Posted on 08/03/2002 8:40:37 AM PDT by yankeedame
Daggers drawn on Mardi Gras party poopers
By Andrew West, August 4 2002
The Sun-Herald
Sydney's gays and lesbians are embroiled in a nasty dispute over who killed off their biggest party.
The collapse of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras has reopened wounds in the community, with a prominent leader suggesting politically correct lesbians were responsible for the debacle.
On Friday, the Mardi Gras organisation was placed in voluntary administration after posting a $500,000 loss last year.
While a toned-down version of the normally extravagant parade is expected to proceed, the arts festival that normally accompanies the Mardi Gras will probably be cancelled.
It was the cultural festival that apparently caused such a major drain on the organisation's finances and prompted an outburst from one of the community's most senior figures.
Asking not to be named, he said: "For many years, the Mardi Gras organisation has been run by people who are not of the same constituency as the members.
"The membership is overwhelmingly gay men and they like the parade and the parties.
"The decision in the early 1990s to ensure gender equity in the organisation was well meant - I mean, I supported it - but it did move Mardi Gras away from its constituency."
He said the arts festival was aimed at politically conscious lesbians, even though they did not attend the performances in the same numbers as gay men.
"Lesbians wanted more of their own events but the people who attend them, and pay for everything, are gay men."
This year's Mardi Gras featured several events aimed mainly at gay women, including an earnest, socially aware play by Petrina Smith about a lesbian foreign aid worker in South-East Asia. Titled "Mahal", it was billed as "a powerful new Australian lesbian work that explores clashes of culture and sexuality set in the Philippines of the early 1980s against a backdrop of violent corruption in high places, shifting loyalties and political turmoil".
The calendar also included a lesbian-only Fur Ball, designed to appeal to "grrls[sic], drag kings, dyke queens, lippy lezzos, butch babes, feral femmes, carpet munchers and sexy gay ladies".
The Sun-Herald was unable to contact Mardi Gras president Julie Regan, but ABC and Channel 10 broadcaster Julie McCrossin, a prominent lesbian who had hosted several Mardi Gras broadcasts, rejected the leader's claims.
"It's obvious nonsense," she said. "The reason the cultural festival failed is because we, as a community, have become victims of our own success and our arts are now mainstream."
A former Mardi Gras treasurer, who first raised the alarm about the organisation's faltering finances, confirmed on Friday that the cultural festival had caused most of the cost blow-out.
Paul Croft, who served on the board between 1998 and 2001, said $300,000 of the $500,000 loss was due to the arts program.
"A year ago I said we needed a very different cultural program and they [fellow board members] said no," he said.
"I understood the need to have a platform for more esoteric gay and lesbian arts but we also needed to balance it with something more commercially viable.
"Whether the board liked it or not, we could not just fund performances for 30 or 40 people. We had to put some bums on seats."
Mr Croft said that between 1998 and 2001, attendances at Mardi Gras festival events had fallen 25per cent, from about 16,000 people to 12,000, even as the popularity of the parade had grown.
I think I'm gonna be sick...
I went to my search engine to try to figure out what some of these things are. Bad idea.
Yeah, right, lady (sic) and the Red Sox are gonna win the World Series this year.
But what about diversity and inclusion? Are they heterophobic, or just "male-ophobic"?
"jumping out of my skin in anticitaption"</Marge Downey>
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