Bring Back Beats

Now that it is socially acceptable to be homosexual, it should be socially acceptable to tolerate homosexual behaviour.  In the old days, pre AIDS, there were places called beats, where homosexual men could walk around in public and connect.  Now we have apps so people can do it anywhere in public, but there is a lot to be said for designated public beats. 

From my experience, it is an old Australian tradition that going down to the riverbank at midnight was a place to meet men.  I never did much with anyone I met, and I don't think many of the men wanted to do much either, just stand in a circle and jerk off.  Mostly, however, men paired off, with some treating it as a race and the first to climax would leave immediately, leaving the other man frustrated.

In the cities, public parks replaced river banks, but they were always times and places where people would not go, or even know exist, except for this one, specific purpose.  Public Toilets became infamous, for example the Honey Pot between St Pats and the Parliament.  Sand dunes were a wonderful place.

In those days, 'gay' meant 'happy' and certainly everyone left a beat happy.  When no one obviously was and everyone possibly could be, and no one had concepts like 'homosexual' even, let alone all the diverse gender identities that have recently surfaced like the sub-atomic particles they keep finding, many men who where on the spectrum from 'gay to straight' would regard it as remaining faithful to their wives as such activity was not sex. 

The pay-off for social acceptability is a demarcation, so the sub-set of people who are homosexual becomes a distinct bubble within society, with an impervious outer layer, so people must decide whether they are in or out (though in this case you would be in if you were out)() of the sub-bubble.  The slow gradation between those of different levels of a social quality, such as homosexuality, in all its ramifications, has gone.

However, beats support the principles of personal liberty and acceptance of us being who we are in the public space.  Yet they are separate and isolated places at times.  They should be signposted and protected by the police, not harassed. 

Riverbanks were best.  I think that is where I first fell in love with Country.  Perhaps because some of the guys I met up with (at least three that I knew were) were Aboriginal, as one might expect on the beautiful but remote rivers in Australia, back in the days when Old Australia still existed, unnoticed, waiting for the right conditions of freedom.

Legislation needs to reflect public realities.  The Law is like a structure within the Social Bubble.  It provides rigid relationships between various individuals and persists in space and through time

"Disgusting . . . Illogical" Jew-hatred.

“Disgusting . . . Illogical,” says Warren Mundine, a leading Australian Aboriginal leader.  He was Labour Party President before chairing the Indigenous Advisory Council.  

antijewish-labor-bid-sickens-warren-mundine The Australian 

The Australian newspaper has reported this, but it would mostly remain unknown to Australians.

Much of the Labor Party’s “anti-Jew” policy is pragmatically driven to win votes of nominally anti-Semitic Moslem voters in crucial Sydney seats, but it is sourced in the shockingly Jew-hating prejudice that pervades the “left”.  Partly a naïve acceptance of the propaganda from Israel’s enemies that purports to paint the Palestinians as victims, despite it being they who have rejected the two-state solution three times, and despite Palestinian refugees (who did have legitimate claims of displacement with the return of Jews to Israel) living permanently in refugee camps, now into their fourth generation, who maintain the fiction that Israel will soon be eradicated and they can return.  These poor people are preserved in their suffering by all the wealthy Arab countries that will not resettle them nor financially fund them, in order to keep them as a visible humanitarian symptom of supposed Jewish barbarism.

Criticising Israel is legitimate, and certainly, fighting a war of survival will lead to errors, but singling out Israel for continual condemnation while being silent on the world’s other social problems can only be attributed to Jew-hatred.  Ironically, Israel was founded by Socialists and the Kibbutz is one of the few examples of the successful implementation of a true Communism.

If anyone is surprised that Aboriginal people care about Jews, remember that one of the few, if not only, Australian protest against Germany’s treatment of Jews was by an aboriginal delegation in 1938 led by William Cooper that tried to protest to the German consul general in Melbourne.

Without singling out names, there have been many Australian Jews, particularly lawyers, who have been significant in the fight for Aboriginal Justice and Recognition.  Despite the denial by some respected Historians who showed that the claim could not be corroborated with surviving, hard evidence, Australian Aboriginal people have suffered what was a ‘holocaust’, being the deliberate policy of racial extermination.  Perhaps this is a source of empathy.  It would be nice to think that Mr Mundine’s attitude was widespread amongst Aboriginal people instead of the opposing, leftist view.