It may be my experience of twenty seven years of heterosexual privilege but my expectations seem to be so much higher, my expectations of how the straight world should treat LGBTI people and how we, as LGBTI people should treat each other. I am used to being treated with grace and dignity within the broader body politic as well as in personal ( Read more... )

Saturday
The morning commenced with housecleaning in preparation for my new flatmate to move in. I cleaned the kitchen bench and put on a load of laundry. My new flatmate arrived and I left him cleaning the kitchen bench. ( Read more... )

My idea for a book arose from my experience as national spokesperson for the Christians4Equality campaign conducted by Australian Marriage Equality. I was disappointed with the level of support that we received from priests and ministers. There was too little time to make the contacts that needed to be made and too little time to build the ( Read more... )

I told Ben the other night that I do what I do partly from survivor guilt. ( Read more... )

Bullying is endemic in our schools. In fact, it is endemic in our society. According to Evelyn M Field on her website Bully Blocking, "Around the world, more than one in six children are bullied at school, every week. More than one in six employees are bullied at work" and possibly more. Some schools in Australia still have a culture of bullying in ( Read more... )

In a short time, my ex-wife and her husband will ring my doorbell. They will be staying here the night, sleeping on my sofas, as they did last night. The painting fumes in their house were too much for them to sleep at home, so they called me last night to ask if they could stay with me. I, of course, said that they are welcome. They arrived ( Read more... )

This evening, I left work a little later than I usually do. The weather is cooler, and I travelled home in the dark for the first time in six months. I was reading Robert Dessaix' Arabesques' which is, as well as being a travel book, a book of reminiscence, beautifully written and beautifully presented. It is the focus of the Sydney Bookmen's ( Read more... )

I admit to having an interest in BDSM, even a fascination, which has never been explored. I have never explored it hitherto because I am suspicious, suspicious of my own motives and those of many others, doms and subs. I often wondered whether the sub's interest is due to internalised homophobia, and that BDSM is a way to be punished for being gay ( Read more... )

There's actually a lot to say. Last night, I participated in my sixth Mardi Gras Parade. I had not planned to participate. I had not planned to be there at all. I was 'over it'. But my employer of the last three and a half years, RailCorp, the NSW government organisation who run Sydney's rail transport network, was to have its first float in the ( Read more... )

Last week, as we wandered the streets of Paris, we saw above the door of a primary school on the side of Montmartre, a plaque dedicated to the memory of children at the school who had been deported by the Nazis during the years 1942-1944, children deported because they were Jewish. There were fresh flowers hanging next to the plaque. The memory ( Read more... )