Photos by the late Iain 'Id' Clacher, Mister Riddles, 'clacker', Mr Id can be seen at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/misteriddlesA biographical speech by Iain can be read at: http://www.queerradio.org/Iain_Clacher_%20his_own_story_Oct_2002_BWF_scnxJF.htm
Information on his passing and the funeral are here:
http://qlp.e-p.net.au/news/tributes-continue-to-flow-for-clacher-2436.html
Tributes continue to flow for Clacher
Written by Peter Hackney and Richard Watts
Wednesday, 14 January 2009 09:14
Tributes continue to flood in for Queensland Pride editor Iain Clacher, who died at his Tingalpa home last Friday.
“The world has lost a lovely man, but Queensland has also lost its most talented and hardest working LGBT journalist,” broadcaster John Frame said of his late friend and colleague.
“Every article that Iain wrote was always honest; he was always trying to push to get the best he could out of politicians and the paper itself.”
Wally Cowin, founder and former publisher of Queensland Pride, recalls that Clacher took the publication, and queer journalism in Queensland, to a higher level.
“He brought the paper and the community together in ways that it hadn’t been together before, and was able to do things editorially that I couldn’t,” Cowin explained. “He was very much about fostering the community, and particularly, fostering new writers.”
Paul Martin, General Manager of the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities (QuAC), the state’s peak queer health and wellbeing organisation, also praised Clacher’s community spirit.
“The LGBT media remains the most important way for QuAC to get messages out to the LGBT community, and Iain was very supportive of us,” he said.
“He went about the business of running the magazine in a way that wasn’t about self-promotion. It was about using Queensland Pride as a vehicle to support, promote and build the LGBT community in Queensland.”
But it isn’t only journalism that Clacher is remembered for. He was a founding member of lobby group Australian Marriage Equality (AME), a noted photographer (his works can be viewed on his Flickr page, here http://www.flickr.com/photos/misteriddles), and a keen musician. Frequenters of Brisbane’s live music venues will remember him playing piano and organ in garage bands such as Krank and Spank, Dementia 13 and Mona Lisa.
Equally significant was Clacher’s role as a lobbyist and activist.
Shayne Wilde worked closely with Iain during her tenure as co-convenor of the Queensland Association for Gay and Lesbian Rights. She says Clacher played a critical role in achieving most of the legislative changes that now exist in Queensland.
“He got involved after the Anti-Discrimination Act [was introduced in 1991], so from about 1993 or 1994,” Wilde recalled.
“Before then we only had two pieces of legislation through Parliament, but after that, from 94 onwards, we were changing amendments and acts, and all told we probably got over 150 changes to legislation through Parliament, and Iain played an absolutely crucial role in that … a critical role in lobbying not only politicians and parliaments, but also … private enterprises like MBF and Medicare to recognise same-sex families and stuff like that.”
Iain Clacher’s funeral will take place on Wednesday January 21 at 2pm at Mt Gravatt Crematorium, 582 Mains Road, Macgregor. Open Casket 2:00 – 2:15pm. Wake details to be confirmed.
http://qlp.e-p.net.au/news/iain-clacher-dead-2435.html
Iain Clacher dead
Written by Richard Watts
Monday, 12 January 2009 09:40
Iain Clacher, the editor of Queensland Pride since 2001, was found dead at his Tingalpa home on Friday afternoon after suffering a massive heart attack.
A tireless community activist, a writer, artist, photographer and rock musician, Clacher’s death came as a shock to all who knew him. His sense of humour, his passion for live music, his creativity, sensitivity and his questioning spirit will be much missed.
Tributes to him flowed in from across Australia.
On Clacher’s Facebook page, Lisa Thorpy from Brisbane’s Open Doors LGBT youth service described him as “a great guy and a friend” who “supported [Open Doors’] young people to publish a monthly youth affairs column, supported our youth based events by publicising them through [Queensland] Pride and took fabulous photos of us all. He was a trustworthy guy and supported some of the young ones in their dreams to be photo models, doing some amazing covers and article photos. He will be sadly missed.”
