Harland now have an interim AVO in place and will return to Blacktown Court for a final AVO hearing on September 14.

They said relations with the police had improved since they went public.

“Since the article, [the police] have done a whole 180,” Harland said. “Even with their phone manner, they’re really pleasant — they’re not just barking ‘give me the event number’ and making me explain the whole story over and over. They’re being helpful.”

The couple’s story saw a community outcry and offers of assistance.

The Homicide Survivors Association offered to act as a liaison between the victims and police. Former Blacktown councillor John Allen has offered to raise the issue with the council.

“This is not just about a couple of fairy guys, this is an issue of safety,” Allen told Sydney Star Observer.

“Blacktown is the largest local government area of NSW, there’s close to 300,000 people.

That then means, just on the stats, there is a very high gay and lesbian population. So to have one liaison officer based in Quakers Hill, of all places, is questionable.”

NSW Police GLBT spokeswoman Donna Adney said the state would see an increase in GLLOs.

“There is a GLLO course in November which should result in about 25 new GLLOs being trained,” she said.

NSW Police Minister Tony Kelly has been made aware of the case, although he declined to comment before the investigation was finished.

WATCHING AJN WATCH

WATCHING AJN WATCH
On Thursday 3 September 2009 I was made aware of a blog called “AJN Watch” whose purpose seems to be to ensure that the Australian Jewish News, otherwise known as the Israeli Zionist Times, keeps to the straight – as distinct from gay – and narrow – as distinct from progressive and all-embracing for the health and well-being of the Australian Jewish community.

In truth, I haven’t had such a good laugh in years! At least it would be a good laugh if, indeed, it wasn’t all too tragic. This homophobic talmud-loving claptrap is enough to cause young Jewish people having trouble with their sexuality to commit suicide, and this is NOT in the least funny!

It seems that one of their latest rantings is against Michael Barnett of Aleph and their attacks on him are such that they could be the ravings of any fascist or semi-fascist organization. Their abuse is much on the levels of what one expects from some of the journalists in the Herald Sun, the Daily Telegraph and the Australian, not to exclude some of the journalists and ex-politicians given house room in the Fairfax media.

In Nazi Germany they began by smearing people because they were Jewish and Jews were compared to vermin, rats running around the streets of Germany and as vermin, to be exterminated.

Smear is very easy to move from one sphere to another, so are these people who belong to a group of humans who were murdered because they were Jews not able to see the parallel to smearing people because they are homosexual and are therefore vermin and to be exterminated because they will contaminate Jewish society?

Is this sort of behaviour to be tolerated because it is about freedom of speech, or does it illustrate a violation of the human rights of others and should therefore be condemned?

These groups of people are the first to scream their heads off when holocaust deniers like Frederick Toben rear their nasty heads, but do the same to people who are gay because their “bible” says this is not permitted under Jewish law. There are other items in their “bible” which have do’s and don’t’s in them but as these contradict laws in modern society, they can’t be acted on. But homophobia is everybody’s game so it is to be played to the full!

The manifesto of this cowardly blogger is:

AJN Watch
Melbourne, Australia
AJN Watch observes & comments (mainly) on prejudice, misrepresentation and monopolistic abuse of power in the pages of the Australian Jewish News - especially regarding the observant community. The AJN is the main source of information to and about Australian Jewry and often aims to set the agenda and influence attitudes. It is this blog's mission to spotlight errors, expose misrepresentations and vigorously respond to items that malign or defame the Orthodox community.

No names are associated with this blog, so the brave soul or souls who run it haven’t got the courage of their convictions to expose themselves to scrutiny in the real world, yet have the cheek – chutzpah if you like – to sit in judgement on others.

The Australian Jewish News is a disgusting rag by anybody’s standards – their behaviour towards Jews who happen to be gay, lesbian, transgender or people living with HIV/AIDS has long been outrageous, and the option, which I exercised some years ago is to stop buying it.

It would be interesting to know by what standards this arrogant blog sets itself up to be judge, jury (or should that be Jewry) and executioner of the AJN when it puts itself above scrutiny by hiding with great cowardice under a blanket of anonymity!
Prejudice and misrepresentation are the hallmarks of which this blog is guilty and if they sit in judgement on others, others sit in judgement of them. They are just as bigoted and biased as any other rabid religious right-wing organization to which so many religions subscribe.

Thanks to Antony Loewenstein and Michael Brull for being the faces of those of us who do not succeed in getting into print because we are not well-known writers, or we are persona non grata with the media responsible for publishing items which are antithetical to zionism and judaism.

