We’re here, we’re queer, we’re still in high school

Young Daniel Swain is rather impressive in today’s Sydney Morning Herald. Things must have improved in Wollongong, even if there is a way yet for our society (and the world) to go…

The F-bomb was dropped on me only once. I was at a bus shelter with my then boyfriend when we heard the “call of the wild”: “Go back to Mardi Gras you f—ing faggots!”. I responded as calmly as I could: “I may be a faggot, sir, but you are a fool. My people get parades, what do your people get?”

The gay teenager is a modern invention. No longer must we wait for the liberal oasis of university to express our sexuality identity. After several years enduring those polite euphemisms of “flamboyance” and “sensitivity” I tiptoed out of the closet. Fifteen, out and proud.

My story is not unique. For the more liberal members of our generation the closet has become an antique…

Thankfully, my own high school is, largely, the tolerant, accepting society in microcosm. It is Wollongong’s only academically selective school which means that the student body is intelligent enough to know that sex only matters when you’re involved. To the Sydney readers, I hope that shatters some of your stereotypes of Wollongong: we aren’t all steel-brained Neanderthals.

At last: a right-wing blog that doesn’t make me want to curl up and die…

Most right-wing blogs I read are simply execrable, cheer-leading, in the main, for the pooling of bigotry and stereotypes, and for some of the more lamentably self-satisfied trends in society, a word many of them would reject. This is especially true of US right-wing blogs, but Australia has its share, some of them sadly only too popular — or should that be populist?

So with great pleasure I introduce (courtesy of WordPress and its what’s hot links) a European blog of considerable merit, which is not to say I endorse absolutely everything on it. It is, however, a blog to be savoured. Click to visit.

 

It isn’t just their good taste in templates either. Here are two entries that I have enjoyed so far:

• Science and Islam
• Global-Warming Deniers: $