Peter Walton, Publisher of Queensland Pride, said: “Iain will be sadly missed by everyone he worked with at Queensland Pride and Evolution Publishing, His commitment to Queensland Pride as well the gay community was outstanding, and I had the honour of calling him a friend. Iain’s passing will be a tremendous loss to everyone he touched throughout his life.”
Queensland Pride Sales Manager Kieren Hunt was full of praise for his late friend and colleague. " He helped me settle down after I moved here, showed me around on weekends when I was feeling down, took me for drives down the coast or into the mountains and told me about Queensland’s history.
"I’m not a big reader, but I always enjoyed reading Iain's writing, and his photography was brilliant. He was such a great person to work with. He was so happy lately, he’d had a great Christmas and New Year, he was really having a great life and getting out and doing so much. He’ll be sorely missed," Hunt said.
Melbourne Community Voice editor Andrew Shaw expressed similar sentiments.
“I had regular morning calls from Iain for most of 2008. I was then online editor for Evolution and together we scouted the day’s mainstream headlines for stories we could present on our homepage,” Shaw told Queensland Pride.
“‘Something trashy this morning?’ Iain would ask, and then we would debate the merits of Kylie announcing a new range of knickers against the discovery of another gay cannibal in Germany. Inevitably, the cannibal story would win, because Iain loved the strange ones even more than I did.
“Iain was, quietly, a bit of a hero for me – maybe he’ll be turning in his grave to hear it, but I wonder if he knows just how much he’s going to be missed?” Shaw concluded.
In a speech which he gave at the 2002 Brisbane Writers’ Festival, in a forum on gender and sexuality, Iain Clacher described his work with the gay press as “not the highest paid occupation, but it’s been a rewarding experience knowing that I’m doing work that does help others deal with the isolation and depression homophobia can cause”.
Clacher himself struggled against the homophobia he encountered growing up gay in Queensland in the 1980s. As a result, throughout his teens and early 20s, Clacher said he put his sexuality “on ‘hold”.
“While other kids were out there learning the social and dating skills required to find a partner, I was living a lie, dating “good Christian girls” who wouldn’t expect sex, while maintaining a series of hopeless crushes on straight male friends…
“This is not to say I lived a sexless existence. But instead of being an act of love or even one of shared youthful adventure, during my teens and twenties, sex was steeped in secrecy and shame.
“It took far too long for me to understand the fact that I had learned this shame from other people; and that my sexual orientation was natural and God-given; that it was the shame itself that was unnatural.”
http://www.queerradio.org/Iain_Clacher_%20his_own_story_Oct_2002_BWF_scnxJF.htm
In celebrating the life and memory of Iain Clacher, Brisbane’s acclaimed gay activist, photographer, musician, editor and journalist – who passed away on the evening of Friday 9th January 2009 – I present below his own life story, which is written from the heart and which he read in public in October 2002 as a Guest Speaker of the Brisbane Writers Festival in a forum on Gender and Sexuality. The other speakers were Krissy Johnson (ATSAQ) and Professor Milton Diamond (University of Hawaii).
Tonight I scanned and proof read the text from his notes, with hand written amendments, which he was kind enough to give me that day.
With loving respect,
John Frame
Iain Clacher’s own life story:
As read October 2002 as a Guest Speaker of the Brisbane Writers Festival in a forum on Gender and Sexuality.
I’d like to acknowledge the traditional owners and guardians of the land we stand on today.
I had a hard time writing this. I’d put hours into writing a different speech. But this time yesterday I ditched it to follow Susan’s advice and just tell my own story. So I’m going to tell it like it is - or was, for me growing up gay in the 80’s.
Like many others, I knew from an early age that I was gay. I didn’t know the word for it, and didn’t know what it meant; I didn’t even know what sex was; but I knew I was different and that many other people out there didn’t approve.
While I wasn’t considered particularly “girly” or “sissy”, I did not pursue particularly masculine interests.
