Community: The Changing Nature of Our Relationships

Working with Cultural & Religious Diversity

14:00-14:30 DIVERSITY WITHIN THE LGBT COMMUNITY TRAINING FOR SERVICE PROVIDERS WHO ARE WORKING WITH DIVERSE GROUPS WITHN THE LGBT COMMUNITY

Ricki Menzies, Queensland Association for Healthy Communities

Contact: training@qahc.org.au

PRESENTER’S BIO:

Ricki is the Statewide Training and Development Coordinator for the QLD Association of Healthy Communities (QAHC) and a founding member of the QAHC Lesbian Health Action Group (LHAG), an unfunded group of volunteers.  Ricki’s entry into working with the LGBT community occurred when she came out in 2001 and started Woman2Woman (W2W) lesbian social and support group with the assistance of her local women’s health centre. She was also one of the original complainants in the Ron Owen anti discrimination case in Gympie.  Ricki’s interest in sexuality, sexual health, the LGBT community and education were honed while working for Gympie Womens Health, Family Planning QLD and the QLD Injectors Health Network before starting with QAHC in 2009. She has a Bachelor of Social Science, Cert 4 in Community, Work, Assessment and Training and Business Frontline Management and a Diploma in Community Education. She is planning to start her Masters in Sexology in 2011.

ABSTRACT:

The LGBT community is a diverse group of sexual and gender identities that hold within it many other minority groups, who might these, be and what is the impact of double minority stress on an individual? Just as the wider community has a diverse range of cultural and  ethnic groups within its ranks so does the LGBT community. And just as there is discrimination within the wider community for people who are different in some way, there is also discrimination within the LGBT community for the same people. Discrimination is experienced from several sides for LGBT people who are also from another minority group, the wider community, the LGBT community and often from within their own family and culture. Culturally diverse LGBT people may experience a triple whammy of discrimination, their culture may not accept their sexual or gender identity, the LGBT community may not accept their culture and the wider community may discriminate on both grounds. Many people think that being a minority and experiencing discrimination makes the LGBT community more accepting of diversity, but its members are ordinary people who respond to the racism, culturalism and other isms just like everyone else. It is only through education that people learn to accept and treat others equally and unlearn generations of non acceptance. Qld Association for Health Communities (QAHC) is aiming to tackle some of this with service providers by tailoring their current Creating Inclusive Services workshops to target specific minority groups. The workshops will inform service providers of the added issues that these extra marginalised LGBT people face. QAHC has tailored the creating Inclusive Services workshop to deliver to A&TSI health and community workers working with LGBT clients in their communities and the next step is to is to do the same for the CALD community.

14:30-15:00 WORKING WITH SAME SEX ATTRACTED PEOPLE FROM CALD BACKGROUNDS

Frances Jacobson & Paul Stone, BFriend, UnitingCare Wesley Adelaide

Contact: bfriend@ucwesleyadelaide.org.au; www.ucwesleyadelaide.org.au/bfriend

PRESENTERS’ BIO:

Fanny Jacobson has been a professional queer for the past 30 years, working in hospitality, the film industry, the arts and most recently social services. She is currently the womens worker and coordinator of Bfriend, a support service people who are newly identifying as being same sex attracted or questioning their gender identity.

Paul Stone has worked as the Bfriend Men's Project Worker since the end of 2006 prior to this he started out as a Peer Educator with a number of various services within Adelaide both gay and mainstream before moving into community services as a Youth Worker in Adelaide's Northern suburbs in various roles focusing on Sexual Health, Homlessness & Housing, Drug & Alcohol, and Peer Education.  As a youth worker he developed a successful Independent Living Skills program and was a member of the Youth Partnership Accountability collective advocating for better ways of working with both young people and the community.

ABSTRACT:

In 2002 Bfriend was lucky enough to obtain funding for a worker to investigate the needs of SSA people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Over the next 2 years this worker put together a body of information appertaining to working with community members from CALD backgrounds. Last year, Bfriend staff devised a training using the information collated from the CALD project.  This talk will be a presentation of the ideas and wisdoms gained from the project and a brief description of the subsequent work that has emerged through using these findings.

15:00-15:30 AN EMERGING GROUP IN THE LGBTI COMMUNITY:  PEOPLE OF FAITH AND RELIGION THE ISSUES THEY FACE AND THEIR SPECIFIC NEEDS

Anthony Venn-Brown, Freedom 2 B[e]

Contact: info@anthonyvennbrown.com; www.anthonyvenbrown.com; www.freedom2b.org

PRESENTER’S BIO:

Formerly a leader in the Assemblies of God and regular preacher in Australia's mega-churches, such as Hillsong, Anthony Venn-Brown is now an ambassador for the LGBTI community. His autobiography, A Life of Unlearning, has assisted 1,000's of people around the world  to resolve the perceived conflict between their faith and their sexuality as well as created greater understanding and acceptance. Anthony is the co-founder and convenor of Freedom 2 b[e], a network of LGBTI people from Christian backgrounds and has been twice voted one of the 25 Most Influential Gay and Lesbian Australians.

ABSTRACT:

In many religious circles it was once inconceivable that a person could be gay or lesbian and also a person of faith. These two things were considered irreconcilable. In fact, the majority of opposition to LGBT people gaining equality has come from religious circles.  Walking into a gay bookstore 10 or 15 years ago it would have been difficult to find books on being gay and Christian, Moslem or Jewish. This has now become a substantial genre in gay literature.  As in the days of Stonewall and Harvey Milk, people were encouraged to come out of the closet and be proud of their sexuality there is now an emerging group appearing in the LGBTI community; people who are coming out about the importance of their faith. This has been called the second coming out. Leading US gay rights groups such as The Human Rights campaign and GLAAD have seen the relevance of addressing this by establishing departments to focus solely on the needs of LGBTI people of faith and religion.  What has influence these changes?

1. A growing acceptance of homosexuality in Australian society which is filtering through into the churches
2. Young people coming out earlier in churches instead of leaving
3. Gay and lesbian people who had walked away from their faith are coming to a point of resolution later in life. 

Questions addressed in the session will include:-

1. Why do LGBTI people of faith experience dissonance about their sexuality with greater intensity
2. What specific issues do LGBTI people of faith face and how to resolve them
3. How to create a respectful space for LGBTI people of faith within our community
4. How to work with LGBTI people of faith individually

Download the presentation here or listen to an audio recording of the presentation here.