Tim Trainor spends every waking moment finding out what's all the gay rage in Perth right now. Events, culture and random bits and pieces from Perth, Australia.
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Viewing posts in the ‘The gay agenda’ category
August 9
Glass attack at The Court
First, my apologies for sparatic updates (life has been very busy recently), but I’ve been pulled back to the blog to talk about what happened at The Court last night.
The venue hasn’t been receiving any of my money in a while now, so I don’t have a first hand account to go on - if anyone else was there please shoot me an email. Apparently a girl was stabbed with a broken bottle at around midnight, and the scene was serious enough to pull in an army of police officers, firemen and security guards. Subsequently half of the venue was closed down to the public.
(Photos by LM)
An SMS from a friend:
It was as Bree called it; a crime scene. I spoke to her she seemed really worried about the bad publicity and the loss of money!
… yeah who cares if the girl survives anyway. Luckily for Bree though, the attack at The Court has been completely overshadowed in today’s news by a different glass attack just down the road at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow, which happened the night before.
In fact, this other stabbing is getting so much of the attention the State government is considering a glass ban for problem venues. More good luck as The Court gets no mention in the news article. Is Bree’s relationship with the police working to her advantage or has word simply not filtered through to the media yet?
Either way, it’s another reminder that all pub venues experience violence issues and The Court is no exception. Lets end this post with a Facebook status update that appeared on my feed this morning. Stay safe on the weekends everyone.
Stabbingat the Court, venue closed by police at around midnight…now we know why I dont go there, on another note, awesome night at Connies. Yay! Bedtime now
Witness comment via facebook:
some girls were fighting in the female toilets and one got hella bashed up. came staggering out at me bleeding all over the place. poor girl, her head was covered in blood, just dripping everywhere
July 18
Eye on parenting
Same sex parenting is clearly on the rise in WA, and has today made its way into the pages of the West Australian. New parents Leonie and Marnie Woodley and Josh O’Keefe, along with their son Quinn Silas Woodley-O’Keefe are featured on pages 2 and 23. Josh is the biological father of Quinn, who was created with an egg from Marnie and carried by surrogate Leonie. Josh will stay an active donor as Dad and help raise Quinn with his two mothers.
The feature gives great insight into the hardships, difficult decisions and determination involved same sex parenting; issues often overlooked by those who oppose, and indeed the wider general public. While trying not to drag the four of them into becoming a case study for political debate, the sharing of their journey gives ammunition in dispelling the many myths surrounding same sex parenting.
At first glance, this family flies in the face of many who argue that a child born, or adopted, to gay parents is at a disadvantage because of the lack of a male or female role model. … “We’ll raise our child with open-mindedness and we expect others to do the same and treat his family with the same respect that we expect our son to treat other family units” [said Marnie].
“At the end of the day we love Quinn more than anything,” says Josh. “Quinn is the priority and his wellbeing is number one… what form the family takes is irrelevant.”
All fantastic messages to be promoting. A personal annoyance of mine is the gap in justification between drugged up bogans from Rockingham, Gosnells, wherever, who can end up with an unwanted mistake pregnancy and be able to carry the baby, and committed same sex couples who really are dedicated to the raising of a child, but have to jump through many hoops to do so. Both are extreme ends of the spectrum but the point remains. The West Australian’s feature story also makes a few opposing argument grabs, and you know, I may be a seething atheist, but opposition to this topic always comes from religious family groups. (Keep reading after the cut).
July 13
Bree Maddox watch - Part 17
On Sunday morning I wasn’t even out of bed yet and received a text from my best buddy and omnipotent media being David to let me know of a photo that was printed in STM Magazine. Many other people emailed in about it as well. Looks like Bree Maddox was out on the weekend at the Tarvydas King Street store launch, and… oh. my. god.
“Shit. The maid forgot to take my haute couture dress to the drycleaners. Oh, that’s alright, I’ll just wear this piece of cloth I found on the ground after Amateur Drag Night at The Court.”
… and pictured with the Mayor of Perth too! Great work. I actually needed a tie-in to legitimise posting that photo, and here it is: Police cars clog restricted gay bar zones.
Perth City Council concedes its parking inspectors have no power to ticket police cars that clog no-standing and one-hour zones outside socialite Bree Maddox’s inner-city gay bar.
The article brings up a few points I agree with, particularly because I’ve personally seen police cars scream dangerously past the alfresco area outside The Court. Not to mention police motorcycles I have also seen mount the curb and then drive along the footpath. There only needs to be one tipsy person who takes a mistimed step and it could all go wrong.
