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Gender Diversity: What they didn’t teach you at school

Posted on November 20, 2011 by Adam

When a friend of mine first started getting involved in the queer world a couple of years back, I remember a conversation with him where he complained that he felt so boring. He was just gay, everyone else was all sorts of exotic mixes of sexual orientations and genders that it made the mind boggle.

I remember once hearing someone say “gender is a social construction.” Now, I was the only kid at school to get 100% on my sex-ed test back in grade 7 (I am such a Casanova). I am pretty sure that the whole male vs female thing was fairly straight forward. So that phrase just didn’t compute at all.

I think I am a fairly accepting kind of guy and have done a fairly good job of keeping my mind open on “gender queer” issues. No one ever preached on it, so I had no reason to hate them. But even approaching these issues with an open mind, having a generous attitude, and seeking out gender diverse people I still find that this area plays with my head.

I’ve finally got a framework for thinking about this which works for me, a “boring” cisgender male (I was born male and identify as male). It’s an evolving thing, and I am very open to learning more. I share this in the hope it can help you. This is what they didn’t cover in that exam.

For me, it all comes down to reducing “male” and “female” to their parts, and understanding the ambiguity and diversity at each level.

Biological Sex

Biological sex is the easiest part of gender to understand, in theory. You either have XX chromosomes, or XY chromosomes. When you pop out at birth the first thing the doctor knows is your biological sex. It’s out there for all to see. So there is no confusion here, right?

Wrong. Some people are born with three chromosomes, such as XXY. About 1-2% of the population is born with indeterminate gender at birth (intersex). They may have unformed genetalia, or both genetalia. Usually when this happens doctors treat it like a defect and perform surgery to make the baby one sex or the other (usually female because that is easier). But what happens when the doctors get it wrong?

Sometimes this isn’t noticed until later in life. I remember hearing one story about a man who thought he might have a tumour, but it actually turned out to be a completely formed womb entirely inside his body. I also heard another story about a teenage boy who started menstruating when he hit puberty.

I think physical, biological genital difference or ambiguity is the easiest form of gender diversity for people to accept because there is evidence that the person isn’t suffering a mental illness, and physicality is the most obvious side effect of gender.

Gender Identity

If biological sex is a simple case of genetic diversity – like left and right handedness and the colour of your eyes, gender identity is about how you let your sex become a part of your label and identity. It’s the difference between “having female reproductive organs” and “being a woman”.

Historically, people have always tried to segregate and exclude people using labels. Gender is the greatest way that we have tried to do this. It’s doesn’t have to be, there are probably more important points of differentiation, but it is as it is. As soon as we are born, the first label that is placed on us is gender. Then, depending on your gender, a whole heap of things in your life are decided: the colour of your baby clothes, the toys you have, the people you are allowed to play sport with, etc.

Some people refuse to allow their biological sex to be such a central part of their personal identity. They don’t want the first label you place on them to be based on their genitals. They don’t want biology to be the primary way that we segregate society. Others feel that their external sexual organs do not reflect how they feel internally, so they may go through a process of changing their body, or they may not.

Concepts of gender identity is a stubbornly hardwired in our brains. When we see someone who looks androgynous we can become quite frustrated until we know if they are male or female. Even with gender neutral pronouns written in front of us (like “ze”) we can struggle to use them in favour of “he” or “she.” As soon as we see someone we want to categorise them, so we can feel like we understand them based on our own preconceptions and societal stereotypes, and gender is a key part of this. We feel that if we don’t know someone’s gender, we don’t know them. It doesn’t make sense really. Maybe gender queer people are more sane than we are?

Recently Australian law was changed so that the gender on a passport could be changed by permission of a doctor, without requiring people to go through costly and dangerous sex reassignment surgery. This made life much easier for people whose biological gender didn’t match their outward appearance and societal expectations (try getting into a country with a passport that says you are a man, when you look like a woman). A Christian men’s group near me responded by having a big rant and declaring that “enough is enough,” as though making life easier for people was a huge exercise in immorality by the government. It goes to show the kind of sacred position we give gender identity in our culture.

Masculinity and Femininity

Masculinity and femininity are a set of expectations that are placed on people because of their gender identity. Males are supposed to be more logical, and like sports, and be tough. Women are supposed to be emotional, and nurturing, and beautiful. It’s prince-in-shining-armour-saves-damsel-in-distress kind of stuff.

