Aussielicious

Yesterday’s marriage equality rally in Sydney, to the Australian Labor Party Conference, was very successful in showing support for our cause and helped achieve a huge step forward for Australian Marriage Equality. Estimates of between 5,000 and 10,000 people marched through the streets yesterday, through busy shopping areas and main streets of downtown Sydney.

Before the rally even started, the conference had debated the issue and voted on two motions presented. The first was an outstanding success, that the Labor Party has officially changed it’s policy to endorse gay marriage. Sadly the second, in a way, reduces the first to a token gesture, but still opens the door for success.

The second motion was to let Labor party members vote with their conscience on the issue if a bill is presented to Parliament to legalise gay marriage, rather than forcing them to vote with party policy. That means that all the right wing faction within the party are not obliged to vote to allow gay marriage.

The fight is not over. We will now have to work on the federal opposition, the Liberal Party to get enough votes within that party to ensure a bill will be passed through Parliament thus introducing gay marriage as a legal and wonderful thing.

If you care about achieving full marriage equality for yourself or those you love and care for, please join us in Sydney this saturday for the Rally for Marriage Equality. We are meeting in Hyde Park at midday and marching on to assemble outside the National Labor Party conference in the hope of swaying those members of the party still undecided, to change the party’s official stance on gay marriage.

There are conflicting reports being published that we have a good chance and that we have a bad chance of getting the Labor Party to come into the 21st century and chance the policy on equality. What I do know is that without as many people as we can muster we won’t have a chance at all. So please come and take a stand or there’s no point complaining about being unfairly treated.

Click here for more details.

This is the new Marriage Equality video, released today, from GetUp! The timing couldn’t be better as our Prime Minister has once again postponed a dinner with three gay couples who won the right to the dinner at an auction. The dinner was supposed to happen within a few weeks but with the participants agreement Ms Gillard pushed it back, as long as it was before the National Labor Party Conference, where marriage equality will be debated, which is next week. Unfortunately the dinner has now been postponed until the new year.

This is a beautiful video that I’ve watched many times this afternoon and cried every time. It’s so simple and represents exactly what I want. It’s not an in-your-face gay love scene or anything that the conservatives could possibly object to. It’s the same love story they claim to be protecting, just between two young men in love.

David Pocock. Never heard of him? Neither had I until recently, then today I see he’s one of the fantastic breed of straight guys. He’s a big beefy straight rugby player on the Australian national team and he’s a vocal campaigner for gay equality.

David is only 23 years old but is 184 cm tall and 104kg (224lb) in weight and a chiseled jaw and a twinkle in his eye. He’s also a Christian, but has what I always believed to be real christian values. That is to treat everyone with equal respect. David recently married his sweetheart Emma, but it wasn’t, from what I can gather, a legally recognised marriage, as he and his bride refuse to marry legally until gay and lesbian people are allowed to marry too.

With people like David and other straight public figures, like English Prime Minister David Cameron, stating that our current (and opposition) political parties are behind the times and are making Australia look foolish on the world stage, surely it’s only a matter of time before we have marriage equality here?

Read more here at Towleroad.

Last Sunday over 200 of us got together to film a video for equality organised by Australian Marriage Equality and directed by DJ Dan Murphy. Please share the video with everyone you know. We need to drive the message home. There is a National Labor Conference in December and we are having a Rally for Equality to coincide with it in early December.

The creative team behind Sydney’s fantastic Bondi Beach and Opera House flash mobs are joining forces with the amazing team behind Australian Marriage Equality to create a video to send a message to the Australian government that the vast majority of Australians are supportive of marriage equality.

They are looking for people to register for the event that will take place on 25th September in Sydney’s Town Hall. The more people we can get the stronger the message will be. Please show your support and share the facebook event with everyone you know. The movement is gaining momentum here in Australia in a very positive way but we still have some very conservative, eccentric and vocal politicians speaking up against us so the fight is heating up too.

I am a romantic and have always thought I’d love to get married, but it’s only been recently especially since I’ve found myself in a relationship with a man I love that I’ve realised how important this is to me. Please show your support.

I saw this video yesterday and had a tear in my eye at the office while I was watching it. I know it’s not real but it’s beautiful. Enjoy.

Congratulations to New York GLBT Community. Your elected officials voted 33-29 to approve gay marriage. From my understanding there were some religious amendments made to the bill but it still got through. That gives me so much hope that one day we will follow suit.