Bree doesn’t comment in the article on account of The Court’s good relationship with the police, and I can appreciate why she didn’t. With police cars all around it gives The Court a sense of security. Although, I could be totally wrong and Bree was actually doing a bit of persuasion work at the Tarvydas store launch:
Bree Maddox: Oi, Lisa… get those police cars away from my bar or you’ll be sorry. There could be an unfortunate accidental gust of wind and my top will fly right off! It’s only secured by a rubber band and some scotch tape you know!
Lisa Scaffidi: Please, don’t do it Bree, I don’t want to see that! There’s nothing I can do… it’s out of the jurisdiction of our parking inspectors… pleeeease spare me!
Photographer: Ladies can I take your photo for STM magazine?
Bree Maddox: SMILE AND DON’T SAY A WORD LISA!
Of course that’s all a joke and never happened, or maybe…
June 18
Same sex marriage in western australia
A few events have pushed same sex marriage back onto the public agenda this week. Mainly, the Australian Marriage Equality association releasing survey results stating 60% of Australians favour same sex marriage. According to the survey, Gen Y’ers and Greens voters are most likely to support it… whaddaya know I happen to be both of those things.
Western Australia, always lackluster in progression, has the highest opposition to gay marriage in the country, with 40% either disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. Are we surprised? Tiffany Fox at The West Australian wrote a blog post about it today:
Equal recognition of same-sex relationships is long overdue. It seems crazy that WA allows gay couples to adopt children, but won’t allow them to get married.
I’m not going to go all politico ranty on you all because I’m sure you’re sick of it. Instead, I’m going to share this absolutely fantastic piece of information with you, taken from The West blog comments:
Craig Says:
June 18th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I wonder how many of these anti-gay folk know that our state’s fauna emblem, the Black Swan, is well known for homosexual activity. It even extends to the point where two males swan form a lifelong pair and rogue females lay eggs in the pair’s nest for the males to raise.
How insulting to the human race that Black Swans are far more advanced in gay surrogacy than us!
May 25
Two bears from the burbs
Hah, in your face every major religion in Australia. Last night 60 Minutes had a great piece on two Melbourne bears who are the first gay couple in the country to have children via commercial surrogacy. Earlier this month they became fathers to twin girls. It all came at a hefty price; they paid a total of $40,000 for their sperm to be inserted in a donor egg, then implanted into an unrelated woman in India. Surrogacy like this is currently illegal in Australia.
Unfortunately Channel 9 haven’t put the video up, but you can read a transcript of the story on their site. Looking from the most cynical perspective, current affair stories like these are great at helping dispel the myth that same sex couples are too promiscuous and too unstable to care for kids in the long term. You can tell these guys really are committed to their new family. It only reiterates my feelings that if drunk hetero bogans can have a sloppy one nighter, end up with a mistake foetus and carry it to full term all the while feeling it’s a burden, same sex couples who really will care for their kids should have the right to conceive.
Some interesting comments from Gautum Allahbadia, the doctor who oversaw the surrogacy (and also pinged on my gaydar).
I believe every human being has a right to procreate and as long as I’m practising medicine within the purview of Indian law I would offer this service to anybody
Liz Hayes also asked a Muslim woman, who had previously been a surrogate, how she’d feel if her baby went to a gay couple:
I would rather do it for a couple who’s really looking for children
It’s going to take a while to change attitudes like these, in both India and Australia.
May 24
Religion is confusing
Political advertisements in the US are so ridiculous I like to watch them and imagine the type of backlash they’d get if they were played on Australian television. Take for example this pile of garbage from Nation For Marriage:
After watching this video I’m very glad that schools, universities and the internet don’t teach kids new ways of thinking… phft! It only leads to increased confusion when the kids go home and their fundamentalist parents scar them with the death, destruction and incest of The Old Testament. What is more confusing… Two people loving each other and getting married as a symbol of their love, or a virgin giving birth?
These children were only confused after the ranty voiceover started talking, so kids, to clear things up here are the answers you seek:
Boy #1: If grandpa was a girl, he would have gone through a lot of stress following the gender reassignment surgery, please be extra nice to her.
Ranga girl: Hell yes giiiiirrrl! I like your attitude.
Boy #2: What the bible doesn’t say is that Adam actually was ‘Anna’, using a very primitive strap on.
Boy #1 again: If your dad married a man, you wouldn’t exist right now. Try not to think about it too much.
Confused boy: If you feel you are bi-curious, there are many resources available at the Freedom Centre.
May 18
Kochie: if two people love each other does it really matter?
