Marriage Equality vs Catholic Bishop Christopher Prowse

Dear Catholic Bishop Christopher Prowse,

Your lies and untruths do you and your boy-raping paedophile-protecting Catholic Church no justice.

You have no credibility and you make no sense.

You perpetuate vile attitudes.

I dislike you because you are full of hate and intolerance.

Michael Barnett.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52h08RNB6_M]

Now that I’m married…

Gregory and I participated in the Adam Hills In Gordon St Tonight Mass Same-sex wedding. It’s been a positive and rewarding experience for us.

Tonight my partner Gregory and I got married.  We made a public declaration, affirming our love for each other.  We were dressed in our sartorial best, freshly shorn and groomed like two gay blades.

20120326 Michael and Gregory on the Adam Hills wedding set


We had a bucks night the week before and we even had a lovely party afterward, with wonderful catering.  Oh, and there were bomboniere.

I have to be honest with you.  It wasn’t a real wedding, and we didn’t really get married.  But yes, there was a wedding, on TV, in which as reality actors, we pretended to get married.  You see, currently in Australia two men like Gregory and me are not allowed to get married to each other.  That’s gay.


But despite the mean-spirited Howardian legalistic prohibition on us blokes tying the knot, the lovely team at Adam Hills In Gordon St Tonight decided to throw us a big ole gay wedding.  And throw us a wedding they did.  There were photoshoots, interviews, a special bucks and hens night (coz there were some chicks as well as some blokes wanting to tie the knot), the main event, wedding presents and even a cocktail reception afterward.  Oh, and there was live entertainment too, although it seemed more like it had been freshly exhumed.  And all at tax-payer expense.  Thank you tax paying Australia, and especially Jim Wallace and Bill Muehlenberg, coz I know how much you hip dudes would have wanted to help us celebrate our homosexual union.

If you know me you’d know that I’ve been very activisty in raising awareness of the discrimination that a not insignificant section of Australia’s population faces when it comes to equality in relationship recognition.  I’ve protested (peacefully) at the Equal Love rallies.  I helped my partner campaign as a then-candidate for the Secular Party of Australia in the 2010 Federal Election (because the party supported marriage equality).  I manage the Proud to be a Second Class Australian Facebook group, with a moniker aimed to draw attention to being treated as second class by the Federal Government.  I give money to Get Up! to campaign for marriage equality.  I’m even a paid member of Australian Marriage Equality.

I don’t think I could possibly make it any clearer that I am trying to achieve a turnaround in the marriage legislation in Australia, to remove the discriminatory words that, for no good reason, prevents me from marrying my partner.  That said, we are already living in a legally recognised relationship under Victorian state legislation because we entered a civil union on April 21, 2010.  Sadly though this relationship is only valid in Victoria and carries no legal weight anywhere else in the world.  It’s also not the same as being married.  You might ask why?  Well, quite simply, because it’s not a marriage.  It’s a civil union, or a registered relationship, or a domestic partnership, or whatever else you want to call it, but it’s not a marriage.

20100421 Relationships Register


Do I want to get married?  Good question. Yes, and no.  To be honest I don’t really know.  Parts of me want to get married and then go and say to those who don’t believe in equality “See, two poofs can now get married, so stick your bigotry…”.  More than that I want to be a positive example of a successful same-sex relationship, to help empower those in their closets, and say “Gregory and I are two men, married to each other.  If we can do it, so can you.  Be proud of who you are”.  Other parts of me simply don’t like the old-fashioned, out-dated notion of marriage that binds two people together, until either one dies or they get a divorce.  Camels and goats must be fatted and dripping in gold chokers if you must give a dowry.

I am committed to being in my relationship with Gregory, and irrespective of any piece of paper or legal status, we love each other very much and want to be deeply interconnected in each other’s lives.  I know what we mean to each other.  We’re special in each other’s eyes and hearts and that’s something legislation can’t change.  But it can make us equal in society, and that’s what we both want.  Equality.  Incidentally, some narrow-minded folk believe that two gay men can’t be equal in society, and therefore shouldn’t get married, because we can’t have children, or that even that we’d be depriving the children of a mother, and therefore bad parents, blah blah blah.  With two well-adjusted adult children under his belt Gregory certainly isn’t looking to have any more.  And we are equal in society.