The following letter, published by Antony Loewenstein in his blog on Sunday 6 September 2009 appeared in the Sunday Age of the same date:

The Jewish community has no debate on Israel
Published by
Antony Loewenstein
6 September 2009

The following letter by Michael Brull, blogger for Independent Australian Jewish Voices, appears in today’s (6 September 2009) Sunday Age:

Dvir Abramovich (”There are as many Jewish opinions as there are Jews”, 30/8) quotes approvingly some Jewish declaration that ”most communal roof bodies include a wide range of opinions”. [But] all major communal Jewish organisations support almost everything the Israeli Government does. They make no pretence at including alternative views, and actively seek to smear people who hold different views.
To give some examples, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry called Norman Finkelstein and Ilan Pappe anti-Semitic in their submission to the Senate on academic freedom. The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council’s Bren Carlill said I wanted to see the West Bank ”Judenrein” because I said settlements had a relation to the lack of peace.

The [B'nai B'rith] Anti-Defamation Commission privately wrote to New Matilda, urging them to stop printing articles criticising Israel, singling out two serial offenders: Antony Loewenstein and myself. We’re both Jewish.
Age readers should not fear that disbelieving Abramovich makes them anti-Semites. It means they take anti-Semitism more seriously than those who think it’s an easy way to win arguments.

MICHAEL BRULL, Sydney

GAY, LESBIAN, TRANSGENDER SUICIDES

GAY, LESBIAN, TRANSGENDER SUICIDES
26 August 2009
The media have been very busy over the last few weeks discussing whether the television programme, which was to go to air about the suicides of 4 young people from the same Geelong school, should be released at all.

A great deal of the fuss was being made by Jeff Kennett who started an organization called “beyondblue’ to deal with depression in the community.

The trouble with all of the fuss is that nowhere is there any mention of gay, lesbian, transgender and HIV/AIDS members of the community who are more at risk of suicide in the community than their heterosexual counterparts, and that is in part because of the homophobia of Jeff Kennett and much of the media in general.

Some of the arguments about publicizing the events in Geelong run along the lines of ‘if you give these suicides publicity it may, in all likelihood, lead to copycat suicides or ideations thereof.’

It seems, on the face of evidence available at the moment, that publicity would not only be a good idea, it may bring to the public attention the fact that there are very real problems among many young people in the community and these problems need to be addressed and addressed very urgently.

It is time the attitude changed of keeping so many taboo topics ‘in the closet’! Child sexual abuse is these days given a great deal of publicity – why would it not with so many religious men and male family members and their male friends guilty of child sex abuse, usually statistically of female children?

Other topics which are still taboo in the media are issues such as euthanasia, atheism, religious right-wing homophobia and intolerance and discrimination, elder abuse by governments and nursing homes and other government and non-government agencies, and other topics which haven’t been mentioned at the moment.

Suicide is a very real problem, youth suicide is an ongoing tragedy, and the refusal of all organizations such as beyondblue and the media to include gay, lesbian and transgender young persons’ suicide is part of the ongoing tragedy in the community of the endless homophobia we face on a daily basis.

Publicity is needed and organizations should be formed to address the issues which lead young people to feel so desperate that they kill themselves. It is not surprising, up to a point, when young people see how those who govern the country and those responsible for education, training and employment are so self-serving that they fail to see the tragedy at their doorsteps.

Unfortunately the present political and economic set-ups under which we live our daily lives do not provide a great deal of inspiration to young people, and if these young people do make cries for help to people in the community, these are often not heard or are ignored – ‘they will grow out of it and grow up eventually!’

People like Jeff Kennett should be told that their ignorance of the situation is such that they should shut up and get out of the business of interfering in matters about which they know nothing, or very little. And the media should publish and be damned!

HEFFERNAN'S HYSTERICAL HOMOPHOBIC HORRORS HIT THE HEADLINES!!

The Age daily poll on Friday 14 August 2009 asked the question: "Is Bill Heffernan fit to be a Member of Parliament?" Responses to recent poll questions have been in the low hundreds, but not this time! 2473 votes were recorded, and 13% said YES while 87% said NO!
This man has been trying for many years to subvert the business of government in the federal parliament, before John Howard became Prime Minister, then during the nearly 12 years of the Howard nightmare, and now continuing during the Rudd years. Hopefully at the next election this will come to an end, at least from him!

From Doug Pollard – Freshly Doug – Thursday 13 August 2009

Gay men called “faggots” and expelled from Parliament House during Marriage Breakfast
Share
Thurs at 14:43
EQUAL LOVE

Same-sex marriage campaign

MEDIA RELEASE


13 August 2009

Two gay activists have this morning been expelled from the Great Hall in Parliament House Canberra, for challenging Labor’s Parliamentary Secretary for Social Inclusion’s stance on same-sex marriage.

