Gays in the Media

Here it is: my speech delivered at the Brisbane Writers Festival on Oct 5. I'd estimate it was an 80% straight audience.

It ain't brilliant. I found it hard to start. In the end I just got drunk over three nights and poured it out -- basically "tellin' it like it is". It went over very well. There are a few Australianisms. If you need clarification, just ask.

LGBT means lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
Kylie Minogue is an Australian singer
Target is a cheap-ish chain store. It is an ironic affectation to pronounce it "tar-jay" as if it is a French boutique.

here goes:

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we stand today, and offer my own apology for the generations of displacement and mistreatment they have suffered since white settlement.

Though I live life openly as a gay man, I don’t really conform to many of the current stereotypes.

I’ve got a goatee -- granted -- but it’s often wild and bushy only rarely clipped to perfection. And as you can see, the closest I’ve come to chiselled pecs and a six pack for many a year are man-boobs and a barrel-belly.

And while I sometimes secretly aspire to owning a collection of Armani suits, lately I’ve been wondering if I’m the shortest man ever to buy from the big men’s section at Tar-jay.

I’ve never worshipped at the altar of Kylie Minogue. I suspect that if I was stranded on a desert island with a Walkman and just a Kylie CD to remind me of humanity, chances are pretty good I’d drown myself (Nothing personal Kylie).

I didn’t ‘come out’ until I was 28 after a decade playing in local alternative rock bands. For me, music in gay venues was abominable – and still is. I concur with Quentin Crisp, who quipped: “A lifetime of listening to disco is far too high a price to pay for one’s sexual orientation.”

Now, I don’t tell you these things to come out as a music snob or to take some perverse pride in my low income and lack of physical fitness, I do it to demonstrate that like any group of people, we gay folk are a diverse lot. We hold diverse opinions, and enjoy diverse cultural artefacts. We are found in all social strata. We exist and belong everywhere.

As a journalist and now editor of a gay newspaper, I have met gay lawyers, gay politicians, gay doctors, gay rugby footy players, gay priests, gay parents, gay plumbers, gay con merchants and petty crims. Some are as butch as Bruce Willis, others as nelly as Jeannie Little. Some are monogamous, some have prolific sex lives, some are celibate; some of us are left-wingers, some right-wingers, and there’s plenty of us who’ve only ever read a newspaper for the sports pages.

Name a type of people and we are there because we have just as much depth of character and range of interests as any other -- a diverse AND essential part of the human family.

Unfortunately, too few people see the reality of this diversity, and the failure to represent this diversity in literature, journalism, film and television can and does have tragic consequences. For young gay people who must deal with the isolation caused by homophobia in the family, in the schoolground and in the media it can be lethal.

Despite limited advances brought by the new liberalism of the past thirty years, gay people are still taught from an early age to hide themselves and take on what can seem a heavy burden alone.

Even some of the most liberal of parents, when first confronted by the truth about their son or daughter’s homosexuality, will first say “where did I go wrong?” – such is the strength of homophobia and the strength of the misplaced belief that homosexuality is a choice.

In fact, homophobia is a central force in every LGBT person’s life – very much like an emotional wound. This is not to suggest all gay people are condemned to a life of victimhood. But whether it fester, scar or heal beautifully, the wound of homophobia is an integral part of any attempt to understand gay people and to create realistic gay characters.

There are many ways in which individuals deal with homophobia: Accepting it (we call it ‘internalised homophobia’) tends to manifest itself in unhealthy ways such as depression, alcoholism, workaholism, isolation and celibacy, loveless marriages, so-called conversion programs and even suicide.

Rejecting homophobia gives us the option to cut the crap, face the issues, educate ourselves, make peace with our Gods or Goddesses, integrate our sexuality into our lives and get on with it.

Most of us live our lives in the spaces between these two paths, and the longer it takes the individual to come to terms with their sexuality, the harder it can be for them to address the unhealthy behaviours they learnt whilst in hiding.

Only now are we beginning to see in mainstream films and to a lesser extent on television, the kind of diversity of gay characters that can help break down the isolation.

We have moved on from the days when we were presented only as evil murderers, sick villains or tragic suicides. And we are starting to move beyond the brief “Sidney Poitier” phase with its ennobling, glowingly positive, but ultimately asexual representations.

