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 tagged ‘politics’
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).
June 18
Media bits
Queen of Tupperware and gatekeeper to Perth’s drag empire, Val Nourished, has arranged herself onto page 2 of today’s West Australian. She’s there to talk about storage containers and lap bands, which I guess are sort of the same thing.
Props to Matthew for nabbing this great publicity - page 2 is a real effort. No points for The West editors who seem to have mixed up their gender prepositions, calling Val Nourished a ‘he’. Hrm. I guess they don’t understand the concept. You can read the whole article here.
Extended shopping hours are up in Parliament this week, and the big retailers are being very vocal. Myer said they have no immediate plans should the extended hours be approved, which must be a major blow to gays bois Perth-wide. Myer have a great business opportunity staring them in the face: simply turn Myer Basement into a mini-club on Friday nights. Every gay boi in Perth is already there anyway, might as well get them to stay, drink alcohol and buy more clothes. Then again, I already have enough trouble trying to find S sized garments in there - damn gays have already raided them all!
Finally, going back to The West Australian: That certain gay bar owner recently featured in a very oversized article publicising her engagement. Uhhhh. No comment from me, but here’s a facebook status update that was brought to my attention:
———- loves that Bree Maddox is getting hitched while the gays who pay her way can’t.
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 20
Pride expands festival line up
Today Pride WA announced an exciting new event in their Homecoming Festival line up: the Pride WA Ball. The title is boring, but the event is not. It’s a dinner, dancing and awards night to recognise the contributions individuals and organisations have made to Perth’s GLBTIQ community (I hate that abbreviation so I won’t be using it again from hereon).
The ball will be on Saturday 22 August at the Novotel Langley and will include live entertainment and the crowning of a GLBTblah ‘King and Queen’. I hope they’re not drag related. Nominations for the various awards happen between June and August, so please bombard Pride WA with many, many emails telling them to nominate me for my contribution to Perth’s very small gay media scene, plus for all that humanitarian work I did in Rockingham - handing out food to homeless bogans, that sort of thing.
Pride WA will be releasing more details closer to the event, so look out for them on gayrage. Other important Pride dates for you to enter into your electronic devices:
- Pride launch: Friday 18 September
- Fairday: Sunday 27 September - (event will become a dance party after 6pm)
- Pride Parade and Homecoming Party: Saturday 31 October
May 20
One last word
This is the last time I will bring up daylight savings, but I have some very important news. It turns out the guy who sparked the Bree Maddox Today Tonight outburst is actually moving to the Eastern States! I wish I could say it’s entirely because of daylight savings, but apparently he was planning on moving there anyway. It will at least give Bree some consolation, after hearing her advice he really did get himself a job and a LIIHHFFEE!!
I was trawling through YouTube and found this heinous video about WA daylight savings, which I thought I would share with you. Tell me how much you hate it with the new comment links I have poured my blood, sweat and php coding tears into. You can also comment on any other post now. Do it!
May 17
Hooray, my curtains won’t fade
Well it’s a shame daylight savings in WA has been killed indefinitely, but at the very least we now have a clearer picture of where most of the state’s idiots are dispersed. Looking at the the referendum results no surprises the electorates within the Perth city who had the most NO votes include Armadale, Cannington, Gosnells, Kwinana, Mandurah, Midland and Rockingham.
Nothing personal if you live in these areas - but you can’t argue against the fact they’re well known for their contributions to Perth’s bogan and teenage mother population… not such a smart bunch. Case in point the pack of drunk Rockingham bogans on my Saturday night train into town: Much to the amusement of all the other passengers, the bogan males were trying to convince the females you’re only gay if you bottom, you aren’t gay if you top. Ahuh, keep telling yourself that boys wink wink, nudge nudge.
So if the person who is responsible for coordinating the mass exodus of young people leaving for the Eastern states in search of daylight savings could please let me know the exit plan - I’ll post the details on the blog.
Oh, and on a completely unrelated note Bree I have a great idea for a new Court event: Sundowner drinks! Oh, wait… nevermind. Thats ok, just keep doing the same old thing you’re doing!
May 15
A day off…
I’ve been a bit slack lately, and I don’t have anything huge or controversial to report right now. But, I would like to say…
Tomorrow when you go to your local place of voting, VOTE YES for Daylight Savings! Bring Perth alongside the rest of the world and give us more time to spend outdoors with our friends and family in the summer. VOTE YES!
Even if you were going to vote no, just do me a favour and vote yes this one time 
… your yes vote will help negate people getting too much of the media spotlight.
Stay tuned to gay rage, I have some cool Perth related items to post over the weekend. I’m also toiling hard to add the function to allow readers to comment on posts. In the meantime, here’s a video for all of the Perth Bears who read this blog. If you’re a fan of parody, you might want check out the original. Love when he breaks a nail:
May 14
Fun distractions
It’s so easy to laugh at other people’s pain when they’re all the way on the other side of the internet. That’s why I read the Ask Bossy blog. It’s the only decent thing on New Limited’s website. Take for example, I caught my boyfriend looking at she-males on the net… should we still get married? Ahhh….. for sure!
I heard strange noises coming from our study so I pushed opened the door and saw my fiance half naked getting himself off while looking at a porn site named: SheMales-YUM!
The fact some one put the effort into adding “YUM” to the title of that website brings it to a whole new level of funny. Don’t place any bets on that wedding, folks. Be sure to check out the equally entertaining I caught my boyfriend approaching men for sex… what should I do?. Do we really need to spell it out for you, hun?
A few newspapers have piped up that after Home and Away featured a lackluster lesbian kiss Neighbours is ‘copying’ them and doing their own homogametic pash. Problem is, Neighbours have already done the lesbian kiss plot line - twice already! Although, they’ve introduced a new element - this time it’s a lesbian asian person! For more info check out the website InterracialLesboKiss-YUM!
And to be my usual ranty self isn’t this a whole lot of double standard? When are we going to see hot, sexy, family friendly man-on-man pashing during crappy Aussie primetime soap operas? I want to see Harold get down daddy/son style with a barely 18 euro twink he met through manhunt by using a fake photo. Now that is actually real life.
Here is a previous lesbian kiss on Neighbours. I imagine deep within the Channel 10 studios there’s a whole vault full of unused gay kiss scenes that never went to air.
HEY! I can’t be all over Perth all at once so if there is something cool you think would fit in on the blog please email it to me. Doesn’t have to be gay 
May 11
Get yourself a job and a life!
The moment we were all waiting for. How ironic the person who asked the question is part of The Court’s customer base! I kind of get the feeling she knew that, though. I LOVE Bree’s dramatic emphasis on the word ‘life’.
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