Letters to the editor – Sydney

SUPPORT APPRECIATED

I write to thank you for your fantastic support for the 2nd AsiaPacific Outgames as Official Media Partner.

As you know, the event was an outstanding success, with almost 1400 registered participants and many more partners, friends and family in support.

The informal feedback we have received has been excellent, and we have just closed an online survey of participants, collecting responses in a more formal way.

We greatly appreciate the consistent support you gave over a long period of time. We received good feedback from this, and we have no doubt that your support was one of the key reasons the Outgames enjoyed such strong levels of Australian participation.

— David Hindley, Co-chair, 2nd AsiaPacific Outgames

CONTENTED LIVES

Re gay marriage: Daniel doesn’t want it (SSO Letters 1067), Michael does — get out of his way if you don’t agree with him (SSO Letters 1069).

How about the many who really don’t give a toss? Perhaps we are content in our lives. I suggest some folk will never be content.

Battle on if you wish. I prefer our way of life as it is.

— Fred

FRIEND SEARCH

Ken Wallace from Adelaide is looking for Andrew Donald (McDonald) from Sydney, New South Wales.

Ken and Andrew met in Sydney back in the late ’80s. Andrew moved to Wollongong in the ’80s to study acting at Wollongong University.

Ken now lives in the UK and is desperate to find Andrew. If you are Andrew or know of him please get in touch via email: [email protected]

Thank you.

— Ken

LACKS GUTS

This would have to rank as one of the worst uses in and of the English language outside that of Henry VIII who commenced his own church based on lust and power.

I lay this at the feet of the SAS-claimed person Jim Wallace, and remind him of his Australian sworn duty as an ex-SAS and his duty to Australian citizens.

His comments re gays and Muslims are appalling. Jim Wallace cited his 93-year-old relative as the basis of the comments. That defies logic of any clear mind.

My uncle fell at the western front, another was one of the original ANZACS of Tobruk (Rats of Tobruk). I was called to fight in Vietnam.

There were gays in the lines of fighting, as well Wallace should know but lacks the Aussie guts to say so.

Adjectives exist in the English dictionaries to cast at him. However, with Jim Wallace, I will not stoop to his gutter pig swill levels. Suffice to say he has lost his way and needs to take a long retreat of prayer and solitude like St Paul did or go walk the pathway of St Francis — that is if he can remember who these persons are.

Or just maybe Jim Wallace has forgotten basic Christian politeness like his mate Tony Abbott. That is for them to answer. They have lost their true heritage, I suggest.

— Ken

EMPTY RELIGION

Perhaps the real reason conservatives are opposed to gay marriage is, if allowed, it will cause traditional marriage to falter (‘Are the masses really against marriage equality?’, SSO 1069).

Marriage forces millions of people into unhappy, monogamous relationships. The mere legalisation of homosexuality in many countries has caused this institution, a symbol of heterosexual dominance, to examine whether it’s built on sand, and not rock as long thought.

Neither is it a matter of whether the Australian Catholic University rejects a Greens agenda, or that the Catholic hierarchy allows Acceptance to hold services in a church.

As gay people, we are uniquely placed to examine the structures that form our societies and way of life, basically the Judaic-Christian principles.

Why, then, does the gay Jewish group, Dayenu, continue to believe in a god that describes homosexuality as an abomination, punishable by death? One can only question the very existence of this god.

Following in its footsteps is Jesus, the ‘Saviour of the World’, if only the original testament could be believed to exist with any truth at all.

What we’re left with is an empty religion which, amongst other things, has convinced most people, be they gay or straight, that the world is predominantly heterosexual. In one sense this is true, but only in that the forces condemning homosexuality have made belief a reality.

The real level of homosexuality is not so much a minority which exclusively identifies with it, but the masses who deny it, having convinced themselves it couldn’t possibly exist in them due to its perceived abhorrence, built out of a fictitious god.

So, if we ended God, we might see homosexuality prosper at the same levels as heterosexuality, and marriage would most certainly end, along with all other man-made afflictions.

Perhaps the reason for the proliferation of heterosexuality is simply the proliferation of the human race itself, an endless cycle of birth and death. Where it may be said that homosexuality can provide no such biological continuance, it could, then, be argued that love is all that is necessary to sustain human life.

— Stuart