Masculinity is policed much more than femininity. This is because, traditionally, males have been thought to be the better sex. It is acceptable for females to make a living wearing a suit, or to lounge around at home in a singlet and thongs. But if a male isn’t the primary bread-winner in the home or, heaven forbid, wears a skirt he is treated with derision because he is “lowering” himself to the level of a woman. Besides being repugnant chauvinism, it’s ridiculous. What is it about your gender that sets in stone your role in the family?

Other people’s expectations are rarely helpful if they are based on a label rather than past performance. There are many people in history who have not done what they loved because of the pressure to conform to gender stereotypes. I think this is most evident with straight males. Hugh Jackman used to go to dancing and drama concerts in total secret just in case anyone caught him. It’s a strange culture that decides that dancing with beautiful women is less masculine than playing rugby then showing with naked guys.

Within the evangelical churches that I grew up in, masculinity and femininity came to be wrapped up in a theology known as “complementarianism” (yes, that’s a real word). Complementarianism is an example of the world infecting the church rather than vice versa – it takes societies existing gender stereotypes and wraps them in Christian language. Despite having no biblical basis, it is used to keep women out of leadership positions and gays from getting married. If same-sex monogamous relationships (where the participants are equal when it comes to gender) can work just as well as opposite-sex ones, it is an affront to all the patriarchal social structures in our world.

At about the time I first told some of my close Christian friends that I was gay, I was given a copy of the book “Wild at Heart” by John Eldridge. This book is all about how to be a real Christian man. It literally quotes fairy tales more than the bible, and yet is extremely popular in evangelical circles. I had never been accused of being particularly feminine, yet it was thought that by policing my masculinity a bit more I could somehow un-gay myself. I bought into it in a big way (I even ran a men’s camp with a friend which was largely based around it) and it certainly didn’t work.

Complementarianism is a dangerous theological belief that restricts freedom and supports injustice. To me, the most beautiful and most courageous thing, the most nurturing and strongest thing, the most feminine and most masculine thing is a person who defiantly lives their own life regardless of what society expects of them. Now, they deserve to be complemented.

Where to from here?

Perhaps I am just indulging in a new way to label people, but I find that splitting gender into components helps me to understand where people differ from the norm and also helps me expand my own views of human nature. Whether you’re a intersex person, a drag queen practising high camp, or a boring cisgender male like me we are all beautiful and there is no argument I can imagine that’d make me believe that just being different is wrong.

There is still a long way to go for gender diverse people (and also for women, but that’s another story). Some issues are as simple and solvable as not requiring pronouns on forms or having more shared gender stand-alone toilets. The biggest issue though is prejudice. The suicide rate amongst gender diverse people is more than an order of magnitude higher than the general population.

I know a pastor who posted a thread on Facebook about what the worst thing to hear on a date was. Most of the responses, from Christian guys no less, were along the lines of “I used to be a guy.” To me, that speaks volumes about how we treat non-gender conforming persons. Lets all try and be a little more open to all the interesting little surprises that our gender-queer, “many breasted”, father God has designed for us to discover.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged complementarianism, gender, intersex | 19 Comments

Do we need to #occupyreligion ?

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Adam

As per the spirit of the season, Jim Palmer, author of Divine Nobodies, has recently been calling for an “Occupy Religion”. His argument is that we need to take back religion so that it is based on the equal divine worth of everybody.

If you consider that in western democracies about 1% of people account for 99% of the religious observance, and that, depending on who you ask, only 1% of the total historical human population is “heaven bound” Palmer may be right.

My parents recently met a gender-queer friend of mine who we will call Rory. Rory wears a pink dress and carries a purse but also sports a burly beard. It’s a strange shock. But the loudness of their outward appearance is offset by their mild mannered personality. My parents commented that they couldn’t think of any church where Rory would be welcome. I am inclined to agree. Based solely on appearance Rory would be made to feel unwelcome within a few minutes, certainly in my church, and in almost every other church I could think of.

Is it right that my gender-queer friend should be excluded from religion?

Rory may not be representative of the 99%, but I think much of the population feel just as excluded. I have met many, many people who feel like they just aren’t aloud to be Christians. As for those in the church, many are leaving, often citing spiritual abuse. As David Hayward recently pointed out, “What I am doing on nakedpastor is drawing attention to a pandemic. … so many people have left the church because of their dissatisfaction with it. It has failed. Not by negation, but by perpetration. Many people will no longer put up with nonsense or abuse or manipulation or control of a group just because they are supposed to be a member of it. There is no more ‘supposed to’. So, more and more, we will see people extricate themselves from a codependent or toxic relationship for the sake of their own health.”

