Rodney Croome . gay advocate

'Wear it with pride'

A ground-breaking education campaign must focus on regional and rural LGBT people.

Today saw the launch of "Wear It With Pride", a new $350,000, government-funded campaign to educate same-sex partners about their rights and responsibilities following the recognition of same-sex de facto relationships in federal law in 2008.

The Wear It With Pride campaign sets an important precedent.

It’s only fair that government allocate resources to explain such an important and complex set of legal changes to those many tens of thousands of people these changes will affect.

In the past, when it came to LGBT law reform, governments generally shirked this responsibility and left under-resourced community groups to fill the gap.

However, the fact WIWP is breaking new ground doesn’t mean we should refrain from questioning the shape it has taken.

One persistent criticism I have heard in recent weeks is about the name “Wear It With Pride”.

“Why should we be proud of a reform that was way overdue, disadvantaged vulnerable people in the LGBT community with too little consideration of their needs, and/or only got us half way to equality anyway?”, the criticism generally goes.

We could add, why use a slogan that is already taken by dealers in Australian-flag wear?

As someone who advocated for this reform for many years, I do feel proud.

However, I can understand why others with less investment see the campaign’s name as an instruction about what they should feel rather than a reflection of what they really feel.

Another criticism is that the community consultation about the campaign’s direction was limited and tokenistic.

I understand consultation only occurred in the eastern states (with all references to the Tasmanian leg mysteriously not included in the draft consultation report).

Moreover, participants in the consultation report that they felt the direction of the campaign was set before the consultation occurred. “Font size was about all they wanted my opinion on”, was one participant’s assessment (fonts seem to be a major issue for WIWP).

As for my beef, regular readers will recall I was critical of what was to become the Wear It With Pride campaign when it was first being developed because it was run by health organisations, not human rights bodies.

At the time I wrote that human rights groups are familiar with running effective campaigns on shoe-strings, whereas…

“I fear that the money will be squandered on the kind of focus groups and advertising agents big-budget health promotion organisations are addicted to.”

Today’s launch did nothing to assuage this fear: artist-inspired t’shirts (that how many people will actually wear?), Hill's hoists outside the Opera House (as if it was still the Olympic Games opening ceremony), pop songs, celebrities, designers, all of it thanks to Satchi...I can’t imagine how much this would have cost to develop and organise (even given the donation of time and effort by artists and celebs).

Meanwhile, the amount left over for local implementation of the campaign is tiny – a couple of thousand in Tassie, a few hundred in the Northern Territory (although I understand raising further funds for local initiatives is a campaign objective).

The problem here is not only extravagance, but a failure to properly understand where the need lies.

Funding for both local initiatives and local advertising seems to have been allocated on a population basis.

But cultural and demographic factors make this unreasonable.

It’s much easier and cheaper to reach LGBT people who live in inner-city, metro areas with an established community media, a friendly mainstream media and a plethora of friendly NGOs than it is in, say, Central Australia.

Localisation is crucial to the success of a campaign like this.

Even though the reforms in question are national, their impact varies immensely across the nation: parenting laws are all dealt with differently in WA, civil partnership schemes in Tas, Vic and the ACT give the federal reform a different complexion, LGBT people from Indigenous and non-Anglo backgrounds will have a different take on what the reforms mean.

Then there’s the simple fact that the more isolated LGBT are, the more information and awareness-raising they need from WIWP.

When the Tas G&L Rights Group and the Hobart Community Legal Service conducted workshops on this reform around Tassie last year the largest audience was not in Hobart or Launceston. It was in Burnie.

Why? Because LGBT people in Burnie don’t have the regular information sources available to people in bigger centres.

WIWP should be developing targetted materials for non-metro communities. Instead Sydney is once again absorbing the funds as well as setting the tone.

Anyway, enough whinging for now.

Check out the WIWP website and let me know what you think.

*

In other federal-entitlements news,

According to the Federal Government there has been a remarkably high rate of compliance with new social security rules recognising same-sex partners, and only 358 people have had their entitlements cut altogether.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t acknowledge the fear some older couples feel about being outed, or the far greater number who have had their entitlements reduced, making it harder to make ends meet.

The Government’s figures do not exonerate it from failing to exempt older partners from reform and providing others with longer to adjust.

In other news altogether,

Ian Roberts has joined Gary Burns in fighting Footy Show homophobia.

UK activist group, Outrage, is looking for couples to challenge marriage discrimination in the European Court of Human Rights, a vital step towards the recognition of equality in marriage as a human rights issue.

A registered British therapist is exposed for believing homosexuality is caused by everything from birth trauma to Freemasonry.

A broadcaster associated with the American Family Association calls for all homosexuals to be imprisoned.

And

Twitter employees respond amusingly to an anti-gay picket.