The official media launch for Mardi Gras on the morning of Saturday March 3rd was dominated by the following heartfelt and passionate speech by honorary Chief of Parade, actor and author Rupert Everett.
“Good morning everybody. First of all let me say what a privilege it is for me to be here today. I’m totally psyched and thrilled to be leading the Mardi Gras this evening. I’m really kind of in love with Sydney, and this morning when I got up at 6 am on Bondi Beach, and walked down to have a swim in that amazing salt water pool, a huge crimson sun appeared over the sea into a cloudless sky and I said “Yes! God is on our side. Not on the side of that wilful and malicious priest with his bunch of so-called “prayer group’ hacks”.
It’s been amazing to watch the people flood into the city over the past few days from all over the planet… It seems as if the whole world has come here to celebrate. But don’t let the crowds fool you – we are the lucky few. We’ve come a long way from Stonewall to where we are today. The gay and lesbian identity is now celebrated from New York to Amsterdam, from London to Berlin. Everyone, it seems, is on board. But where are we really? I think it would be great to pause just for a moment before we go to the party, and consider the millions… or billions actually… of people all over the world who never got the flier for the Sydney Mardi Gras.
All over Africa, Asia, South America, just about in every corner of the globe, there are people just like us with even lower body fat that they didn’t get that way in a gym. They’re too poor, too hungry, too sick, and all too often too afraid of their government and their religious leaders to celebrate anything other than making it through one more day. The gay and lesbian community, perhaps more than any other group in the developed world, are the brothers and sisters of the downtrodden. Firstly, they have our disease. They just don’t have a lot of drugs. And even when they do they don’t have our clean water, our clinics or our sanitation. But perhaps more importantly, we understand what it means to have to hide, to have to lie about ourselves, to be scared of living almost as much as dying… By the way, let me just say that like all of you I came here to have fun, and I promise to get off the podium very quickly and go and do just that.
But I also come from a generation who remembers what Gay Pride stood for. It used to be far simpler to answer that question than it is today. We marched to show that we were not ashamed. We marched for a cure, and we marched for our rights. And these battles are by no means won. Some of us still have mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, co-workers and friends who would be shocked if they knew we were here today. And of course there is still no cure. But by and large, look at what we’ve achieved. It would be a tragedy if we were simply to throw in the towel by mistakenly thinking that since we pretty much got what we wanted for ourselves we can now just dance off into oblivion. Because remember, we were outraged at the apathy when AIDS was only killing gays. We cannot in good conscience ignore the apathy now that it’s only killing Africans and Asians and Haitians. And by the way, it’s still killing Americans, Europeans and Australians.
So for me, I’m not just here to party. I think we’re here to ask ourselves what it means in 2007 to say you are proud to be gay. Is it still good enough just to be proud of what we are? I’m not sure. We’ve made giant strides, but I think we need a new pair of shoes. We used to be proud of what we do and how we are. We can’t just act up any more – we have to act… Easy for me to say, you might say. I think it’s time for us to give back and care about each other, and to fight for others, gay and straight, who just like us before them don’t seem to matter and who don’t have a voice just when they most need to be heard. That for me would be something to be proud of this Sydney Mardi Gras of 2007. Thankyou.’
Transcription of Mr Everett’s speech reproduced by OUTinPerth with his kind permission.
