We'd like to think that everything is different now. We'd like to think that we're accepted as equals in our community. We'd like to think that hate crimes are relegated to history. But they're not.
With Australia's most progressive equality laws and more law reform on the books, Tasmania is looked upon as an example of what the world could be like for gay and lesbian people.
But when a well-known gay-friendly café in the most cosmopolitan part of Hobart is broken into and defaced with homophobic graffiti, you realise that there is still a undercurrent of hatred towards us. In the minds of some Tasmanians there is still space reserved towards hating us.
Kaos Café in North Hobart is not one of my regular haunts. But I have been there, and I really liked the unpretentious feel of the place. The food is great. The coffee is how coffee should be. The small crowd of people there on the night we dropped in for dinner and a chat with a friend was nice. They were happily chatting amongst themselves and enjoying the easy atmosphere. There was a mature-age lesbian function on next-door in the Soak Bar, which is part of the property. It was nice. And it felt like a place that is safe to “be me”.
To hear that in the last couple of weeks that the least pretentious and least-obviously gay venue in Hobart would be defaced with gate hate-messages makes me angry. Angry not necessarily at the people who did it, because they are just cowards who are acting on their upbringing. What I am angry at is a social background that breeds this hatred into them. I am angry that there are still people who think that it is OK to encourage this kind of behaviour. Angry that schools still do nothing about schoolyard homophobia that displays itself not necessarily in bashings, but in the accepted description of everything that is “stupid” as “gay”. Angry that I, myself, have previously written in thinly-veiled support of the right for people not to like us. But when it comes to blatant attacks on us, I am furious.
With TasPride, the TGLRG and other groups calling for education programmes in schools and communities, it really is time to stand up – because I feel that many of us, like myself, have slipped into a comfy little hole of our own making, where everyone around us loves the gays, everyone we work for loves the gays and everyone in our day-to-day lives loves the gays.
When the Christian church began nearly 2000 years ago, it was living in an era where it was considered to be a bad influence on society. The Romans didn't like it. The Jewish establishment didn't like it. The Greeks didn't like it. And the people on the street didn't like it. So what did the terrified group of new believers do? Hop on the backs of trucks and shake their shaved backsides at passers-by? Start lobbying the government for equality of religion? Start education programmes in schools? No. They enjoyed incredible success (or so the stories tell us) by going “from house to house” sharing fellowship with each other and with those who would happen to join in.
The parallel for us is this. Instead of sitting in our gay hovels and bitching about everything that we can possibly bitch about, instead of surrounding ourselves with only gay friends, instead of always falling into “our kind of people” who never challenge us or ask questions about our sexuality or lifestyle, why don't we get organised and start being evangelists? If the Assemblies of God, Christian City Church and Christian Outreach Centres can have phenomenal growth every year by inviting the “unsaved” into their circles with the purpose of having their eyes opened to “the reality of life in Christ”, then haven't we got an even greater opportunity to be evangelists when we are not preaching about some invisible “Sky Daddy”?
Their message is Christ. Our message is Ourselves. Their outreach is done to the Unsaved. Our is done to the Unknowing. They require submission to an invisible Higher Power that is a carbon-copy of earlier Gods and mythological beings out of Egypt and Sumeria. We require only that they enjoy the company of some nice people. And we are nice people. We are talented people. We are creative, fun, intelligent, caring, sharing, compassionate people. We are everything that Christians claim to be, except that we don't need those we are reaching out towards to place their cash in the plate, or participate in “ministry” on our behalf.
Our evangelism doesn't have to refer to a book, but there are plenty of them we could share with our new friends. Our message doesn't have to involve itinerant speakers and special hypnotic stage techniques to cause people to fall into a religious fervour. Hell, we don't even need to hold our “services” in special purpose-built halls.
So, I call on you this week to reach out to someone at work, at school, on the bus, anywhere. Start talking to them. Let them discover that you are gay without you having to make a point of it. Make a new friend. If you notice they have a few homophobic tendencies, then don't get offended, see an opportunity to change their mindset gently over time. There is no set of words you need to share with them. There are no meetings to attend. There's not even a set of rules you should follow to be a gay evangelist.
Just make friends with someone who doesn't like us. I've done it myself countless times and it's not that hard. By showing someone that they have nothing to fear from us you are not only changing one mindset, you are influencing their entire universe. Their friends. Their families. Their kids. That kind of growth is exponential.
And all you've had to do is make a new friend. And that's one less person who hates us.
We'd like to think that everything is different now. We'd like to think that we're accepted as equals in our community. We'd like to think that hate crimes are relegated to history. But they're not.
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