20120326 Panorama of wedding couples on Adam Hills TV set

Now, around the middle of February this year Gregory sent me an email asking if I wanted to be in the Adam Hills IGST mass gay wedding:

To join our Mass Gay TV Wedding on March 26, email gordonst@abc.net.au – include your contact details and a pic of the happy couple!

I pondered the idea and then without consulting Gregory I sent in an application to be part of the wedding.  I thought that if he was tempting fate with asking me to be part of a TV wedding, I’d accept the challenge and commit him, and me, to being part of it.  🙂

We were accepted by the IGST team and told there were going to be a number of events over the coming weeks culminating in the TV wedding.  It was becoming exciting.  A bit like a real wedding.  Photos, what to wear, bring some food, look good, get hair cut (#2 clippers on each other…), vajazzle, you know, the usual stuff.  There was a sense of anticipation.  A bit like a real wedding.

We told our family and friends about this.  They got excited.  Very excited.  Colleagues were talking, even those who were usually a little uneasy with the “gay” thing were getting excited for Gregory and me.  I was even asked by a colleague, who only last year told me he didn’t believe in gay marriage, whether I was going to invite the guys from work to a bucks night.  After a coffee and a chat he even seemed comfortable with the notion that marriage equality might have some merit in treating people on an equal basis.  Yes, equality is about being equal.

Gregory told me many of his colleagues were having kittens because he was getting married.  They really couldn’t contain their excitement for him.  And on Facebook I was getting a variety of well-wishes from people who wanted to know when “it” was and then wished us all sorts of lovely things in anticipation of the big day (or is it the big gay…?).  Things were abuzz.

Mikey & Gregory pre-wedding glitzy pic – March 8 2012


I really started feeling like I was getting married, for real.  When we got civil unionated in 2010 people were happy for us, but not to the same level as they had become around the IGST wedding event.  It was as if the notion of marriage conveyed a special status, over and above any other sort of life event or relationship recognition.  Funny that.  Because it does.  It’s the ultimate in happy.  And it’s the ultimate in silly too.  Just look at the amount of money people throw at weddings.  It’s big business.

Quite remarkably though, and I think this is about as significant as it gets, Gregory told me that tonight, on his way home, a dear friend of his told him that he had decided that it wasn’t so bad after all if two blokes wanted to get married.  He threw his religious belief coins up in the air and they both landed queen-side up.  And the world didn’t stop, and the sky didn’t fall in.

Mikey and Gregory pre-wedding photoshoot – March 8 2012


People have been talking because of the IGST wedding event.  They are talking about how lovely it is to see two guys getting married, and two gals getting married, and they cried and they were happy.  These people and conversations are actually changing attitudes and opening minds.  Oh, and my Facebook account has melted with all the wonderful messages from people who saw us on the TV and loved that we were getting married.  I have never ever had a bigger response to anything on my Facebook page than to our participation in this event.  It’s really quite overwhelming, and humbling.

So we got TV married tonight, in a very happily-ever-after way.  Two handsome princes rode off into the sunset and shared a bit of love around the place, and hopefully they made a difference.

PS.  If you missed the TV coverage of this event, you can catch up on it here.

PPS.  If you want to tell the Australian government why you support marriage equality, you can make a submission here.  It only takes a few minutes.  Be quick as the deadline is April 2, 2012.  You can read other people’s public submissions on the site, to get an idea of what they are saying.  Speak from the heart.  It need only be a few paragraphs.  Thanks.

Madonna crucifies Russia’s anti-gay hate laws

Madonna is standing up to the vile homophobic Russian government. Madonna is awesome.

Madonna is pure awesome:

I’m a freedom fighter.
My show
My songs
My work
My art
Is all about freedom of expression
Freedom to choose to speak to act
Always with humanity and compassion
I will come to St. Petersburg to speak up for the gay community, to support the gay community and to give strength and inspiration to anyone who is or feels opressed.
I don’t run away from adversity.
I will speak during my show about this ridiculous atrocity.

MADONNA ANSWERS ST PETERSBURG’S CONTROVERSY

I have always loved Madonna, and now I love her even more.

Ban Ki-moon on same-sex relationships and ending discrimination against GLBT people

On March 7, 2012, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon delivered a historic speech asking countries around the world to decriminalize same sex relationships, and end discrimination of LGBT people.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUizJUQIbq4]

My Woolworths Easter Drawing

The Easter Bunny died for your sins.

