Rodney Croome . gay advocate

c) Activism and social change

On Great Oyster Bay

This speech was given at the Patron's Breakfast at the 2nd annual Bendigo Queer Film Festival on April 3rd 2005.

Good morning everyone.

It’s an honour and a privilege to be here today. It’s been a real thrill to witness the vibrancy of Bendigo’s LGBT community, particularly the success of projects like Way Out, FAB and the Queer Film Festival.

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c) Activism and social change

The Place of Desire: historical and geographical determinants of social change

This lecture was given to sociology students at the University of Tasmania on October 12th 2004.

There is a myth that I must begin today’s lecture by dispelling.

It is that social change, and in particular, attitudes to sexual difference, and homosexuality, are not driven and shaped by universal forces.

Whether sexual minorities are ill-treated, or treated with respect, whether they are valued as an important element of a diverse society or subject to criminal sanctions, is determined by very specific factors, which play themselves out differently in different places at different times.

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c) Activism and social change

Marching forward to freedom and equality

Address at the launch of the Greens National LGBTI policy, Sydney, 28.9.04

Although I am a spokesperson for the Equal Rights Network, I’m not here this evening as a representative of that organization.

Instead I want to talk to you straight from the heart as a Tasmanian gay activist.

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c) Activism and social change

The anger of the lion is noble

Can agents of change put their anger to constructive ends?

(address to the Tasmanian Council of Churches Commission for the Gospel and Human Relationships, Hobart, March 2004)

"Whatever you do, don’t answer back, don’t argue, and don’t get angry. If you feel like you’re getting angry take some deep breaths, walk away, or move next to a friend who will help you restrain yourself."

With this admonition still ringing in our ears, the doors of the bus opened, we disembarked, collected our placards and banners, and walked toward the community centre or town hall which had, for that night, been selected by human history to play out one of its cruelest contemporary dramas.

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c) Activism and social change

A recipe for social change

What are the ingredients of a successful campaign for social change?

(address to the Annual National Conference of the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union, Hobart, September 2003)

Today we commemorate two important anniversaries.

The first is the attack on the World Trade Centre Towers in New York two years ago.

The second is the landing, two hundred years ago, of Lieutenant John Bowen at Risdon Cove, to found the first permanent European settlement in Tasmania.

Some believe it was tomorrow, but most reputable historians believe it was today.

These events share common features. They were both historical tragedies involving a clash of cultures with irreconcilable aspirations. They both marked the end of one era and the beginning of another.

But in my mind they are linked even more profoundly.

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c) Activism and social change

On being Tasmanian and free

Will history ever set gay Tasmanians free?

(address to the University of Melbourne Australian Centre, Tasmanian study tour, Hobart September 24th 2001)

"Shall fathers weep and mourn, to see a lovely son, debased, demoralised, deformed by Britain’s filth and scum?
Shall mothers heave the sigh, to see a daughter fair, debauched and sunk in infamy, by those imported here?
Shall Tasman’s Isle so famed so lovely and so fair, from other nations be estranged, the Name of Sodom bear?"

This poem appeared in the Launceston Examiner in 1846, penned most likely by the editor of that august publication, Rev John West.

Is there anything unusual or remarkable about this? Don’t church ministers have a long tradition of indignantly swiping at homosexuality? Well, what makes this poem special is that Rev West was no ordinary church minister, and his loathing of homosexuality was not just because he believed the Bible to be the Word of God.

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c) Activism and social change

"A Just Society"

There is no justice while the only home some gay kids ever find is a coffin

(address at the launch of the Victorian Law Foundation's, "A Just Society", September 1999)

I don't know his name or how he died. All I know is that a 16 year old man, Captain of his Launceston high school, killed himself last week after being constantly harassed for being gay.

He was someone's son, someone's brother, someone's friend, and as he is lost now to those who loved him, so whatever contribution he may have made to the lives of others, to the prosperity of his country and to the betterment of humanity is also lost.

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c) Activism and social change

Achieving justice

Many different themes harmonise in any successful campaign for social change.

(published in, 'A Just Society', 1999.

For people around the world December 10th is the day of the year most closely associated with human rights. It was on this day in 1948 that the original members of the United Nations, shocked and appalled by the slaughter and genocide of the Second World War, signed the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

But for one small group of people in Tasmania, December 9th - the day before International Human Rights Day - has come to symbolise not only the profound importance of human rights, but how respect for these rights is successfully fostered and enshrined.

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c) Activism and social change

The challenge of change

If we don't risk the worst we will never know the best

(published in 'Inside Out - an Australian collection of Coming Out Stories', 1999)

In the pile of old photos in the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group store room there are two particular photos of two very different people.

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c) Activism and social change

Exploding gay myths

Why do so many contemporary gay and lesbian advocates use HIV, violence, suicide, hetero celebs and the pink dollar to dress up straight forward claims on justice?

(address to the 1998 national Queer Collaborations Conference, Hobart)

Hello everyone and welcome to Hobart, a city which for a decade now has been at the cutting edge of global gay and lesbian activism. And welcome also on the most important day of the queer calendar. Today is Stonewall Day, the day in 1969 when the patrons of the Stonewall Inn in New York City took to the streets to fight back against years of police intimidation and violence, and the contemporary movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered rights was born.

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