On June 3 the City of Darebin Council passed the following motion:
THAT building on its support for the No to Homophobia campaign expressed on 10 December 2012, Council commit to No to Homophobia’s ‘Promise Campaign’, thereby ‘giving its word to stand up against homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. Always’
Impressive.
In March this year, the Jewish Community Council of Victoria announced they were joining the No To Homophobia campaign. At their May 6 plenum meeting they advised they would not pass a motion in support of saying No To Homophobia or calling others to do so, and instead simply made an informal recommendation to its affiliates:
MOTIONS BEFORE THE PLENUM
The motions on the agenda regarding the ‘No to Homophobia’ campaign and Child Protection were actually recommendations to the JCCV affiliates and not motions which needed to be voted upon. Nina Bassat read the recommendations to the Plenum on the ‘No to Homophobia’ Campaign and the offer from the Child
Protection Reference Group.Nina Bassat requested that Affiliates advise the JCCV if they sign up to the ‘No To Homophobia’ campaign, and requested that Affiliates respond to the questions in the Child Protection Briefing Paper prepared by Andrew Blode and presented at
the Council of Presidents.
Not so impressive.
This week I asked the JCCV if a motion was put to their plenum that preceded their March announcement to support No To Homophobia, given that there was no minuted record of it in their March plenum minutes. They were unable to provide confirmation of such but advised me they would make enquiries to establish if there was. Watch this space.
And so, here we have two sizeable organisations who have both signed up to saying No To Homophobia, the City of Darebin which has made a firm documented commitment to the cause at council level, and the JCCV, not so much. A pity really, because in the absence of such a motion their level of commitment could be perceived to be lacklustre.
Council-Meeting-Minutes-3-June-2013