I now help organise Freedom 2 Be Brisbane, a networking group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBT) people from Christian backgrounds. Whilst I have been doing this I have met countless victims of religion. The detrimental effects of a Christian faith on LGBT people is now well known and range from increased minority stress to suicidally. In some cases it seems like the most Christ-like thing to do is to help people leave the church.

Further more, Christians have generally slowed progressive social change. Christians were the last group (as a block) in western culture to support voting rights for women, abolition, inter-racial marriage, protections for the environment, laws against hate speech etc. Martin Luther King Jr, in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, described Christianity as the “tail lights” of society, dragging the chain, rather than the “head lights” leading progressive change. Even today, religion is still the only major institution I can think of that has an official discriminatory policy against women.

Perhaps this is a list of specific complaints about which we could begin to protest:

Religion is exclusive. Only the contributions people who live very narrow lifestyles are valued. Heaven is also very exclusive.
Religion fails to appreciate diversity. Not only does it remain one of the most racially segregated institutions in modern society, it also prescribes specific beliefs and ideals for living, thus creating homogeneous communities. The failure to accommodate opposing theological view points is ironically cause for much disunity in the church today.
Religion is frequently on the wrong side of justice. Women are still second class citizens in many Christian denominations, and the bible has been used against progressive social change. Abolitionists even had to abandon a literal interpretation of some verses.
Religion lacks intellectual integrity. Since doubt is an important part of intelligence yet religion requires total faith. This frequently ends in attacks against science.
Religion pushes unsuccessful and undesirable people to the margins, thus many who are most in need of spirituality are most excluded from it.

I could go on. I know this list seems harsh, and there is no double that many Christians have also made positive contributions, but I do think we need to evaluate why Christianity only seems to work for such a narrow slice of the population.

Do we need to occupy religion?

(Image from http://funnyjokesandlaughs.wordpress.com/)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged occupy religion | 9 Comments

Modern Retelling: Parable of the Unforgiving Servant

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Adam

(Based on Matthew 18:21-35)

There was once a banker who racked up a trillion dollars of debt and was unable to pay. The popularly elected government was going to let him file for bankruptcy but then he got a lobbyist who told the government he was too big too fail. So the government bailed him out with tax payer dollars.

But then the banker went out and was approached by a single mother who was overdue on repayments on her fifty thousand dollar mortgage. The banker grabbed her and demanded that she pay him immediately. So she tried to negotiate a new repayment plan, but the banker would have none of it. He repossessed her house and forced her and her family into homelessness.

When the media saw what was done, they thought it was a fantastic ratings opportunity and told the government what had happened. The government responded by doing nothing whatsoever.

And so the population got very upset and started trending towards ideological extremes.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged occupy wall street, tea party, unforgiving servant | 1 Comment

Machine Gun Preacher: Inspiring story of hope or justification of violence?

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Adam

Machine Gun Preacher is based on the story of Sam Childers, a former drug-dealer turned preacher, who builds orphanages in Africa for kidnapped child soldiers. The movie stars the likes of Gerard Butler (300) and Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road). For once it is looking like a Christian Movie that won’t be B-Grade.

On its surface Machine Gun Preacher is an inspiring story about a redeemed life. It’s a story about one man’s devilish skills being up turned and used for good. It is about courageously taking action against injustice where others sit on the side line.

But on the other hand it is a story about the glorification of violence and the sanctification of vigilantly justice. It’s about a white man killing black people. It’s a homage to the American hero complex. It’s disempowering. This leaves me concerned.

We live in a society bombarded by violence. We have become so desensitised to it that we hardly notice our movies, books, and television shows surround us with a culture gruesome enough to leave Romans blushing (actually, we took their coliseum, ramped up the intensity, and broadcasted it out to millions). We are taught that the enemy, the cause of evil, is out there and that if we just kill them the world would be a better place. The template is well known: a villain, with no redeeming factors, is eventually overcome by a hero and their superiority in battle.

But the realities are quite different. There are no truly evil people in this world just as there are no truly good people, and the people with power are not necessarily the ones on the side of justice. As Bertrand Russell says, war does not determine who is right – only who is left. In the meantime, war and violence damage innocent bystanders, it further disempowers those without strength, and it begets more violence in return. It is naive to believe that violence can bring about long-term positive change. Having peace through means of war is like bringing about purity through rape.

