Tue Nov 24, 1992
f) Lots of other LGBT issues
Green and gay politics in Tasmania
There are many unexpected links between green and gay politics and identity in Tasmania
(published in Burn, December 1992)
Each of us can trace the development of our gay or lesbian identities through important periods and events in our lives. For me the green movement in Tasmania has had a role to play in almost all of these pivotal times. When I was about 16 and still living with my parents in Devonport I bought a copy of Bob Brown of the Franklin. It is a two hundred page book but I bought it for the two pages that deal with Bob Brown's homosexuality and his coming out in 1975. For all their ambivalence these two pages told me exactly what I needed to know. They said that gay men can be good people and that somewhere else in Tasmania there were people like me. I hid that book behind my bookshelf for fear of being labelled a greenie and a poofter. But every couple of months I would take it out and read these two pages over and over just to re-assure myself that there was a better life ahead.
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