Did you watch Sunrise this morning?… Uh, you didn’t? Well I don’t blame you, the show does make me nauseous. This morning they took a break from discussing the potential cost savings of buying home brand toilet paper and decided to heat it up with a little gay marriage debate. Yes, you totally heard me correctly!
After stuttering their way through a run down of what’s happening with gay rights in the US they opened the floor to a Peter Furness, Australian Marriage Equality Convener who did a really good job of civilly explaining the reasoning behind the need for gay marriage rights in Australia. I was impressed because Sunrise didn’t just round up a gay rights nut job - the type who constantly screams ‘prejudice’ well after everyone’s stopped listening. Instead they round up a nut job for the opposing argument: some guy from the Australian Christian Lobby. Major lols ensured.
You can watch the whole segment here (10 minutes). Big round of applause for host David Koch who at one point totally shut down the Australian Christian Lobby panellist for implying that gay couples abuse their children. If you can’t be bothered watching the video here are some of the fantastic things we learnt from the Australian Christian Lobby today:
- If gays are given marriage rights in Australia, people will be able to demand the right to marry their cat
- Gays don’t believe in monogamy or longevity of relationships (he tells this to Peter who has been with his partner for 16 years)
- Preventing gays from getting married is the same principle as telling smokers they can’t smoke in no smoking areas… that um, totally makes sense… uh.
May 5
lesbians are teaching toddlers how to dooo eeeeeiitt
Well, according to this moronic drivel from News Limited.
A BOOK which teaches children about lesbian mums getting pregnant using sperm donors is being pitched at kids as young as two.
The controversial publication, Where Did I Really Come From?, also features a drawing of two gay men holding a baby in a chapter about surrogacy.
I hate it when gay men hold babies! It’s so unsettling and offensive. And so it sexting! If your teenage daughter sexts some one it is guaranteed she will become a lesbian. Spread the moral outrage people!
News Limited’s office seems to have a dedicated phone line straight through to Family First / Focus On The Family / every religious group’s public relations department, because they publish trash like this every time a family group feels they need to irritate the public. The article calls the item in question a “sex instruction book aimed at toddlers”, which is sensationalism at its best.
“It devalues the traditional family unit and at the very least desensitises us,” Focus On The Family spokeswoman Deb Sorensen said yesterday.
Hate to break your belief system there Deb, but the traditional family unit doesn’t actually exist, and hasn’t for a very long time. The issue here is choice: if you want to show this book to your child (the recommended age on the book is two - twelve) then you do that. If you don’t, you don’t. Just don’t smother your beliefs over everyone else’s face. Your lack of tolerance suffocates us.
If you’re allowed to be producing crap like ‘Preventing Homosexuality’ then us heathens should be able to publish our ‘Where Did I Really Come From?’ book. kthx.
Well, now that I got that little tantrum out of me, there was an interesting news story today about a girl in Melbourne who has been allowed to have his breasts removed because he is more comfortable being a boy. He’s been given the androgynous pseudonym of ‘Alex’ because Alex is still underage.
Without knowing too much about the situation, it does seem the Family Court is doing the right thing for Alex’s welfare. If you’re feeling newsey have a read. The Age can’t seem work out which gender preposition to use - it’s almost like they’ve done it on purpose.
Justice Bryant said having breasts constrained Alex socially. She had to avoid being hugged by friends, could not go to the beach and had to wear binding. “So it was quite an impediment to his social development, which everyone thought was very important.”
May 1
Why bar owners don’t work in public relations
I don’t actually spend every moment of my life whinging about The Court. I only do it every second day, or when I’m feeling cranky, or feeling bored. Physically it’s a great venue, and yes it has introduced some good new elements to Perth’s gay bar scene (mainly food related). Although I feel it still hasn’t reached full potential yet you could definitely go a lot worse on a Saturday night - Mustang Bar anyone?
What I frequently don’t agree with though is the venue management’s attitude towards its patrons. I’ve discussed this previously, but apparently we’re not even allowed to talk about it anymore: Bree Maddox (owner of The Court) recently went on a censorship spree and threatened the owners of two Court related Facebook groups, pushing the owners to take the groups down.
One of these groups was set up to discuss the security company employed by The Court, and included valid conversation on how patrons had been treated (according to the group a few incidents have occurred recently). When this Facebook group first started Bree Maddox even contributed, stating she would to look into the situation and enact changes as required. A few weeks later though she’s suddenly changed her mind and is demanding the group be deleted otherwise “further action” will be taken… huh?
