Gay pride centre calls for no cops, no colonialists and no men’s toilet
Council staff pushing for Sydney’s first gay pride centre want to confront homophobic councillors, encourage “anti-colonialist” sentiment and ban police entry.
NSW
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EXCLUSIVE: Council staff pushing for Sydney’s first gay pride centre want to confront homophobic councillors, encourage “anti-colonialist” sentiment and ban police entry.
An official Inner West Council report proposing a $4 million Pride Centre for the LGBTIQA+ community calls on the council as a whole to “challenge homophobic councillors”.
The report also calls for a “POC (Person of Colour)-centred space”, “police to be excluded” and for staff to have “anti-colonialist and feminist values”.
The centre would also have no male and female toilets — with the report saying “I don’t think you could call yourself a pride centre and try to enforce a binary”.
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The document angered Liberal councillor Julie Passas, who is fighting accusations of homophobic discrimination against a neighbour in the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
Mrs Passas says “100 per cent I am not homophobic” and has called for disciplinary action against the employee who wrote the document.
Mrs Passas said the push to “challenge homophobic councillors” was blackmailing the 15 Inner West Council councillors who will soon vote on whether to fund the centre.
“To me it is a threat and says if you don’t vote for this then you are homophobic,” she said.
“It’s like saying if you vote against a preschool then you are against children.”
Mrs Passas claims the centre is estimated to cost $4m, however IWC failed to comment on a price.
IWC also failed to comment on which groups would and wouldn’t be allowed to hire out the centre.
An estimated 2.24 per cent of residents in the IWC are same sex couples — more than four times the Sydney average.
The report said the centre is “a place that is safe for expression, inclusion, connectedness, and belonging”.
The “offensive comment” about challenging homophobic councillors was contained in The ‘Visioning a Pride Centre’ Community Survey report, dated May 21.
In a leaked email to councillors Inner West Council CEO Michael Deegan said: “I have been alerted to an offensive comment which remained in the document despite my own proof reading; that comment has since been deleted”.
“On behalf of the Council staff I sincerely apologise to the Councillor who was clearly very upset and frankly with good cause,” Mr Deegan wrote May 23.
IWC also failed to explain why police would be excluded from the centre — a legal impossibility.
However, LGBTIQA+ advocates say older members of the community — who were alive when people got arrested for marching in Mardis Gras in 1978 and encountered discrimination by police in previous decades — would “not necessarily have a positive relationship with police”.
Labor Mayor Darcy Byrne declined to comment.
Mr Byrne has previously said the LGBTIQA+ community “are a strong and vocal part of our community”.
“We want to make sure we get this initiative right and that’s why it is so important to hear from the community about what it envisions for a Pride Centre,” he said last year.
“We want the Inner West to have the first Pride Centre in Australia.”
A NSW Police spokesman said: “It is our mission to work in partnership with all LGBTIQ communities with respect and understanding of current issues or those that emerge”.
“We will always be available should people require our assistance, support or if a consensus to allow our inclusion was reached,” he said.
Inner West Greens councillor Lou Steer said “police have traditionally been unsupportive of the LGBTIQA+ community”.
“There’s still no great reason for the gay community to trust them,” she said.
“If police want to search a private building they need a warrant; that is the general rule whether it’s her house, office or pride centre.”
Ms Steer said she wants the centre to be in Newtown.
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