Gay Comfort

Mardi Gras Is Held Saturday Night, March 2

Date: 
08/08/2002
Teaser: 

Picture this. It's a bleary-eyed Sunday morning in Sydney. Street sweepers clear the detritus of another parade along Oxford Street. Stragglers wander in a daze as the road barriers are collected. My partner and I wake in our hotel room, all smiles. What could we have been thinking? What we did was provocative. Performed in everyone's faces. So not very Melbournian at all. We *whisper* held hands.

Source: 
ga_editor

I’ll admit that line sounds trite, even facetious. It’s meant to be neither. What would be quite ordinary behaviour in the lives of 90 per cent of people is extraordinary in ours. You might ask, why is there still a need for this funny Sydney soiree? The Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, “world’s most famous celebration of gay and lesbian pride.??? Because, it is not enough to say you now tolerate us. That’s patronage. Try “accept??? instead. Then I might feel comfortable about holding my bloke’s hand. But, when that day comes, we’ll probably keep frocking up for the festival, metaphorically speaking. Probably in garments just that bit looser.

We want to be recognised in law and society as whole human beings, and maintaining an attention-grabbing presence in the street helps to achieve that motive. Moreover, straight people only have to turn on the television on any night to have their identities reinforced. We choose dance music and choreography as a way of getting together with our own and like-minded. Even if we can’t dance. Go figure.

In February 2002 in The Weekend Australian, reporter Claire Harvey couldn’t fathom it at all. She wrote: “In 24 years, Mardi Gras has grown from a small but daring street protest at which police outnumbered marchers to a slick, sexy fashion parade for the body beautiful set.??? I wonder how the Mardi Gras men who proudly wear their big, hairy bellies and call themselves bears feel about such confused comments. Or the proud parents of gays and lesbians who march. Or the people living with HIV-AIDS, solemnly remembering their lovers and friends. I could go on. I do wish Harvey would have a good look at the parade.

Harvey also argues Mardi Gras has become “just another fixture on the tourist calendar???. A bloody big fixture, actually. The fact that the parade draws hundreds of thousands to the streets is a reason for celebration, underlining our relevance. And I’m actually happy that the police participate rather than beat us up these days. Times had to change from the small, brave placard-wielding group that got things going in 1978. The world is now a more sophisticated place, and we need to be seriously engaged to move effectively within it. Frivolity and humour, of course, have been harnessed as seriously potent political weapons right the way along. Are we apolitical because we also build great floats? Just watch the lesbian mothers parade past with their own children and ring Archbishop George Pell for a reaction. Last year’s parade, in fact, carried more messages than I can remember in years. The revolutionary soul of Mardi Gras is dancing.

Just don’t expect miracles yet in Swan Hill. Conservative religious types in such locales still oppose programs that will help young gay people feel good about themselves. Televising the Mardi Gras assists isolated people to know they are not alone. Economic power and all that attention gave us greater social reach. While Harvey weeps for nostalgia, we’re getting our message through on Internet simulcasts and chatrooms and saving lives.

Legally, we’ve still got a ways to go, with continued discrimination in federal superannuation, tax, immigration and workers’ compensation laws. Just the basics for a relaxed and comfortable Australia, really. Mardi Gras is all about that most unfashionable term, human rights. I’ll call it the hand-holding index. When a bunch of louts drives past me in Commercial Road, Prahran, and screams in unison: “faggot!???, it’s because the people who set our values – usually men of the clerical or political collar – have created a two-tier society in which some humans are devalued. My partner and I usually self-censor our intimate behaviour in public. We’ve internalised the way most of you expect the likes of us to behave. Don’t ask; no show and tell.

Think of the night as our Christmas. Get it now?

Steve Dow is Melbourne journalist and author of Gay, published at www.worldwriting.com Steve was born in Melbourne and survived a childhood in south-suburban Frankston. He began his career writing vox pops for the (now defunct) 'Frankston News'. He has been a staff journalist for 'The Age', and 'The Australian', and he has written feature articles for the Fairfax and Murdoch weekend magazines. You can order Steve’s book on-line at: http://worldwriting.publisher-site.com/ProductShop/.