The activists held placards reading “Social Inclusion means equality” at a breakfast held by religious groups to celebrate the ban on gay marriage in Australia.

Spokesperson for EQUAL LOVE, John Kloprogge said that August 13th represented a national day of shame in Australian political history.

After standing on the stage for a few minutes, religious members from the audience grabbed the men and forcefully removed them from the room.

It is understood one of the men said, “get out of here you faggots” before grabbing one activist by the neck.

“We were attending this unholy event to make a statement about the hypocrisy of the Rudd Government supporting and endorsing a ban on gay marriage”

“It is particularly galling that the Parliamentary Secretary for Social Inclusion, Senator Ursula Stephens, provided the Rudd Government’s endorsement to this gathering of anti-gay lobby groups and offered ongoing support to excluding gay and lesbian people from civil marriage.”

“This gathering in our Federal Parliament represents the biggest anti-gay protest group since the marriage ban was implemented in 2004.”

“It is important that gay and lesbian people stand up wherever they are and make a statement that we are entitled, as Australian citizens to equality under the law.”

“The expulsion from this homophobic breakfast is just another indication of how gay and lesbian people are treated as second class citizens.”

“The real marriage here is between extreme religious view and the complicity of the Rudd Labor Government in acceding to those view.”

Mr Kloprogge warned the Rudd Government that fostering a closer relationship with anti-gay groups and the Christian Right would not be welcomed by mainstream voters.

“Overwhelmingly, Australians reject anti-gay discrimination. A recent galaxy poll revealed that up to 60 per cent of all Australians support same-sex marriage”.

Same-sex marriages are legal in Canada, Sweden, Spain, Denmark, South Africa and several US states, but are being blocked in Australia by the Labor Party under pressure from religious groups.


HEFFERNAN’S HYSTERICAL HOMOPHOBIC HORRORS HIT THE HEADLINES!!

Heffernan in hot water

Senator Heffernan (top right) sends a message to Senator Wong yesterday.
Stephanie Peatling
August 14, 2009 The Age
FEISTY Liberal senator Bill Heffernan created a further headache for his friend and leader, Malcolm Turnbull, when Senator Heffernan was forced to defend comments made to gay rights activists and a rude gesture in the Senate chamber.

At an event marking National Marriage Day, organised by his wife, Senator Heffernan had an altercation with three civil union activists.
The activists' group, Equal Love, later issued a press release accusing Senator Heffernan of allegedly saying to them: ''I don't mind gay people, I just want you to stop f---ing the kids." (As this blog is not a daily "family" newspaper, this word does not need to be edited and is, in case nobody had guessed, fucking!! The Age newspaper should really try and update itself a bit more!)
Senator's 'obscene gesture'
Senator Bill Heffernan denies giving Climate Change Minister Penny Wong the finger during heated exchanges over climate change policy in the Senate.
Senator Heffernan denied using those exact words.
''Everyone knows where I stand on protecting the institution of marriage and prosecuting the rights of the gay community,'' he told The Age.
''Everyone knows that I conduct a continuous war on people who use kids as sex objects and I don't intend to change now.''
The controversy will not help Senator Heffernan's bid to shore up his preselection before next year's federal election.
It was also an unwelcome distraction for Mr Turnbull, whose inner Sydney seat of Wentworth has a large number of gay and lesbian residents. A spokesman for Mr Turnbull last night declined to comment.
Senator Heffernan's day grew worse when he was caught on camera making an obscene gesture with his finger during question time.
The Government leader in the Senate, Chris Evans, complained that Senator Heffernan had made the gesture at Climate Change Minister Penny Wong.
But Senator Heffernan said he had actually meant it for West Australian Labor senator Glenn Sterle. ''I apologise to Senator Sterle. He knows I was sending him an obscene message,'' Senator Heffernan told the Senate.
Senator Heffernan later told The Age that the pair had an ongoing friendly rivalry due to their membership of the Senate's agricultural committee.
Letters in The Age, 15 August 2009
'Informed' stance
SENATOR Bill Heffernan is, as usual, completely correct. It is a scientific fact that all homosexuals are pedophiles and want to form families only so they can prey on children. Conversely, there has never been a case of children being abused in a heterosexual family, ever. The senator is to be congratulated on his informed public stance.
Andrew McIntosh, Glenroy
Liberal senator Bill Heffernan needs to realize the institution of marriage is not under attack from the gay community but heterosexuals. With such a high divorce rate, straight people themselves are doing an excellent job of destabilizing the institution.
Alexander Liddington-Cox, Hampton

It is an embarrassment to consider that one belongs to the same species as Bill Heffernan - homo sapiens, and it would be an even greater one if one belonged to the other same species - homo sexual!!!!!