Inner Sydney at Dawn
"For the past few decades, the progressive fad of minority rights, fuelled by multiculturalism, has flourished. Once a hard form of multiculturalism took root, one that treated all cultures as equal, the values of the host country were effectively under attack. Cultural relativism morphed into a violent strand of Western self-loathing where tolerance was reinterpreted to mean tolerating those intolerant of Western culture and values."
Janet Albrechtsen
This is a story I wrote some years ago I found while cleaning up. It was at a time when the seedy 70s gay bar Costello's was in the news; and I was one of the few people around who actually remembered the place as it was daily demonised in the press. I was trying to point out the moral ambiguities of a place where street kids found food, money, alcohol and even, but certainly not always, the occasional kindness; in a time, too, before contemporary hysteria, or contemporary values, had turned multiple layes of gray into black and white. I don't think I actually succeeded; and now, with teenagers of my own, doubt the project was worthwhile. But this is now and that was then.
I remember Costellos.
It was a place where as kids we could go to get off the street, get
warm, get bought a drink, a feed, find somewhere to sleep for the
night.
For many of us it wasn't the place of pedaristic evil that it is being
daily painted in the media and the Police Royal Commission.
In the very early 70s Costello's was one of the only places in the
Cross where young people were welcome.
While the evidence from some of the witnesses before the Commission
may suggest that they were permanently psychologically damaged by what
went on in the less public realms upstairs, how much of this derives
from the impact on already disturbed adolescents of the stigma that
was attached to homosexuality in those days is a moot point.
For a lot of us Costello's was one of the only places you could go to
go to get off the street, away from the cops and the wierdos.
They didn't have youth refuges in those days.
There wasn't a queue of social workers waiting to help us. No one
wanted to know.
Our parents certainly didn't.
Going back home was never an option.
And for many young kids I'm sure it isn't an option today.
No - I don't support 12 year old kids being sexually abused.
If there's one thing I hope to achieve in life it would be that my own
children have a happier less emotionally distressed youth than I ever
did.
But let's get all this into some sort of perspective.
Does anyone seriously expect us to believe that you can't buy 14, 15
or 16 year olds in Sydney in the nineties? That to this day an endless
stream of sexually confused young men aren't coming in from often
abusive homes in the suburbs, seeking adventure, affection, somewhere
to sleep.
And that most of them, like myself, go on to have careers, wives or
lovers, children.
If I had to point to one thing that had scarred my life more than any
other, it wouldn't be the number of queens who admired my young body.
Now more than ever, since I've had kids of my own, I wonder how my
parents could have let me come home from school on Fridays, change out
of my school uniform and come back in the early hours of Monday
morning.
Knowing what I know now, I wonder how they could have thrown me out to
fend for myself within days of my 16th birthday.
I remember, drunk as a skunk, standing at the top of William Street,
and out of all the miserable chaos of that night one phrase from a
passer-by: ``He should be at home with his mother.'' And around the
same period, passing out literally in the gutter outside Circular
Quay, blind drunk again.
Out of all the hundreds of office workers bustling home to the North
Shore, it was a gay man that picked me up and washed the vomit off me,
let me have a shower at his house, gave me a change of clothes.
It was gay men who encouraged me to finish my schooling by
correspondence. Who taught me to appreciate music, books,
conversation. Who encouraged my first stumbling efforts to write.
Who, when I was homeless, sometimes for weeks on end, would give me
shelter, food, clothes.
Who in later years helped me through university when my own father
wouldn't because only pinko communist poofs went to university.
Most of us came from pretty miserable home lives. We were utterly
starved of affection.
But there was always a queue of queens ready to take us home, buy us
drinks, lavish us with attention, probably boast about us afterwards.
They were often kind, they were often lonely, they were often
alcoholic.
A few kindly old souls I remember with affection to this day. People
like old Hugh, a retired doctor in his 70s, long dead now, who treated
us all as if we were his own children. Who was too much of a gentlemen
to ever ask for sex. Oh no dear, I've already had one heart attack.
Who listened to our problems, cared about us, gave us money and advice
when we needed it.
A lot of young men around the Cross were very saddened by his death.
For me, he was one of the first adult men who had ever actually cared
about me, who I was, what I was feeling; who I could go to for help,
who was proud of me for trying to complete my education.
In the end, who was using who?
Costellos was one of Sydney's earliest gay bars, popping up at a time
when gay pride and gay culture was entirely subterranean, when the
sexuality of everyone there was illegal, when the upheavals of the
sixties were only just starting to be felt in Australia and when the
vast stupidity, ignorance and nastiness of the mainstream culture was
something worth fighting against.
At the back of Costellos was the dance floor. At the front the bar. If
you were in any way different or remotely adventurous in Sydney in
those days, sooner or later you would end up there.
As someone who was there, raking over the coals of what happened in
that bar more than 20 years ago strikes me as very odd. For everyone
who was tormented, for whatever reasons, by their early sexual
experiences, there are others who owe their lives to the kindness of strangers, predators though they may have been.
THE BIGGER STORY
Brisbane Times:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is set to touch down in Washington on the first stop of a five country tour that will take him around the globe.
Over the next 17 days, Mr Rudd will travel around 45,000km as he meets political, economic and business leaders in Washington, New York, London, Beijing, Brussels, Bucharest and southern China.
Mr Rudd will use his first major trip outside the Asia Pacific to talk economics with some of the key decision makers who are trying to prevent the US from going into meltdown from the global credit crisis.
Climate change, Iraq, Afghanistan and the stalled Doha world trade talks will be some of the other major items up for discussion as Mr Rudd works his way through a packed Washington schedule.
After arriving this evening around 8pm Washington time (1100 AEDT Friday), Mr Rudd's first engagement will be a visit to the White House to meet US President George W Bush.
It will be their first face-to-face meeting since Mr Bush's pal and Mr Rudd's predecessor, John Howard, was ousted from government last November.
Herald Sun:
CHINA crisis it isn't, but a growing China syndrome confronts Kevin Rudd as he makes his first major overseas trip since assuming office.
The Prime Minister's lengthy itinerary concludes with five days in China. It promises to be a delicate balancing act for the one-time diplomat.
Sensitive issues sure to test his artfulness include Tibet protests and China's bid to build its stake in Australia's resources sector.
Plus, there is Mr Rudd's 2006 acceptance of sponsored overseas travel from mysterious Beijing-based company Beijing AustChina Technology when he was a Labor frontbencher... But it is that very personal dimension that leads many to question just how strong a message he will deliver on Chinese action against Tibetan protesters."
Herald Sun:
SEVERAL dozen Buddhist monks staged a brief protest in front of the first foreign reporters allowed in to the Tibetan capital Lhasa.
Monks at the Jokhang temple shouted down a Chinese official who was briefing the journalists on recent unrest in Lhasa, and yelled: "We want the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet, we want to be free".
The monks denounced the Chinese official as a liar.
After several minutes, the foreign reporters were ushered from the scene by their Chinese minders.
Inner Sydney at Dawn
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