I think the most genuinely queer-inclusive attempts in the current mainstream cinema are those in which a character’s homosexuality is a simple fact. It is not his or her only defining characteristic and it neither impedes nor assists their place in the story. Kathy Bates’s smart, strong-willed lesbian in Primary Colors and Paul Reubens’s hip queer drug dealer in Blow are not added for spice; they’re essential, interesting characters that also happen to be gay.

While no fiction can ever identically reflect the real-life experiences of a community as diverse as ours, our need for cultural mirrors is inevitable and only human, and I would ask those of you here today who write fiction to get to know gay people; to talk to us in some depth about our lives, and endeavour to include realistic gay characters in your work.

In journalism, the representation of gay people is not quite as rosy.

As part of my job I read a lot of newspapers from across the country and around the world, and it’s not hard to see that LGBT people are marginalised to the point of near-invisibility in mainstream newspapers.

We have our glitzy showbiz celebrities like Elton and Ellen, but for the most part, we are made invisible in feature stories and our significant relationships are purged from obituaries.

Rarely are we mentioned in the news pages as anything other than some imagined THREAT to heterosexuals, whether it be to their God, their marriages or to their children – and most cruelly and unfairly in the case of the ongoing lesbian parenting debate, not only their children, but even our own.

Those pushing the line that LGBTs are a threat rarely ever spell out what this threat is, and journalists rarely push them to explain. If pushed, I suspect their answers will invariably reveal a shallow, unscientific and sometimes hysterically fearful understanding of human sexuality.

I’ve yet to see a news story in which a journalist appears to have asked those who oppose recognising gay relationships to explain exactly how such legal recognition would in any way diminish heterosexual marriage?

Surely, if marriage really does assist couples to build stable, long-term relationships why deny it to us? Is it to create a self-fulfilling prophecy – to ensure same sex relationships fail? Or do those that push this line believe that despite the weight of science and the testimony of the overwhelming majority of LGBTs that being gay is not a choice, the world will ‘turn gay’ unless discrimination continues to be enshrined in law?

Why not ask them to produce studies which back their view that children are disadvantaged if raised by same –sex couples? If it is anything like the material presented to the recent Senate Inquiry, you will find plenty from church-run ‘think tanks’, but little that has stood up to the scrutiny of independent peer-reviewed academic journals.

It’s not as if same-sex parenting is anything new, but the issue is presented in both news and op-ed columns weighed down by an illogical fear that unless we stop lesbians having babies, the children raised by same sex parents will become gay or more hysterically, that sooner or later women will abandon men and a new breed of lesbian superwoman will rule the globe.

It’s nonsense.

Surely the dominance of heterosexuality is not as fragile as homophobes seem to fear. I can’t help but wonder if they fear their own sexuality is so fragile? Or, are they, perhaps in good faith, simply mouthing falsehoods, which repeated often enough and left unchallenged, take on the sheen of truth.

Unfortunately, the limitations of objective news-writing – with its duelling spokesperson convention -- means that the issues that greatly affect standards of living for LGBT people are rarely ever afforded the in-depth attention they deserve.

We rarely appear in the Opinion pages at all unless we’re copping a savaging from the most poisonous of culture warriors: the Miranda Devines, Angela Shanahan’s and Piers Ackerman’s who dominate the field.

Although WE are the experts on the issues that effect us, gay writers, activists or public figures are rarely asked to write opinion pieces on gay-related issues, although The Age and Sydney Morning Herald do so occasionally. By comparison our own Courier-Mail lags behind.

The failure of the mainstream press to accurately represent LGBT people and our issues also demonstrates the continuing need for an independent gay press which endeavours to examine and address LGBT issues; which endeavours to reflect our diversity; which serves as a forum for queer voices; and which advocates and consolidates the quest for equal rights before the law. This is especially so in Queensland, which is now lagging far behind every other state in implementing gay law reform.

Though we are far from perfect, Queensland Pride remains committed to these responsibilities. It would be far easier and perhaps more lucrative financially for us to avoid the controversies, to allow advertorial to replace issues-based news and opinion, to remove all lesbian content because they are alleged to be a poorer, less lucrative demographic, to ignore trannies, to never mention HIV/AIDS, and to pretend all gay people are YUPPIES and DINKS rolling in expendable pink dollars.

But by doing so, we too would be selling out the diversity of LGBT people in favour of a shallow illusion and ultimately, to abandon our belief that if LGBT people are to have hope of overcoming the force of homophobia, we must face the challenge posed by own diversity and work together as a community, and not a “lucrative niche market” alone.

Thank you