Nominations are open for the 2018 Australian LGBTI Awards. Time to celebrate the bland homogenous face of Australia’s LGBTI community. How did we go from Priscilla Queen of the Desert to the pantsuited activist brigade? This is not to disparage their work, they do more for the LGBTI community than I ever will, but it represents how the gay community has become a circle jerk of leftist politics and political correctness. Which I could actually forgive if the winners weren’t so boring.
Some of this years winners:
Hero of the Year: Rowena Allen, Victorian Commissioner for Gender and Sexuality. Activist. Yawn.
Journalist of the year: Chloe Sargeant.
“Proud activist and staunch feminist”. Perhaps she won for her brave stance boycotting Coopers Beer?
Inspirational Role Model of the Year: Sharon Carroll, Diversity & Inclusion Business Partner at Australia Post.
Someone from the post office? Which is a major sponsor of the awards? Ok then.
LGBTI Celebrity of the year: Ruby Rose.
Is this really the best we could do? A person who has built an entire career out of the type of faux-lesbianism that peaked in the late 90s but is still apparently titillating to Australians. She didn’t even show up to claim the award.
Politician of the Year: Penny Wong.
I adore Penny Wong. Penny Wong in Senate Estimates investigating who broke the Prime Minister’s marble coffee table is the greatest moment in Australian politics. But lets see how many Labor and Greens members they get through before they award it to a conservative like Tim Wilson.
Community Initiative of the Year: Australian Marriage Equality.
Well that’s a surprise. I thought they might have given it to the Australian Christian Lobby.
Lifetime Achievement Award: Molly Meldrum.
I think they had to rush this one out; he isn’t going to be around for next year’s ceremony.
Brand and Organisation of the Year: SBS.
Ok, I’ll give them this one. Watching Queer as Folk on SBS at 2am with the sound off taught me everything I know about life and being a gay man. Thank you too for Eat Carpet, the compilation of student films that had so, so many lingering soft focus shots of uncut East European penises.
All from the same side of politics. Apart from Penny Wong, all the individuals who won were white. AIRBNB got an award, but no Indigenous Australians. I got a pretty neat handy while I was working at the Novotel, maybe they can get an award next year. The Australian gay community is so diverse, it’s a shame to have chosen such safe, correct winners as our representatives.
On the other hand, I don’t really blame them for favouring the activists over the more exciting controversial gay media personalities. Because we don’t really have any. For all the feather boa waving of Mardi Gras, Australia is still a conservative country. Neighbours had its first gay kiss in 2012. And remember the national shitstorm over the lesbian kiss on Home and Away? That was only frikkin’ 2009. In fairness, 2009 was a crazy time all round. We were all delirious from swine flu and the random $900 cheques that arrived in our letterboxes. Singer Peter Garrett was a minister for some reason. A black face minstrel show was deemed acceptable prime time entertainment…. but not a tender kiss between two women, apparently. It seems the only way for a media personality in Australia to be accepted as gay is to become an icon then come out once their legend status is enshrined, such as Molly Meldrum and Magda Szubanski, make it a part of their whole shtick, like Joel Creasey, or just shut the hell up about it.
Or you can be an activist. Become the issue. Get wheeled out for talking points on the news and award ceremonies so that Australia can pat itself on the back for how progressive it is. Hey, its still not as degrading as the Logies.
Sidenote: I have a long list of Australian celebrities that I believe to be closeted gays. I have another list of celebrities that are semi-confirmed as gay because a ‘friend of a friend’ has slept with them. But neither shall be revealed because I don’t want to get sued into oblivion. (Just to be a dirty tease: there’s a newsreader who dresses up teenage rent boys in his son’s school uniform and a footy player who gets on the pipe and visits bathhouses in states where he thinks he won’t be recognised.)
