Gay slurs take AIDS fighter by surprise
A NSW government MP stunned colleagues at an inquiry into gay marriage when she accused the gay community of ''looking down'' on women and deliberately excluding them from efforts to combat AIDS.
Catherine Cusack, a Liberal, asked the head of an AIDS-fighting agency whether gay men routinely referred to women as ''breeders'', ''beards'' and ''fag hags''.
Nicolas Parkhill, the chief executive of ACON, a community-based gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender health organisation, said he was ''taken aback'' at the line of questioning at a hearing of Parliament's standing committee on social issues on March 15.
Ms Cusack went on to question whether ACON was delivering HIV/AIDS programs to the 20 per cent of people who contract the disease every year who are heterosexual.
Her first question to Mr Parkhill was: ''In the gay community are women often referred to as breeders?''
He said that was not the case.
She then asked if the term ''beard'' was slang for a woman who was married to a gay man as a front for him and what was meant by the term ''fag hag'' – a female friend of a gay man.
