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Episode 8: Mardi Gras

Transcript

We'll look at the prefix anti- and some of the words that describe same sex relationships.

My name is Robyn Plaister. I was one of the first 78ers as they call us in that I was involved in the Mardi Gras in 1978. I was actually an organiser of that march and there was probably about a thousand of us. one of the main oppositions at the time of the start of the Mardi Gras was the reverend Fred Nile who belonged to the festival of light. He was anti-abortionist, he was anti homosexual, etc and one of the things he did was always at the beginning of the march he would be with a whole lot of his followers and they'd be praying for rain so that the march wouldn't occur.

So we are concerned about the obviously any accidents of Lesbian running over a Christian person.

I think at the beginning of the Mardi Gras in the '80s through to the '90s that you could see a growth of acceptance of both homosexuals as more legislation was changed, obviously the attitude of people had changed, the attitude of politicians had changed.

The general term for people who are attracted to people of the same sex is homosexual. Listen:

I think at the beginning of the Mardi Gras in the '80s through to the '90s that you could see a growth of acceptance of both homosexuals.

What's the word for homesexual women?

So we are concerned about the obviously any accidents of Lesbian running over a Christian.

Homosexual women are called Lesbians. And what other polite terms are there for homosexuals?

One of the years was really interesting to see the parents of lesbians and gay men who had children marching in support of their daughters and sons.

Homosexual men are called gay men or gays. The term 'gay' can also apply to women. Another word that refers to homosexuals is queer. And what about people who prefer the opposite sex?

Heterosexual groups really want to march in support of lesbians and gay men.

Heterosexual refers to the conventional sexual relations between men and women. Now listen for the prefix - anti in the next clip.

one of the main oppositions at the time of the start of the Mardi Gras was the reverend fred Nile who belonged to the festival of light. He was anti-abortionist, he was anti homosexual etc

Anti-abortionist and anti-homosexual. Anti- means against or opposed to. For instance people opposed to war are anti-war. Fred Nile is anti-homosexual - he is against sex between people of the same gender. Listen for another example of the anti- prefix.

And it gets the message out that there is hope there, that things can change. Our legislation has certainly changed to keep up to the change in attitudes in terms of anti discrimination etc.

Anti-discrimination. Discrimination means being treated unfairly because of your race or sexuality. So anti-discrimination means being against this. It means treating people fairly.

So we've seen that homosexual and gay are the general terms for people who are attracted to people of the same sex, and the term for women like this is Lesbian. The prefix Anti- means against.

We'll finish with more examples of the words discrimination and homosexual:

Some of the original goals was to stop police harassment. It was also to stop discrimination and repeal those sorts of laws against homosexuals and I think we've achieved a lot of that.

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