Zombie Easter Bunny

Download the competition form here and draw your Easter.

Barnett to be married at public expense

Apparently I’m getting married on TV and at tax-payer expense. 😉

[SOURCE]

Photographer, blogger, popular Melbourne gay identity and significant Qmelb contributor, Michael Barnett, is to be featured in a mass gay wedding with his handsome partner. The wedding (and what has been advertised as a stag night / hens night) will be hosted on Australia’s national television network’s by comedian Adam Hills over the next two Wednesday evenings. This will clash with Melbourne’s Queer Film Festival. The wedding will be paid for by Australian taxpayers, a service the ABC has never offered to straight couples. At this stage it is not known whether the ABC or Barnett will be releasing a video of the post wedding celebrations.

Michael Glover
East Melbourne

(The Gordon St Mass Same-Sex TV Wedding Extravaganza is just around the corner! This inaugural event will happen on March 26 and airs Wednesday March 28 at 8:30pm.)

stand4marriage (or Warwick Marsh 4 Peter Madden)

Peter Madden and Warwick Marsh would make excellent homosexual lovers, but which one would go top?

[SOURCE]

I reckon Peter Madden and Warwick Marsh would make great homosexual lovers.  Two wonderful role models of Australian masculinity.  But which one would be the man and which one would be the woman in that relationship?  Coz we all know that every relationship has male and female roles.

I also wonder which one would go top and which one bottom.  Perhaps they’d take turns, one going for it first, then flipping and going the other way.  I bet they’d both get down and dirty, squealing like stuck pigs, and there might even be some santorum being shared, coz I’m sure they’d be lapping up the post-coital love juices.

Well, that’s just my fantasy, a bit like their fantasy, that all homosexual relationships are disgusting and dangerous and that it’s ok to vilify homosexuals.

Oh, and if they don’t like that gays want to marry a same-sex partner, I’m of the opinion that their choice of life partner is pretty sucky too and that they could have done a lot better.

AJN Watch confirmed gone soft

Yesterday I said AJN Watch had the bloggers equivalent of erectile dysfunction.  In a post just up today they’ve confirmed it:

The simple reason that we have stayed away from this semi-annual “gay moan and gripe” festivities is because it has become boring. Boring for us and boring to our readers. Zehu! Nothing else.

I don’t for one minute believe this codswallop.  Their masthead states quite clearly:

We spotlight errors, expose misrepresentations and vigorously advocate our community’s positions.

If they had an ounce of credibility they’d be vigorously advocating their community’s positions, but nope, they’re can’t be bothered.

Soft shmocks.

(P.S.  AJN Watch accuses gays of being “half-naked, sexually-disturbed weirdos” and “pink-frilly underpants-wearers”.  Their religious community is the one rife with the hideous child sex-abuse scandals, police investigations and cover-ups at Yeshivah College.  Not to mention the men walking around the streets in hats made of possums, wearing funny white stockings and curly side-locks, and their women covered up, not unlike the burqa-clad Muslim women, simply because their lecherous men can’t control their sexual urges.  They’re not in a position to be calling gays weirdos, especially with this sort of shmutz and weirdness in their community.)

AJN Watch has gone soft (or “Let’s play hide the kosher elephant”)

AJN Watch has gone soft given their lack of response to the Australian Jewish News’ coverage of the homophobic bullying and the ECAJ’s spanking of Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen.

I’m really intrigued.  AJN Watch has gone soft.  Once they’d take on the Australian Jewish News with great gusto, and most especially when it was on the issue of homosexuality.  But of late AJN Watch has remained silent on the major coverage that the AJN gave to the two most pressing issues of late, namely the Executive Council of Australian Jewry’s spanking of the out-of-line Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen and the AJN‘s extensive coverage of the taboo topic of homosexuality (in the context of bullying in schools).

Has someone had a word in the ear of the editorial team at AJN Watch and told them it’s not ok to publish gay-hate any more?  I suspect they’d be foaming at the mouth with these recent events, and barely able to contain their collective rage.  I mean, the best they’ve been able to get outraged about lately is kosher cheese and Jon Faine (and of course a reminder about how to bypass the need to subscribe to the AJN).

I can’t say I’m at all disappointed that their vile hate has been silenced, but I’m curious as to what’s transpired behind the scenes.  The silence is deafening.