Welcome to FUSE15. July 2010.
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Only a few weeks in and already I’m disappointed with the new Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. I was so excited about having a woman at the helm. Yeah, I know the circumstances of the “succession” may not have been the best, but we are talking politics here and those kids don’t often play nice with each other. I was hopeful that she might bring some more compassion, understanding and support for things like equal rights and gay marriage.

Then I read the morning news last week and there it was in big bold letters: ‘Gillard does not support gay marriage.’ My heart sank with disappointment (again). Then in her next breath she told the country that she is not a religious person. This confused me because religious ideology is usually used as the stock standard reason why gay marriage is wrong. So from this I can assume two things: (1) she’s just towing the party line; and/or (2) she actually doesn’t think I have the right to marry my same sex partner. I was really hoping for a PM that would take a stand against this ongoing discrimination!

Later that morning my partner Christopher (the guy I can’t marry) popped his head into my office and said, ‘now that we’ve finally gotten the whole female PM thing out of the way, maybe Australia will elect a gay Prime Minister one day!’ I felt a little better. How progressive would it be to have
an openly gay politician running the country. I wonder who might be up to the task — we’re looking at you Andrew Barr and Penny Wong. Long shot,
maybe, but everything is possible — things just need the right circumstances. It’s food for thought.

Talking about politics (oh dear, always with the segues), we look at the ‘politics’ of coming out. Simon Copland writes about the recent uproar over footballer Jason Akermanis’ call for AFL players not to come out and the forced public outing of ex NSW Minister, David Campbell who was photographed leaving a sex club. p08.

And speaking of sex (see, there’s another one), our sex guru Hilary Caldwell shares her thoughts on how to deal with differing libidos in relationships and she also has some nifty ideas on things that just might save your sex life. p36.

We also chat to some Canberra locals: Jarrad West, who’s about to star in The Boy From Oz  (finally he has something to do with all those Hawaiian shirts) p20; and the lovely girls from Ruby for Lucy, who muse about their indie folk fairytale sound and brand new album. p44.

So here we are at FUSE15 and I really hope you all love this issue’s covers (‘cause we all froze our arses off in a very cold alley doing the photo shoot — it was fun, but damn). We were after the ‘cheap but chic’ vibe to go with our feature article ‘The Designer Look on a Tight Budget’ by Chad Wijayatilake — who along with the very spunky Skye Lang is on our cover this month. p26.

Enjoy, Alex