In this world addicted to violence, seeing Christians exalt such behaviour is worrisome. This is not the story of some UN sanctioned peace keeping mission. This is about a man acting on his own to forcibly bring about God’s will. If it wasn’t Africa we would be appalled. Is it really too far a stretch to see the same logic being applied to bombing an abortion clinic or shooting down a same-sex wedding? (Indeed, the same logic has been used throughout history for far too many atrocities to list)

Granted, child slavery is awful. But in his zest to save children isn’t Sam just adding more violence to an area that has seen enough already? Isn’t he just destroying more property, and killing more people who were once kidnapped as children themselves? Won’t the LRA respond to the threat by recruiting more soldiers and punishing those who work with Childers?

But even if I leave aside the foolishness of it all, I don’t know why Christians would make a movie about this because I just cannot see Jesus doing what Sam Childers does. Jesus did have the power to bring about justice through violent means, and the knowledge to do effectively. But rather he allowed himself to be the victim of injustice. He could have set himself up upon a thrown but instead allowed himself to be ridiculed. He taught us to pray for our enemies (Matt 5:44), and warned us that those who live by the sword die by it also (26:52).

So this movie makes me sad, because it is such a huge departure from Jesus. It indicates that the Church has lost its way so much that it now celebrates the values and methods of the culture more than Christ. When I watch this trailer Sam Childers Christian-ness doesn’t stand out to me, his American-ness does.

To me this is a story of a man who wants to do what is right, and since he doesn’t know better he resorts to the methods of his former life. There is much to celebrate here, but lets not set Childers up as a role model for others to imitate.

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Surprised by Heaven?

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Adam

I’ve been working my way through the controversial Love Wins, by Rob Bell. It’s provided a lot of food for thought. One insight is that the people who end up in heaven may not have expected to be there.

Now, I knew that some people who expect to get to heaven will be turned back (Matt 7:21-23) but I had never figured the reverse.

In the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt 25:31-46) the sheep are surprised to enter heaven. In the parable of the banquet (Matt 22:1-14, Luke 14:12-24) the lower class – people who did not expect it – were invited to the king’s table.

I guess those scared souls who believe God can’t love them may be in for a surprise after all.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Heaven, Love Wins, Rob Bell | Leave a comment

Good things about Pharisees

Posted on June 26, 2011 by Adam

I recently had the good fortune of hearing Rowland Croucher speak. He’s the former pastor of the largest baptist church in Australia, and now runs John Mark Ministries, the most visited non-denominational Christian site in Australia.

During his talk he told the following story about Pharisees (good people in the worst possible sense). It has stuck with me ever since:

Being an itinerant (‘hit-run’) preacher has some advantages. I remember a Sunday evening service in a conservative church in rural Victoria, Australia. They had big black Bibles and severe expressions… And they knew their Bibles, and were proud of that. It was a smallish group, so I decided to engage them in dialogue:

‘Who knows who the Pharisees were?’ They did. ‘The Pharisees got a pretty nasty press in the New Testament – particularly Matthew.’

‘Now tell me all the good things you can think of about the Pharisees.’ I wrote them up on a blackboard:

The Pharisees knew their Bibles; were disciplined in prayer; fasted twice a week; gave about a third of their income to their church; were moral (very moral); many had been martyred for their faith; they attended ‘church’ regularly; they were evangelical/orthodox; and evangelistic (Jesus said they’d even cross the ocean – a fearful thing for Jews – to win a convert).

There was a deep silence. I asked ‘Peter’ sitting at the front: ‘What’s wrong?’

He pointed to the list and said ‘That’s us!’

Read the rest here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Pharisee | Leave a comment

Why I believe that being gay is not a sin

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Adam

I had written this essay a long time ago, but have been reluctant to publicise it until now. It explains how I came to believe that being gay is not a sin.

I am not interested in engaging in a theological argument, I believe such arguments are useless. My only hope is that by reading this you have a more informed perspective and understand that an anti-gay interpretation is not the only serious interpretation of the bible. To much talk around LGBT issues and the church begins with uninformed assumptions about what the bible actually says. I hope to elevate the conversation a little.

Why I believe that being Gay is not a sin (PDF)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged bible, gay, Sin | 16 Comments

Would Jesus bomb Libya? Pacifism vs Just War.