Sadly our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard responded to the news that we make decisions for the good of our own country. I’m not sure, as the figure head of the Australian Labor Party how she can maintain that line when several state Labor Parties have voted to support gay marriage.

While New Yorkers celebrate a very hard fought win, we still have a long way to go. The news from NY adds another thing for my list of things I want to see while I’m there. I want to see a gay couple coming out of a church or registry office beaming with joy at their just-completed nuptials with happy family and friends all around them.

Have you ever noticed that people like the Westbro Baptist Church and all the people preaching hate and discrimination are filled with fear and, anger and they never smile? When you let all that prejudice go it’s only natural that you smile more. This video from NOH8 proves that. This is a very diverse group of ethnic backgrounds, sexualities and gender orientations. That’s what it looks like to me anyway. Every single one of them looks like they are having an absolutely fantastic time. Of course it’s to the anthem for tolerance from Gaga, “Born This Way”. Love it.

It’s people like these that have made it possible for us who live in places like Australia and the U.S. to be able to live in relative safety.

An Australian filmmaker has made this documentary “East Bloc Love” about the fight for gay rights in Belarus. It’s chilling when one of the activists says they hope that they are arrested before the homophobes arrive.

On Monday morning, I was driving to work when a woman called in to the radio station I listen to, to complain about Fair Day, one of the big events on Sydney’s Mardi Gras calendar. It had been held in a big park the day before. In part of that park is a public swimming pool which was closed because of Fair Day.

The woman was complaining that “The Majority” don’t get a street parade and a big fair day that is unwelcoming to others. I beg to differ. In Sydney ‘The Gays” get one parade a year, one big Fair Day and a handful of other events.

Given that the “majority” is 9 out of 10 people and we are just one out of that 10 I believe they get a lot more than 9 times the number of Fairs, fetes, music festivals and countless other events where gay people are distinctly made to feel uncomfortable and perhaps even unsafe.

She proposed a “Majority” parade with women in power suits and men with briefcases. I don’t know what planet she’s living on but a lot of us, “the minority” wear suits and carry briefcases and walk amongst the “majority” every day, unnoticed. Our Mardi Gras parade started over 30 years ago as a protest for gay rights and all the participants were arrested. Our parade today still calls attention to inequality and unfair treatment, as well as celebrating that we have actually come some way forward towards equality which she would take from us no doubt.

What would her parade celebrate? Keeping us from being married? Keeping us from being able to adopt? Keeping us from being able to donate blood? The caller has just proven how far we have yet to go in our fight for our rights. Thankfully the radio hosts basically told her that her parade would be bloody boring and that she was being a bit unfair.

There is a religious conservative who is running for Lord Mayor in Sydney and he’s basically against anything remotely fun or interesting. He disapproves of our Prime Minister because she is unmarried and living in a de facto relationship. He thinks the Mardi Gras parade should be moved to a stadium so that it doesn’t entice the youth into lust and filth etc etc.

Well, in the face of such ludicrous moral conservatism, there is hope. A young straight Sydney-sider is organising a Pash Party Protest. For those abroad, what we call pashing is what Brits call snogging and the U.S. call macking or making out. The young straight guy, Danny Clayton is still undecided whom he will share his first same sex kiss with, but the fact that he’s willing to passionately kiss another man in support of gay rights is a brilliant sign of progress!

The facebook event is here. Go sign up if you are in or going to be in Sydney!

It seems that living in the big cities like Sydney is great if you are gay and want acceptance but if you venture out of the city, go further than the edges of the city. It turns out that there are vast areas on the edges of Sydney and other cities in Australia that don’t really approve of gay marriage.

Sadly these same areas are the same areas that are heavily targeted by politicians in elections because of their tendency to swing their votes to whomever is pandering to them. What does that mean? It means that we are still facing an uphill battle to get marriage equality while those conservative folks in those voting areas voice their opinions on our entitlements.

Read the full article here.

This is Oz is a website devoted to promoting equality and inclusiveness in Australia. Celebrities and ordinary people like you and me can submit photos of themselves with messages of support and equality.

American Porn star and all-round exhibitionist Luke Hass has seen the site and really wants to take part in it, but is asking for suggestions for his message. You can leave your suggestions on here in the comments or you can go to Luke’s blog and contact him there with your ideas!