Been There Done That

31 Jan 2019

Public Holidays … let’s do away with them?

Diversity, Gay, History, HIV, Politics, Pop Culture, transgender

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Public Holidays … let’s do away with them?

In this week’s show, we wonder whether we Australians look forward to a public holiday but tend to ignore the reasons behind the non-work day. There is now greater interest in the celebration known as Australia Day, as well as much debate about the appropriateness of the date and also the reasons or circumstances surrounding the public holiday.

We refer to the anniversaries of Ellen DeGeneres US TV talk-show host, and her wife, Portia de Rossi, Melbourne gay pop-music icon Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum, US Olympic HIV+ diver Greg Luganis and popstar Justin Timblerlake – all having birthdays around this time.

From international sources, we learn of President Trump’s edict to block transgendered people from serving in the US military – effectively sacking 13,700 trans people from the military. Meanwhile, in 2010, Australia repealed a ban on transgendered people serving and this action implemented anti-discrimination legislation applying to all Australians.

We also learn that in Germany, a new museum has opened celebrating queer history in video games.

In February 2004, Facebook was founded, and we comment on the revolution it has brought to social communications – both good and bad. Sadly, the opportunity to source and sell statistics from the global Facebook database was a temptation unable to be resisted,by those in control of the data. We notice that China is intending to keep tabs on all its population, by manipulation and application of the data collected about all their citizens.

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