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Adam

“When the rich wage war, it’s the poor that die.” – Linkin Park

I was introduced to Christian Pacifism during my first year of university when a well spoken Jehovah Witnesses pastor approached me whilst I ate lunch in the botanical gardens. The idea at the time was completely foreign to me, coming from a fairly mainstream background. I supported the invasion of Iraq at the time, yet I found the arguments of this man very persuasive as he told me that the early Christians were all pacifists.

Eventually I got a chance to study the issue properly. I read the likes of John Howard Yoder, Shane Claiborne, Martin Luther King, Walter Wink, Leo Tolstoy, and whatever else was accessible to me seeing as I lack any theological training. Eventually I came to see pacifism and active peacemaking as a core part of my faith and a key way in which Christians can impact the world.

I know that all violence is the result of making scapegoats (believing that an other person is responsible for the problems in your own life). I believe that Jesus set himself up as the ultimate scapegoat – truly innocent, yet we killed him because we blamed him for everything – and by doing so exposed violence for what it really is. I doubt that weapons can ever bring justice in the long term. I think that using war to bring peace is about as effective using rape to bring about sexual purity. I know that it only creates more enemies. I also know that violence runs directly counter to the commands and lifestyle of Jesus. When we are told to “love our enemies” that probably doesn’t mean we should kill them. Even President Obama once called the sermon on the mount, the centrepiece of Jesus’ teaching, “a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defence Department would survive its application.”

Not until Libya have I encountered a situation which is so challenging to this position.

Just War

The tradition and study into Christian pacifism is a very old part of our faith, yet there is another strand of thought that also attempts to honour the teachings of Jesus without eliminating the possibility of violence entirely. Just War theory is at least as old as the 2nd century AD, it allows violence to be used as a defence against an aggressor provided the following conditions are satisfied:

the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
there must be serious prospects of success;
the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

Just War advocates and pacifists argue all the time but in reality they usually agree on behaviour because there hasn’t been a war in recent memory that actually satisfies the above conditions.

Libya is different. As far as I can tell, the current no-fly zone satisfies all the conditions of just war. This does not mean that the west has always treated the Libyan people justly, for years we allowed their oppression because their oppressor gave us oil. But right now the situation is dire and the Libyan people need help.

I do not believe this military action is cause for celebration. In the long term it will not bring peace nor solve the underlying problems (only extreme love for enemies can do that). War at best only delays the inevitable and at worse is the greatest cause of suffering and injustice in our world. Yet I am not sure what the practical alternative is in this case.

Would Jesus bomb Libya?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged just war, Libya, pacifism | 3 Comments

5 reasons I care about poverty – and you should too

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Adam

1. Poverty is unsustainable

I don’t believe that the levels of inequality that we see in our world today are sustainable. Billions of people are denied opportunities that are commonplace to us in the west. Think of all the Einsteins and Newtons who starve to death at the age of 4. What a waste.

Poverty doesn’t just hurt the poor. No man, or country, is an island. What is good for our global neighbours is also good for us. I do not believe that it is a viable option for humanity to continue with such a large burden as poverty and inequality holding us back.

Injustice is never sustainable. Slavery has ended. The oppression of woman is coming to an end in the western world. Racism has been fought off. The Soviet Union fell. Apartied ended. England was ejected from India. Democracy has replaced Monarchy. Human rights are taking hold around the world.

History proves that injustice is not sustainable, and any system that relies on injustice for its survival is a system that is sure to fail. So I think we are better to begin rooting the injustice out of the system now, before the poor root it out for us.

2. God cares about poverty

It is interesting to see how Australian’s react to various social issues. It is mostly revealed in politics. Take the Australian federal Greens party. The Greens are very much the idealistic party in Australia. They support a number of good causes such as protecting the environment, increasing Australia’s overseas aid, being kind to refugees, and ending homelessness. But they are also support gay marriage, euthanasia, and abortion. This stops Christians from voting for them. We consider issues of “morality” more important than issues of justice.

Christians have really got their priorities wrong. Depending on how you read things there are maybe 3 passages in the bible about abortion, and 6 about homosexuality. There are over 2,000 about caring for the poor.

The fact that you can’t even see the bars on this graph for abortion and homosexuality when compared to poverty is an illustration of just how wrong our priorities have been. If I am to be faithful to God and politically active, it is obvious to me where I should be investing the majority of my energy.