My idea of fun was not to beat other guys to a pulp while chasing a pigskin pumped full of air around a field. Instead, I enjoyed art, reading and writing, and from about the age of seven I found a niche organising classroom plays based on historical events.
This budding drama queen was often the lead character, of course, whether it be Robert the Bruce, Richard the Lionheart or even Jesus the Christ. You see lain the Poof was quite a religious child.
At about the same time I can recall my first hurtful experience of overt homophobia - and it came from my father. Though a liberal-minded man on many subjects, he was of the Great Depression and WWII generation for whom homophobia was considered normal - absolutely so.
When I was about seven or eight I asked him if I could pursue my interest in theatre by joining a junior theatre group. He wouldn’t let me, because, he said, I “might become a poof’. Now, I hope that sounds as ridiculous to you as it does to me, but that is what he believed.
His homophobic fears surfaced again shortly afterwards when he asked me to stop kissing him on the cheek to say goodnight. Men don’t kiss other men,” he said. Even handshakes goodnight stopped shortly after that. I was only seven or eight years old.
The nature of my “difference” became all too apparent when I hit adolescence and started getting crushes on other guys - usually friends; one at a time.
These crushes were as entirely natural to me as breakfast, yet I knew my father, my peers and society at large did not understand and did not approve, and I took the only course I felt was available to me at the time - I hid. I pretended to be straight.
At school I’d witnessed the punishment meted out to those who by their mannerisms couldn’t hide. I saw how they were vilified, harassed and physically abused. I saw how school was made Hell for these kids.
The teachers didn’t want to know, and in those days, gay kids did not speak out about their ill-treatment.
Mind you, playing straight wasn’t all bad. I didn’t get harassed like some others, and I became quite an expert on Rugby League, which brought me closer to my father. However, it put me on course for a nervous breakdown and set patterns of bad behaviour that I still struggle with today - twenty years after leaving school.
The worst part is that I put my life on ‘hold’. While other kids were out there learning the social and dating skills required to find a partner, I was living a lie, dating “good Christian girls” who wouldn’t expect sex, while maintaining a series of hopeless crushes on straight male friends. They served as an impossible and therefore ‘safe’ focus for my emotions; my love life.
This is not to say I lived a sexless existence. But instead of being an act of love or even one of shared youthful adventure, during my teens and twenties, sex was steeped in secrecy and shame.
It took far too long for me to understand the fact that I had learned this shame from other people; and that my sexual orientation was natural and God-given; that it was the shame itself that was unnatural.
It took me so long because I was frightened. Homosexuality was still illegal, and I had already seen how friends and family could reject you. I’d never even heard of anti-discrimination laws. We didn’t have them here in Queensland before 1991.
For a while I tried to be heterosexual by beginning what was to be a long-term relationship with a woman I met at university. I certainly enjoyed her company. And I did love her. I had no problems functioning heterosexually. But while I loved her, I was not “in love” with her, and my series of severe crushes on straight male friends continued with the same intensity.
That experience confirmed to me that my sexual orientation was fixed - that I am gay; that nothing would change that fact, and that it was unfair to any woman to pretend otherwise.
But still I didn’t “come out”. Hiding from rejection had become programmed into my behaviour patterns.
Living this unfulfilled life led to bouts of insomnia, which in turn led my low level recreational drug and alcohol intake to snowball.
Despite very high grades, the economic pressures of the “recession we had to have’ forced me to drop out of my PostGrad journalism course and I took a job as a telesales nuisance for an office equipment company.
Believe me, you don’t know rejection until you’ve done telesales. It’s high pressure and the abuse rate is even higher. But somehow, I was good at it.
The boss of this telesales company was a particularly loathsome bloke. He ran that workplace on fear, and belittling people was his favourite weapon.
In my case, he used his suspicions about my sexuality to keep me timid. I once asked if I could keep using a company car over the Christmas holidays. His reply, and I quote, so cover your ears children, was: “if I let you have the car will you let me fuck you up the arse?’
This was no come on; he was testing me; seeing how far he could push.