The group owner told me:
She [Bree Maddox] asked me to take it down or it would be reported and removed anyway. So after a fairly intense discussion with her I swallowed my pride and removed it myself. They weren’t so much legal threats, but it was implied that further action would be taken if the group wasn’t deleted.
It doesn’t take a degree in Public Relations (which I do have, by the way) to know that if your customers are raising legitimate complaints, you don’t try to censor them. If you attempt to silence people they talk anyway. Word spreads and then some loudmouth puts it on his blog and then even more people know. Scaring your customers with implied threats of legal action or a banning from your venue is a big no no. A discussion group sharing complaints about a product or service is not defamation.
So my question to Bree Maddox is; why are we not allowed to talk about ways to improve The Court? Why are you threatening people who point out areas that need attention to make the venue better?
As a side note, can you also explain why you registered the domain name perthmardigras.com? I’m a tad confused… you didn’t want anything to do with the 2008 Pride Parade, but at the same time you registered a website for your own Perth Mardi Gras?… Just sayin!
Obviously this is quite a controversial topic for little ol’ Perth, and I would like to add a disclaimer that this post is by no means an attack on staff who work at The Court (I know you guys are a pretty tight knit bunch), or any specific security guard. Bree if you would like to respond - please do. I will gladly post your reply here.
Currently the Court related Facebook group I started ages ago has not received any requests to close down. Funny that.
April 20
News bites
The St Mary’s Catholic Community in South Brisbane today left their resident church building after being excommunicated by the Brisbane Archbishop. St Mary’s Parish Peter Kennedy was removed from the Roman Catholic Church for “unorthodox” views, namely supporting same sex partnerships and the right for woman to preach. To add salt to the nine inch nail wounds, the Roman Catholic Church said anyone who continues to follow Kennedy will be condemned by the Church.
Gosh, Roman Catholics are just the most delightful and loving bunch of people. The nice part of this story though is St Mary’s continues to push on, finding a new headquarters for its followers just down the road from the church house they were evicted from. You can download and listen to a really interesting segment on Triple J’s Monday Hack program. The story features some of the progressive Catholics in exile who still support St Marys.
Media loudmouth Perez Hilton has gone a bit ape at Miss California after she stumbled through a question about gay marriage during the Miss USA Pageant. As the video above shows she basically doesn’t agree with it. Afterward Perez had a big video blog rant calling the contestant a “dumb bitch”.
This is where things get a bit cloudy: he clarifies she is dumb because she didn’t answer the question politically (ie. sitting on the fence like a good Barbie Doll should do), not because of her actual views. Fair enough, and fair enough that she doesn’t believe in gay marriage. I don’t know if everyone on the extreme left and right wing are going to see it that way though. The righties will use it as a pin up for freedom of speech while the lefties will call foul for public homophobic. Funnily enough, my article in next month’s WAX Magazine looks at this very topic. Way to go, shameless self promotion!
Even if you’re not politically minded have a watch of the video - you can have some real fun pinpointing the exact moment when her Barbie Doll smile starts to crack and she thinks “oh, shiiiit”.
April 15
Absurd news bites…
… from the last few days. Armies of homos on twitter went crazy over Amazon removing the sales rankings of gay literature items on their website. Amazon’s public relations department were busy taking sedatives and could only respond with “it’s a glitch” and mumbled something about their system for protecting children from inappropriate content, which made everyone even angrier.
This all happened over the weekend, and most sales rankings have since been restored. A hacker has also come forward to claim responsibility. I’m too busy focusing on what Amazon Xanax PR have called the incident: “embarrassing and ham-fisted”. Apparently ‘ham-fisted’ is a common American term for clumsy. But dammit, now I can’t stop thinking about what ham-fisting would involve.
In Poland a conservative politician criticised his local zoo for importing a gay elephant. Apparently this is news.
“We were supposed to have a herd, but as Ninio prefers male friends over females how will he produce offspring?” said Grzes, who is from the right-wing opposition Law and Justice party.
Well Grzes, you just need to find a lesbian elephant to act as the surrogate. Disclaimer: I did steal that joke from another website.
The head of the Poznan zoo said 10-year-old Ninio may be too young to decide whether he prefers males or females as elephants only reach sexual maturity at 14.
Poor elephant, only 10 years old and already being forced into a gender role.
Within Australia that lipstick lesbian kinda indie if you squint your eyes hard enough MTV VJ Ruby Rose is defending accusations she took a ham-fisting from a straight guy. Her convincing defense on twitter was that hooking up with a guy was just as likely as…
“an alien snowboarding in Iraq with a poodle”
ACTUAL QUOTE.
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it's all gay rage in perth right now is a 