Gahy humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. Here's a dangerous idea for you.

Individuals who are members of minority identity groups that have traditionally been oppressed or

sidelined don't always agree with each other about how much progress they've made and how hard

they should keep fighting for further progress

and how grateful they should be to the rest of the community for coming along with them on the

progress ride. This is a situation I often find myself in as a bloke who's married to another

bloke who has kids, the white picket fence, the middle class life. I'm privileged enough to be a gay guy

in an environment where that really has no downsides, if anything, it probably has upsides

in the current climate. And I've been, I guess, incautious and heedless enough to say so in

public, which puts a target on my back and often makes me a persona

non grata amongst the circles that I am supposed to be swimming in. This happened earlier this year

when I was invited to write a piece about Mardi Gras, which is the biggest gay and lesbian festival

in the world. We call it Mardi Gras. It's not the same as the New Orleans Mardi Gras.

It's basically gay pride in Australia. And it's in February because that's when our summer is

and we don't want to be marching during actual gay pride in June when it's cold.

There was a controversy this year about whether uniformed police officers should be able to

march in the Mardi Gras because it was happening in the wake of the murder of a young gay couple.

I'll read you the piece. I think this is the best way of getting into this because today's interview is a conversation between me and someone who took exception to the piece.

He's a very articulate, very thoughtful,

very good person, a gay activist who has spent his life fighting for gay rights, and he perhaps somewhat understandably found my piece a little bit triumphalist or maybe even smug. My words, not his. The piece published in the Sydney Morning

Herald, Sydney's biggest broadsheet newspaper, was entitled, No Copps at Mardi Gras isn't a moral

triumph. It's fuzzy-headed victimhood by Josh Sepp's broadcaster February 27th, 2024.

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