Then he humiliated me at a meeting of 60 of my colleagues by joking that I “was sure to bend over backwards for the boys, just like Lesley”, a staff member whose complicated love affairs with colleagues had led to her dismissal.
Shortly after returning from the 1993 Christmas break I suffered a nervous breakdown and had to go on sick leave. My self-esteem had hit rock bottom. It got so bad I couldn’t even cut up an onion or wash the dishes without convincing myself that I was doing it all wrong - that I was utterly useless at everything.
I was diagnosed as suffering major depression. Months later I requested Prozac, which really did work for me. Prozac lifted me out of the depths and allowed me to start putting things right.
I had already started reading gay newspapers, which in a tangible way, helped me realise my experience was not uncommon and that I did not have to be alone; that homophobic shame and guilt had wrecked my life and that it simply didn’t have to be this way.
When my closest friend - a straight guy - finally confronted me about my sexuality and said it didn’t matter to him, it was as if a dam of repression had burst open. It was a joyful experience to finally discard all that baggage. I no longer felt compelled to beat myself up for doing totally natural things such as crossing my legs the ‘wrong’ way or standing with my hand on my hip or falling in love. Suddenly, it all made sense.
Within days I had come out to nearly everyone: my mother, my friends, the lady at the local take-away and several unsuspecting pharmacists.
Within weeks I’d ditched my telesales job and began writing for the gay press.
It’s not the highest paid occupation, but it’s been a rewarding experience knowing that I’m doing work that does help others deal with the isolation and depression homophobia can cause.
As such I’ve also taken an activist role in my work: campaigning over many years for the reforms recently introduced here in Queensland. My view is that the state has no place maintaining ANY discriminatory laws because the very existence of those laws reinforces the shame young gay people are taught to feel about themselves.
During the recent public debate over those reforms I was saddened but not surprised to hear many people say they were fearful that a gay teacher might tell their kids that being gay is okay - and the amendment to the legislation as accepted by the mainstream churches boiled down to addressing that particular fear.
If only a teacher could have given me that same message twenty years ago I might not have suffered so much anguish and wasted so much time fighting a futile battle against myself.
So while I respect the right of parents to send their kids to a religious school, no kid should have to go through any school without also hearing the story from this side of the fence.
By all means tell the kids that in your particular religion homosexuals are considered an abomination, but no school should be allowed to tell gay kids they are intrinsically evil whilst also denying them the other point of view; the lived knowledge that says gay people can and do live happy and fulfilled lives.
To deny them this truth is to inflict an unnecessary, and I believe, truly evil cruelty upon them. From where I stand, from my own experience, I consider that to be child abuse.
I hope the gay kids listening here today — and some of them will be gay - do not take my story to mean they are condemned to a life of perpetual victimhood; that life will be horrible for them.
Sure, homophobia is a horrible thing, but it’s also a silly thing, and like any irrational fear based on ignorance, it can be confronted and its ill-effects blunted.
It’s also important to remember much has changed for the better over the past twenty years. I’m proud to have played a small part in helping some of this change to happen.
Unfortunately, I’ll never know if my father is proud of me. In 1997 both he and my mother died. He died without ever understanding exactly why his only child became so remote from him. It’s a sad personal tragedy for him and for me both, and I would give anything to make amends for the coldness I displayed towards him far too often when he was alive.
But by the time I was ready to educate him about homophobia he was completely deaf and beginning to show symptoms of Alzheimer’s.
So, to the parents here today I swear to you there is nothing you can do to stop your child from being gay if that’s the way God made them. No church school, no “faith-based community” will stop it, no V-chip, no “gender-appropriate” toys, no cloistered upbringing. Your task is to ensure your children know that your love is unconditional; that whether they be straight or gay you will love them and be there for them.
And to the gay schoolkids here today I implore you to extend to your own parents the same tolerance and acceptance you yourselves crave from them. Educate yourself, and when you feel secure enough - by that I mean you know that you won’t be thrown out of home or disowned - you too must tell it like it is, because it is only in telling our stories that our lives will change for the better.
Thank you.
(Iain Clacher, October 2002)