The expulsion of "queer" activist, Norrie May Welby, from the management committee of Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby (GLRL) on March 25 has brought the increasingly heated question of a "queer" agenda, to replace the current "gay and lesbian" agenda of the lobby, to the boil. KAREN FREDERICKS compiled this introduction to some of the issues from a series of interviews conducted by MICHAEL SCHEMBRI (of Radio 2SER's Gaywaves program) at the GLRL's special general meeting on April 20.
Norrie May Welby describes herself as a "queer activist", "a bisexual", "a person with transgender issues" and someone who identifies "both as a gay male and as a female". She has been involved in the struggle for gay rights since she came out as a gay man at the beginning of her adult life. She has since changed her gender identification, or broadened it, but she remains actively involved in gay and lesbian politics in Sydney, particularly through the GLRL and its Anti-Violence Project.
On March 25 Welby was expelled from the GLRL management committee, by six votes to four, formally on the grounds that she had "persistently and wilfully acted in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the association" by making public comments critical of the lobby's (or its leadership's) attitudes and activities.
The mover of the expulsion motion, GLRL co-convener Peter Costello, has pointed to several public criticisms, including a letter from Welby to the Sydney Star Observer in November, which railed against the organisers of a GLRL anti-discrimination rally for "... keeping trannies firmly in their place as the unacknowledged serving class, the 'niggers of the queer community'".
Costello says that Welby "was in a position to have issues of concern to her addressed", and that "they were either not raised or were raised in a way that was unconstitutional". Costello says that
he and others attempted to conciliate with Welby but that she was not interested. This, he says, left no option but to use the constitution to defend the lobby "from continuing attack by a member of the committee that flaunts the constitution".
Whether the question was one of sexual or gender orientation, or of poor political form, Welby's expulsion has marked the full-scale eruption of the debate over the adoption of a "queer" agenda (which includes gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues) for the GLRL.
Special meeting
Following the expulsion, the editor of the Star Observer, Campion Decent, wrote a special editorial pointing out that Welby had been elected to lobby management on an explicitly "queer" platform. He challenged Costello's assertion that the expulsion was not over transgender and bisexual issues but rather a question of a "difficult person". He challenged the lobby leadership to "disband and go to the people" on both the composition of the management committee and the substantive issues involved.
About 200 GLRL members attended the special general meeting on April 20, called by the GLRL management committee in response to the SSO challenge. Norrie May Welby's membership was reinstated by the meeting, and a new management committee was elected consisting of five existing members (including Paul Costello, who remained as male co-convener, but not including Welby) and 10 new members.
The meeting went on to discuss two motions dealing with the debate over what had come to be seen as the proposed "queer" agenda for the GLRL.
The first motion, proposed by Mardi Gras secretary Richard Cobden, was that "this meeting reaffirms the objects of the GLRL to promote lesbian and gay rights in NSW ... and to resist any change to these objects in the foreseeable future". It was carried 88 votes to 39.
The second motion, proposed by Norrie May Welby, was
that "this meeting recognises that gay and lesbian rights ... are not solely the entitlement ... of those who are in identification as gay and lesbian ... but are the basic human rights of all people, including bisexuals and people with transgender issues", was defeated.
Thus, emerging from the complex intermingling of personal with political, a growing push has become clear for explicit inclusion of transgender and bisexual issues under the banner of what used to be called the "gay movement" and which has fairly recently become the "gay and lesbian movement". Also clear, however, is a strong opposition to this push, for which there is a broad range of reasoning.
The new female co-convener of the lobby, Jane Clements, echoes the feelings of many who voted against Welby's motion on April 20 when she says that she believes the rejection of the broader agenda by the lobby does not mean that bisexuals and transgender people are not part of the gay and lesbian community. "They're members of our community whether they identify as gay or lesbian or not", she says, but "I feel that the GLRL is for gays and lesbians ...
"I don't think it's actually up to the GLRL to start fighting on behalf of transgender people. If they want to set up their own group to do that, that's much more appropriate, and if they want the GLRL's help, then I'm sure that would be forthcoming."
'Left out'
Norrie May Welby sees the specific inclusion of bisexual and transgender issues as analogous to the way in which the involvement of lesbians was explicitly recognised when "gay" organisations became "gay and lesbian."
"If we acknowledge that trannies are part of the gay scene, and I don't see how anyone could argue that they're not, if we have a rally and say it's for 'lesbians and gay men', it specifically leaves trannies out", she says. "How can we be for these people if we're not addressing them? We have to
make them feel included and use labels that they identify with."
From Welby's point of view, the GLRL already includes transgender and bisexual people; it just doesn't recognise the fact. Her motion at the general meeting was designed to gain acknowledgment for the fact that "gay and lesbian rights" should not be restricted to those who identify, openly, as gay or lesbian but that they are basic human rights which should be available to all who are oppressed by "patriarchal, heterosexist society".
Roseanne Burston, of the group Love is Boundless, says that, by rejecting this position the GLRL is practising "old" politics — gay and lesbian coalition politics — rather than the "cutting edge" of new "queer" politics.
"Queer is where it's at right now. Queer is where all the campuses are at", she says, "and I can't believe that the GLRL has set itself aside from all this in such a staid way".
'Watering down'
Ken Davis of Lesbian and Gay Solidarity sees nothing new in the current debate. He points to the theory of "polymorphous perversity" popular in campus gay groups in the early '70s, a phenomenon which he believes held back the development of a politically powerful homosexual identity. Likewise, he sees the proposed "queer" politics as a "very dangerous watering down of lesbian and gay identity which we've built at great cost and through struggle."
"I think to create a bisexual identity is not progressive sexual politics", he maintains. "I think people who have sex with, or who desire, people of both genders, have always been welcomed under gay identity. Bisexuality is trying to say that between the two big blocks of identity there is a third force that is oppressed by both sides. I think that's an outrageous statement which shows no understanding of sexual oppression in our society."
Whilst he rejects the bisexual and queer agendas, Davis supports a more explicit acknowledgment of the work and demands of transgender people within organisations such as the GLRL. He believes there has been some movement towards trying to gain middle-class "respectability" for the movement by reducing recognition of and support for people with transgender issues, and that this needs to be redressed.
The 1993 Freedom March on Washington, in which over 1 million US citizens marched under a banner of "gay, lesbian and bisexual rights" may or may not be a glimpse into the future of the Australian movement. Transgender activists in the US are currently campaigning to have the word "transgender" added to the banner for future marches.
So the debate is not restricted to the Sydney GLRL, and even in that forum it is clearly not over. Paul Costello has announced plans for at least one GLRL forum to discuss the issue further. Bisexual and transgender activists are also planning their strategies for the lobby's annual general meeting in August.