(That doesn’t mean voting for the Greens, but it does mean advocating for the poor regardless of who is in power.)

3. Jesus is in the poor

In the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt 25:31-46) Jesus shockingly identifies himself with the poorest and most vulnerable people in our world. For a long time I thought that this was because God loves them, and thus He feels pain whenever we hurt someone He loves. But now. after working with the poor, I believe it is much more than that.

God has a soft spot for the world’s rejects. He may be unbiased, but He does take sides – He sides with the victims of injustice. The lowest people in our society are the Kings and Queens in God’s Kingdom and He reveals Himself to them, and makes Himself real in them in a way that He does not with those of us privileged to live a happy life inside the system.

The poor are God’s image in this world. That’s not to say that the poor are somehow innocent and don’t often participate in their own oppression. Its just a reflection of God’s grace. If He lives in the poor, than no one can claim to have done something to deserve Him.

It follows that if I love God I won’t just leave my worship inside the Church. I’ll take it out with me into the streets. If I love God how can I allow Him to suffer? I must take a stand on behalf of the one I love.

4. Poverty is unfair

The largest factor dictating the life expectancy of a person at birth is the country they were born in. Out of all the thoughts that this brings one feeling stands out above all the rest: this is unfair.

One of the “Australian values” repeatedly espoused by the media is that of a “fair go”. If we really care about giving people a fair go, we need to look beyond our boarders and see the millions of people who never chose poverty: they were born into it.

A fair go is an easy idea to ascribe to when you’re the one being treated unfairly. But a principal is not a principal unless you are also willing to practise it when it doesn’t suit you. In the case of global poverty it is the poor that have been denied a fair go, and it is up to us to provide them with the same opportunities that we thankfully received but did little to deserve.

5. Justice is inevitable

I’ve already stated that I don’t consider poverty to be sustainable, the flip side of that is that I consider justice to be inevitable. The only question is whether this will be an easy of difficult thing for us.

A lot has been done in the last decade to really study and understand poverty so that the money we give can be used more effectively than it ever has been. It is a very real possibility that by the end of my life extreme poverty will be just a bad memory. That this evil that has scourged humanity for so long will be gone. I would like to be part of that.

When poverty is over I would like to be one of the people who has some responsibility for that. I would like to be one of the people getting thanked.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged poverty | 2 Comments

Mardi Gras After-Blog

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Adam

The party is all over. It was an amazing experience to march with Freedom 2 Be. It is so different to anything I have every experienced before that I struggle to find a common frame of reference to describe it. It is like a giant, elaborate costume party with hundreds of thousands of people cheering for you. I only have time for a few comments presently:

It took at least half an hour after the parade to stop smiling. And yes, there were a couple of points where I almost cried. A year ago I would have been horrified had I known I would be marching in the parade.
In one day I had 10,000 times more people cheering for me than will ever condemn me. The parade took almost 40 minutes and the whole way the crowd was really enthusiastic.
We were 7th in the parade. Groups for Anglicans, Catholics, Muslims, and Jews were before us, an Atheist group was after us. The Jewish group was fun. We were in the “Heroes” section of the parade. Our part of the parade was family friendly.
There were 130 floats in the parade. They were overwhelming positive (which is great for a community that has a lot to be negative about). They included several political groups (including the Liberal party for the first time), the police, several companies, sporting groups, community groups, support groups, and just groups having fun.
Only a handful of floats were overtly sexual (such as the S&M float, the DNA float adorned by Bel Ami models, and the priestesses of perpetual pleasure). Others had little clothes on but when it is the water polo team or the surf life savers it’s just normal. There were a few awkward moments in the staging area but for the most part it is not a sleazy environment. It passes the “would you tell your mother” test.
I’ve been thinking about the floats that are embarrassing or make me uncomfortable (i.e. the aforementioned S&M float). I realised that for many gay people our Christian group would make them uncomfortable and that we are really the odd ones out. If we want to be able to participate we have to let them as well. I also realise that if there was a Christian parade with a large cross section of the community, it would also have floats that would make me cringe (probably more so than Mardi Gras as well).
The police were having fun. You know things are good when the police are having fun.
The official after party was quite underwhelming. The atmosphere sucked. Not worth the money. The F2B after party was awesome.
I am part of a really awesome community.

That’s all my comments for now.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Mardi Gras | 4 Comments