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You heard it here first: George Bush and John Howard get hitched!

By Steve Dow - posted Friday, 4 March 2005


This Saturday night, the 28th annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade will be staged. On the street, you will see two recurring themes: the outlawing of homosexuality in more than 80 countries, and the banning of same-sex marriage in most places worldwide, including in Australia. Some 6,000 people will be marching and dancing along Oxford Street.

There is plenty that is serious and overtly political about the parade this year, from both a local and global perspective, and much to support an argument that the parade is as important now as when it all began in 1978 amid arrests and police brutality.

Arguably, in these gay-visible, politically complacent times of Queer Eye, Queer as Folk and The L Word, when both the federal and NSW police actually march in the parade, the event is even more important, because all is not as it seems. Gays and lesbians have been caught off guard by speedy legislators in Canberra.

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For the past three months, I have deliberately stepped over the line of dispassionate, Sydney-based journalist and become one of the thousands who help voluntarily stage this event. It is impossible to be a gay or lesbian journalist in this country and remain impartial against a tide of divisive reactionary social politics that has washed ashore in this country, direct from the United States.

Next weekend (March 12), when the Mardi Gras flame has flickered, my boyfriend and I will fly to Melbourne for my younger brother’s wedding to his girlfriend. I truly wish them every happiness, and will revel in the moment.

But Mardi Gras’ mock marriages and then a real suburban marriage in quick succession force me to look at my partner of nearly six years - a period longer than my brother and his fiancée have known one another - and wonder what we did exactly to deserve the federal Marriage Legislation Amendment Act 2004, a truly unnecessary law which reinforces marriage as a union of only a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all others.

Its chief sponsor, the Prime Minister, has taken his lead from the US President, who last year flagged intentions to amend his country’s Constitution to keep same-sex couples away from the altar. At the same time, New Zealand has in recent weeks been able to introduce what we couldn’t: a civil union registration scheme for same-sex couples.

When my partner and I return to Sydney, we will be taking out a mortgage on an apartment, but will be forced to draw up wills for financial, legal and psychological protection; to prove our relationship exists. One is tempted to lobby for the introduction of a special homosexual income tax scale that slides down according to our reduced legal and human rights.

My Mardi Gras project has been to contact each of the 120-odd parade entries and floats this year to find out more about what they are doing, then write them up in the souvenir program to be distributed along the parade route.

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Last year, the Mardi Gras organisation, which in 2003 collapsed under a mountain of debt, tottered back to life on its heels, hence “New” Mardi Gras. The new organisation, from my observations, is not without some problems.

Chiefly, there is a need to unite the old community focus with the new, financially necessary corporate drive to survive. The two halves don’t quite yet make the whole. These kinks need to be ironed out to avoid the sort of hubris and division that brought “old” Mardi Gras down two years ago.

The Mardi Gras board, preoccupied with the corporate focus, temporarily took its eye off its constituent community this year. HIV fundraisers carrying their collection buckets were nearly excluded from the launch in Hyde Park four weeks ago. Gays and lesbians under 18 were ejected by police from the same event due to liquor licensing laws; an unfortunate result given the recently won battle for equalised ages of consent in NSW. It’s now legal to love your own gender at 16 in this state, but not always permissible to join in all the celebrations of that discovery, it seems.

Sometimes, though, the harshest critics of Mardi Gras are not the likes of radio presenters such as John Laws waffling about gay TV stars being "pompous little pansy prigs" and "pillow biters", referencing Queer Eye’s Carson Kressley or The Block’s Gav and Waz. Sometimes, it is members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer community themselves, with vituperative criticisms of the Mardi Gras festival in the gay press, who can be the most corrosive. Sometimes, what passes for queer community debate is shrill melodrama. One foot put wrong by New Mardi Gras and a chorus of shrill shreeks cascade down.

Elsewhere, some Mardi Gras organisers are pre-occupied with the fact some photographers and camera crews seek to obtain images of tits and bums. Yet it seems a strange argument to forbid the photographing of flesh when it is plainly on show. Trying to control the media spin too much is surely anathema to the parade’s own notion of freedom. The organisation is mostly gaining sophistication by realising the opportunity the media presents it to pitch queer political and social messages.

So the buzz is building, an army of workers and volunteers has poured in their souls - often putting their paid jobs on hold - and the creativity is as strong as ever.

The thinking behind the lead entry has been superbly realised. Eighty-four national flags, in a marching dishonour roll, will represent each of the countries that outlaw homosexuality, with punishments ranging from imprisonment to torture to death: Eighty-six, in fact, if you include Iraq and Jordan, where homosexuality is technically legal, but punishable under other laws in these countries.

But the dominant theme to emerge from the community floats this year is the freedom to marry. “George Bush” and “John Howard” will get hitched on several floats, while the Prime Minister will also be depicted as a very long snake in the official gay and lesbian marching group.

But come 7.45pm on Saturday night, one suspects Mr Howard would be welcomed with open arms if he came along and joined the fun, even if he can’t bring himself to send his best wishes year after year for the official Mardi Gras season guide.

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About the Author

Steve Dow is a Sydney journalist.

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