By Carol Joyner (From Seeds August – September 2024)

It was by pure chance that, for the second year running, my annual holiday with my younger son coincided with a Pride event in a major city. Last year we found ourselves immersed in the colourful (if somewhat commercial) Berlin Pride; this year saw me visit him in Australia during Sydney’s Mardi Gras.

We arrived at a time of significant tension between the New South Wales police and the organisers of the Mardi Gras due to the murder of a gay national TV star, Jessie Baird, and his partner, Luke Davis, by a serving police officer. This tragedy led to the Mardi Gras committee banning LGBT police from being part of the parade this year.

Despite the signs in Sydney’s Pride Square declaring this site ‘a safe space’, this has not always been the case. Earlier in the week, I had met the gay Christian activist, Anthony Venn-Brown OAM (pictured), founder and CEO of Ambassadors and Bridge Builders International, an Australian organisation that seeks to advocate for LGBT Christians.

Anthony said there were not only tensions between the police and the queer community; there are also tensions between the conservative Sydney churches and the LGBT community, leading Anthony to be labelled in one article as a ‘poster boy for sin’ with ‘demons in his eyes’.

The previous Sunday, I had attended a church service in a Sydney suburb. Despite the friendly welcome, it was clear from the outset that this was a church where women were not allowed in positions of leadership.

Furthermore, the songs were laden with references to hell, sin and addiction. Before we had even entered the building, we were asked our name in the church garden and given name badges, freshly printed from a labelling machine. This felt fraught with potential problems for transitioning or introverted visitors. The social time afterwards was even segregated along gender lines, with the women congregated at tables outside while the men spoke to one another. This was not a church in step with 21st century sensibilities – was this deliberate?

When the associate pastor asked me my views of the service, I communicated my misgivings around the message conveyed by the song lyrics and the patriarchal structure. It did not feel like a ‘safe space’ to me. I later learnt from Anthony that Sydney Diocese is renowned for its conservative views on women in leadership and LGBT issues, and is part of GAFCON, the Global Anglican Future Conference of Conservative Bishops. This puts it in communion with Churches in countries such as Uganda, which still inflicts the death penalty on ‘aggravated acts of homosexuality’.

The concept of Safe Space was to become a motif for the week. Later that week, we witnessed a heavy police presence at a large and noisy Pro-Palestine demonstration. We also visited Sydney’s Jewish Museum, which houses a large display on LGBT Jewish rights.

It was a powerful fortnight where we found ourselves inadvertently witnessing the battle for safe spaces, amid the tension of opposing world views – from the vocal street protests against police brutality, and the actions of the IDF in Gaza, to the more silent advocacy of minority religious, sexual and indigenous rights in the exhibitions we visited in the galleries and museums of Sydney.

I wonder where Matt and I will find ourselves next year…