Rodney Croome . gay advocate

f) Lots of other LGBT issues

Prejudices from the Past

This article was published in MCV and SX News on 20.4.10.

All gay and bisexual men should welcome the Red Cross’ decision to review its ban on gay blood donation.

The ban affects every one of us, including those who wouldn’t give blood, even if they could.

It effectively says that all men who have sex with men are all at high risk of HIV infection, it stigmatises us all as a threat to public health, and it re-inforces the myth that we are all sexually irresponsible.

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f) Lots of other LGBT issues

Gay blood ban review must be transparent

This article about gay blood donation was published on the ABC Unleashed webpage on 12.4.10

A review of Australia’s ban on sexually-active gay men giving blood, just announced by the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, is long over due.

In recent years similar reviews have occurred in Canada, New Zealand, Scotland, Sweden, and appear likely soon in the US.

Since 2006 a review has also had the support of Australia’s community AIDS organisations, which have traditionally supported the ban.

But until now the Australian Red Cross has been reluctant to look at its policy.

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f) Lots of other LGBT issues

Opening our eyes

This address was given at the launch of 'Beyond "That's So Gay"', in Melbourne on 18.2.10

Nothing is obvious until it is pointed out.

Most people thought the earth was flat until it was pointed out that ships that sail over the horizon come back.

Lots of people thought wearing masks and smoking tobacco prevented the plague until someone pointed out what seems obvious to us today, that rats, fleas and poor hygiene were the problems.

In the same way, the old, outdated and irrational ways of thinking that hold us back from effectively challenging homophobia in schools have too rarely been identified for what they are.

But now, finally, someone has come along who has pointed them all out. Suddenly, they are obvious.

That someone is Dan Witthaus.

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f) Lots of other LGBT issues

'Let's do it'

This article was published in MCV on 15.12.09.

Kevin Rudd’s keen interest in foreign affairs has earnt him the nickname “Kevin 747”.

But there is one grave foreign issue he hasn’t shown an interest in, yet.

Uganda is about to enact a law that will make the penalty for gay sex life imprisonment and for repeated offences, death. Positive discussion of LGBT issues, funding of LGBT groups, and even failure to dob in a homosexual, will incur a gaol term.

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f) Lots of other LGBT issues

An important step forward in blood donation reform: Cain v Australian Red Cross Society

This summary of the Tasmanian gay blood donation case by Ben Bartl and Rodney Croome* was published in the Tasmanian Law Society Journal in October 2009.

On 27th May 2009 a landmark case for reform of Australian blood donation policy was handed down in Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Tribunal. The case of Cain v Australian Red Cross Society [2009] TASADT 03 concerned Michael Cain, a young Tasmanian who was refused the opportunity to donate blood at an Australian Red Cross Society Blood Service (ARCBS) collection centre in Launceston because he answered ‘yes’ to a question asking whether he had male-to-male sex (MSM) within the last 12 months. Four and a half years after lodgment of the complaint of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and lawful sexual activity, the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Tribunal, comprised of Chairperson Wood and Tribunal Members Rheinberger and Otlowski, unanimously upheld the Red Cross policy as ‘reasonable’. In coming to its conclusion, the Tribunal acknowledged that the policy did disadvantage and discriminate against homosexual men, but given that the ARCBS is bound by law to ensure the risk of unsafe blood is as low as possible, the Red Cross policy did not amount to either direct or indirect discrimination. However, whilst the decision was disappointing for the complainant, it is an important step forward for the reform of blood donation policy both in Australia and around the world particularly given the number of internationally recognized medical, public policy and social research experts that were called to gave evidence to the Tribunal, and the fact that the Red Cross is responsible or partly-responsible for the collection of blood in many of the world’s developed countries.

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f) Lots of other LGBT issues

Breaking the Spell of Silence

This article was published on Online Opinion on March 29th, 2007.

“Less theory, more facts”: that’s the catch-cry of governments and commentators concerned about progressive, “post-modern” values in education.

Well now we the facts are in on schools anti-homophobia programs.

“Breaking the Spell of Silence”, a study by the University of Tasmania’s Dr Doug Bridge has shown that one such program, Pride and Prejudice, significantly reduces the prejudices of school students towards gay men and lesbians.

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f) Lots of other LGBT issues

Human rights and national pride

Address by Rodney Croome to the New Matilda National Human Rights Bill launch, Hobart Town Hall, 11.2.06

What a wonderful Tasmanian irony that the very week we sit down to discuss a National Human Rights Bill, and the State Government announces its plan to investigate a Tasmanian equivalent, our Shadow Attorney-General, Michael Hodgman, has reminded us why human rights guarantees are so important.

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f) Lots of other LGBT issues

Healing Australia's soul: leadership in queer Australia today

This address was given at the Australian LGBTIQ multi-cultural conference in Melbourne on October 17th 2004.

I have a friend who recently went on his first trip to Sydney as a newly out young gay Tasmanian.

It was the same kind of adventure for him that it is for thousands of young men in similar circumstances.

He told me after the visit that he felt he’d arrived somewhere it was not only easier to be gay, but where the meaning of gay is defined. This was a place to re-invent himself.

He promenaded, and shopped and danced, and he met a guy, the coolest guy he could imagine. One thing led to another and thus Sydney fulfilled its sexual promise as well.

And that’s where it ended. Not because the big city ceased to seduce but because of what my friend and his cool new friend talked about after they’d had sex.

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The best of gay Australia

Three of the best are right here in Tassie

(published in the Gay Australia Guide at the end of 2003)

BEST BERRIES

It’s easier going from rags to riches in a land that is already rich.

When Kate Bradley moved to Tasmania almost sixteen years ago she had nothing but several years experience as a textile technician and the scant savings it cost to buy some acres on a hill-side near Swansea. From this she has built one of Tasmania’s best known berry farms.

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f) Lots of other LGBT issues

Learning from the Majority World

We have much to learn from LGBT struggles in the majority world

(address to the Amnesty International Global Human Rights Conference, Sydney, October 2002)

South Africa is a country with many problems; poverty, violence, unending ethnic hatreds, environmental devastation, soaring rates of HIV infection, problems which affect LGBT South Africans at least, if not more, than others. Yet in the mid 1990s in the midst of their battles with these intractable problems South Africa’s LGBT activists turned their attention to a piece of paper, the new South African constitution, and how that piece of paper could advance their emancipation by explicitly recognising the right to sexual self determination.

Compare the response of the Australian LGBT community to recent debates in this country about changes to our constitution. We followed along behind an uninspired discussion of a Bill of Rights and when that faded so did our interest. I guess with LGBT kids still killing themselves, with hate criminals still terrorising us, and of course with parties to run, we had too much else to do. Since its adoption the new South African constitution has been used to strike down anti-gay criminal laws and recognise same sex couple rights. Appeals to constitutional human rights guarantees have been no less successful elsewhere in the majority world. As recently as August appeals by gay activists to rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution have prompted moves by that country’s Supreme Court to over turn laws against same sex relationships. Meanwhile Australia remains stuck in the rapidly diminishing ranks of western countries not to have a national guarantee of basic rights and freedoms. Not by coincidence we are also one of the most backward countries in the western world when it comes to the recognition of LGBT human rights in national law.

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