CLICHÉS DRIVE ME UP THE WALL

Do you have to be a card carrying member of the Labor Party to be a part of the GLBTI community? Do you have to be a feminist socialist to be a lesbian? Do you have to be a buffed, drug-taking partyboy to be young and gay?

Clichés, most of them invented by our own community, have beset wider impressions of the GLBTI community for years. The media repeat them and we get upset.

Of course the wider GLBTI community are as broad and diverse as the rest of the Australian community. There's accountants, school teachers, tradespeople, business-people and truckies.... as well as hairdressers and people in musical theatre.

On JOY we have a fairly broad cross-section of the local GLBTI world. A bit of this and a bit of that. Politically we have people on the far right as well as the far left. And just because your sexuality may be G or L or B or T or I doesn't mean that you vote one way or the other.

Why do we have these stereotypes within our own community. Indeed, why do we have a lack of tolerance to people of diverse political views?

Come and join a few card carrying lefties as well as a guest right wing of Gengis Kahn, as well as someone somewhere in the middle on next Tuesday's Spin from 7pm.