It’s our summertime and along with bushfires, the heat and drying rivers, we must prepare and engage in our community’s 23-day festival of ‘midsumma’ and especially next Sunday’s Carnival Day at Alexandra Gardens.

In this week’s program, we refer to the birthday 8/01/1941 of gay Graham Chapman – ‘Brian” from Monty Python’s Life of Brian; of Blues vocalist Janis Joplin 17/01/1943 who died tragically at the age of 27 years of drug overdose, as did many of her contemporaries – the ‘27’; and also of Ita Buttrose, our Australian publisher of women’s magazines, who educated the mothers and wives of Australia of the AIDS crisis during the 1980s, and remains an advocate for our community.

From international sources, we learn that Manchester Pride (UK) is proposing to use an 8-stripe Rainbow Flag in their Pride Celebrations, to acknowledge and respect their GLBTQ multi-racial community, and they are armed with the knowledge that most of their BAME (Black, Asian & minority ethnic) members suffer racial discrimination. Recently, schools in UK were required to follow the Equality Act’s proposed guidelines to mention homosexuality, same-sex relationships, sexual orientation and gender issues when covering the general topic of sex education. However, some faith schools (Ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools for instance) have indicated that they don’t wish to teach anything about sex, including LGBT education of their pupils, and are prepared to leave the UK instead. From the US, we learn that the new Speaker Nancy Pelosi vows to ban anti-GLBTQ discrimination.

While Australians understand that when we refer to various days with the pre-nom of ‘Black’, we are talking about bushfires. Phil tells us how this label is used in the US – and why the aping of the US Black Friday shopping day is stoopid and illogical for us Aussies … and its importation to Australia and incorrect use here should cease – in the same sense as the misappropriation of their Thanksgiving (turkey day) into our culture.

Listen to these stories, opinions and more – presented with some merriment (where appropriate) by Chris, Gordon & Phil.

Show #839 – First broadcast on 15 January 2019   

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