YObama!

By Lawrence Gibbons

Years from now, people will recount where they were back on Wednesday, November 5th, just after midnight Chicago-time, when President Elect Barak Obama delivered his instantly immortal ‘Yes We Can’ victory speech from behind bullet proof glass, before a live audience of 125,000 people in Grant Park. Me, I was in a bar up on Oxford Street, partying with my fellow registered Party members at the the Democrats Abroad victory celebration. ‘If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.’ The crowd went wild. Jesse Jackson wept up on a moviescreen sized TV, Oprah grinned and I raised my fist in solidarity. ‘It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight” The Oxford Street crowd grew wilder and the very French bubbly poured amongst my friends. After the Howard Years and the Bush fiasco, that night we earned the right to party.
And then the newscaster on CNBC interrupted celebrations to announce that voters in California looked set to pass a constitutional referendum — banning same sex marriages from San Francisco to West Hollywood. Despite bipartisan pleas from Obama and California’s own Republican Governator Arnie Schwartzenegger, the anti gay referendum looked set to pass. Funded by the historically polygamist Mormon (as opposed to the More Men) religion, Proposition 8 ammended the State Constition so that same sex couples would be prevented from tying the knot. Passed by a razor thin majority of voters, the irony was that religiously conservative black Obama voters turned out in record numbers and overwhelmingly denied same sex couples the very right that would have been denied to Barak Obama’s mixed race parents in 16 states until 1967: the right to obtain a valid marriage certificate.
Lets hope they don’t get away with it. Less than six months ago, California’s Supreme Court overturned an earlier voter referendum which banned gay marriages, thus allowing eighteen thousand same sex couples to legally wed. Just one day after state voters attempted to annul those contracts, six couples, the City of San Francisco and California’s State Attorney General Jerry Brown all lodged appeals to the State Supreme Court seeking to overturn Prop 8.
When will the Australian Labor Party follow suit’ Along with Uganda, Lithuania, Honduras and a group of redneck American states, Australia’s constitution bans gay marriages. In 2004, in the lead up to the federal election, the ALP entered into an unholy union with the Liberal Party to outlaw gay marriages. Despite the party’s subsequent efforts to eliminate legal discrimination against gay people, the governing Labor Party still refuses to legalise gay marriage or to recognise same sex marriage certificates that have been issued in a number of European and American states, including the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Canada, Massachussets and now Connecticut, whose Supreme Court allowed its gay citizens the right to connect just weeks before the California vote.
Discrimination against gay men blatantly continues here in Australia. As the Sydney Star Observer reported, up on Oxford Street, I recently confronted two blonde backpackers who were collecting money for the Australian Red Cross, a Christian charity that openly discriminates against gay men. In 2004 a brave young Tasmanian named Michael Cain brought a four year long suit against the Red Cross after the organisation refused to accept his blood because he had been in a gay relationship for two years. His suit disputes claims by the Australian Red Cross that gay men are automatically at risk of contracting HIV, even if they are in a commited long term relationship. Final arguments in his case were made on November 17th before the Tasmanian Discrimition Tribunal, who could take up to a year to hand down its judgement. What the Red Cross was doing asking gay men to donate money on Oxford Street when their organisation will not allow them to donate blood was the question on my lips when I asked Red Cross collectors to find a more suitable location to proselitise.
Here in Australia gay men are damned if they try to say I do and damned if they don’t have any interest in living in a traditional monogomous relationship. Rachel Evans, the spokesperson for Community Against Anti Homophobia accuses police of targeting gays in public toilets and parks here in Sydney. Participants are often closeted gay men, who have not come to terms with their sexual identity and are particularly vulnerable to police harrasment and intimidation. According to Evans, ” police are using safe sex equipment (condoms and lube) as evidence of intent to engage in public sex; (CAAH) is concerned that beat users may stop carrying condoms altogether and engage in risky sexual behaviour.’ By contrast, last month a British police report recommended that police turn a blind eye to consenting adults having sex in public places. Deputy Chief Constable Michael Cunningham stated, “‘it is not for the police to take the role of moral arbiter.’ The report warned that people who have been arrested or otherwise intimidated by police sometimes engage in acts of suicide and self harm. In Amsterdam, police are instructed not to interrupt gay sex in public parks or toilets as long as participants are not creating an actual nuisance. A police report released in the Netherlands earlier this year suggested that Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht also tolerate gay cruising in public parks. The State Police and their political masters in the ALP could learn a thing or two about tolerance from the Dutch.