Join the Mardi Gras Parade
If you're not one of the half-million people who'll be lining the streets of Sydney for the 21st annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade, you can still see it all on the Web either live or any time in the month following at http://netcast.mardigras.com.au/parade/. To watch it live, you should log on at least 15 minutes early, for the coverage that will begin on February 27 at 1:15am PDT/4:15am EDT (that's 8:15pm Australian Eastern Summer Time).
You can expect to see rather a lot of Monica Lewinsky (despite a delay in the planned wig shipments) and Kenneth Starr at the parade, as well as local lights (such as New South Wales Premier Bob Carr) in need of satirical skewering. With the help of tennis togs contributed by Nike, you'll also see an entire contingent of some 40 Amelie Mauresmos, who electrified the community with her public displays of affection towards her partner Sylvie Bourdon, as well as her defeat of Lindsay Davenport at the Australian Open.
Diplomat's Partner Meets Queen
In a first for Denmark, gay Australian Ambassador Stephen Brady presented his life partner, Peter Stevens, to Denmark's Queen Margrethe in Copenhagen this week. Although the Queen has socialized with some of her own gay and lesbian subjects, who were the world's first to be able to legally marry, she's not previously been introduced to any foreign diplomat's same-gender partner. It's not known if any Australian diplomat has made such a presentation to a foreign leader before.
While Brady himself did not offer comment and Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade would only say stiffly that it did not discriminate in employment, other Australian gays and lesbians were enthused. Openly gay Senator Dr. Bob Brown (Green - Tasmania) said, "It's terrific the Australian Ambassador took his partner with him to present his credentials to the Queen. He has put Australia on the map in Scandinavia and certainly throughout Europe." That's a reference to Brady's current ambassadorial duties to not only Denmark but also Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Norway, as well as a previous charge d'affaires appointment in Ireland.
The Australian Council for Lesbian and Gay Rights, while commending Brady for upholding Australia's image as a leader in gay and lesbian human rights, also took the occasion to call for full spousal rights and benefits for the domestic partners of all the nation's public servants. ACLGR co-convenor Rodney Croome said, "The equal rights that have been granted to senior public servants, especially those in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, must be extended to include all Commonwealth employees. The issue is particularly important in the Defense Forces where same-sex couples are often seriously disadvantaged by not having equal access to relocation payments and housing."
Lawyer Defends His Reputation
Attorney John Marsden, long one of Australia's most visible gays, has won the first round in what will still be a lengthy defamation lawsuit against Channel 7 licensee Amalgamated Television Services, which presented programs in 1995 and 1996 indicating that he had had sex with underage teens. In the first phase of the trial, a 4-person jury determined unanimously on February 25 that the programs had conveyed in a damaging manner that Marsden knowingly had sex with boys under 18; had sex with boys of 15, including some sex workers, after deliberately not asking their ages; and had given a 15-year-old boy drugs before having sex with him. The jury rejected a fifth charge by the plaintiff, that one show conveyed that Marsden had contributed to a notorious murder as one of a number of men who had sexually abused the perpetrator when he was a child.
The jury was specifically not responsible for judging the truth or falsity of the programs' content, but only what they said about Marsden and how it would impact his reputation. In the next phase, the judge alone will determine whether Channel 7 can legally justify the defamatory broadcasts and the amount of damages they should pay if not, but there are numerous legal questions to be answered before that trial begins. It's estimated to last six weeks and could easily go longer, as Marsden alone has some 30 - 50 witnesses to present to challenge the validity of the programs' content.
The alleged sexual encounters supposedly occurred between 1970 to 1984. Marsden, a prominent attorney, is a former president of the New South Wales Law Society, a former member of the New South Wales Police Board, and former head of the New South Wales council for Civil Liberties.
