The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 16

16 AGENDA 1 4 JUNE 1998 THE SUNDAY AGE ecus area -5Uv- Ticture: CATHRYN TREMAIN gerlingly so. But he wouldn't have liked it." "What about Bob Menzies?" I asked. "He wouldn't have believed Well, he might have then said: it's a stage. It'll pass some time in the next 50 years. a drink, And Barry Jones would have (jo you read Oscar Wilde?" "What about Paul Keating?" "He wouldn't take it out on you.

He'd say, oh yeah, I saw you in that antique shop. I like Keating actually. Very smart. Used to run rings around us." Neil Brown did concede a little later that his coming out had occasionally affected other people, though not often. A friend related that eyebrows were raised when the friend said he had recently lunched with Brown, for example.

I THOUGHT Neil Brown was in a powerful position to evaluate whether Australia's tolerance on sexual matters had increased in recent times. "I think there is a lot of unspoken discrimination. Like racism, it's there. Under the surface. You can't legislate against I doubt that it will ever change." "It seems to me," I said, "that when you were a senior Liberal Party member, you broke the law." "How?" "Well, homosexuality was illegal "Oh.

I'm not aware that I did break the law. I wasn't active in that sense. I believe very firmly that 1 did not. I suppose it wouldn't matter now." "Maybe you were trying to suppress your sexuality from yourself?" "I don't know that I had all that much to suppress. I should have been an archbishop.

I am a Christian, but I've written a lot about the hypocrisy of the organised church. "I should like to say this. To abuse someone who is a student or ward or a choir boy is the most outrageous abuse of trust ana the duty of care that the organised church has. It is deserving of the most severe punishment, and most of my gay friends would agree. All of them, in fact.

"Many people assume that paedophiles and gays are the same thing. Research shows this is false. Most paedophiles are not gay. And most gay men would run a million miles rather than have anything to do with children. They'd rather re-arrange the furniture, or go to the opera." "Are you happy now?" I asked.

"I'm the happiest I've ever been. When I was married, I was happy in a different sense. I've got a vast social circle now. Not all gay. I love going nightclubbing.

It brings you into contact with the demi-monde more than any other thing." "I don't have any financial worries. Some years ago I gave my car away to the local Presbyterian minister, Theo Fyshwick. But I did recently buy a car. It's a Mitsubishi Magna Sports V-6. Dark green.

Sun roof, tinted windows, very good for driving down Chapel Street. It should really be black in St Kilda." "What was the car you gave the minister?" "It was my father's 1970 Holden Premier." "During your parliamentary career, who were the most impressive human beings?" "Menzies. Malcolm Fraser impressed me. And Whitlam. Malcolm Fraser had something the Romans called gravitas.

A lot don't have it now, and it's hard to take them seriously. "Whitlam because of the way he was able to martial a whole movement and sentiment behind him. Heady days, and all that. So we overlook things like the invasion of East Timor. Whitlam gave the country a jog along, not all of it for the good, I emphasise.

He's an impressive person. Uses the language well and has a very good sense of humor." "Any regrets?" "Yes. I wish I had achieved more in politics. I'm sorry to come back to this. I'm very aggravated.

The Brits and the Americans have very sound principles of using people who have left public life. Also some Asian countries. But we don't. At least, not in my case." "So you feel discarded?" "Yes. That's a very good word.

As though all the contribution you made counted for nought. Very disappointed." earn yews OMEHOW it seemed bizarre, walking down Fitzroy Street with Neil Brown in search of a gay magazine. He was looking for the current edition of MSO in order to show me a letter-to- the-editor in which he is mentioned. He "eventually found a copy in a barber shop. It was bizarre for a couple of reasons.

Neil Brown QC was wearing a sombre grey suit in juicy Fitzroy Street, for a start. And you just don't expect to be searching for a gay magazine with a former deputy leader of the Federal Liberal Party. I suppose there's nothing unusual about gay politicians. But usually they are not very open about it. Neil Brown was deputy leader to John Howard from 1985 until Howard lost the election of 1987.

He had first entered parliament in 1969, was Minister for Employment and Youth Affairs in the Fraser Government and finally ended his political career in 1991. Like most good citizens of the Parliament, he was married, We have not heard much of him since those days. Recently he popped up in the papers as a QC representing the gay argument for the Laird Hotel in Abbotsford and Club 80 in Collingwood. They won the right to be exclusively gay (no women customers or employees). The case went to the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal.

"What stage of life are you at?" I asked him when we had settled in a St Kilda coffee bar. Brown is 58, a smoker about to give up of thinner than his Canberra days, and lives in an old apartment nearby. He has a bike in the corridor. "I'm in the early stages of another career," he said. "How would you describe your career in politics?" "In and out like a sailor on leave, running out of puff." "What sort of legal work are you doing?" "Private work for individuals.

Antidiscrimination. It's not very prestigious, a lot of it. But at 58, I've found I like writing. I write for some gay publications. And I ve found I like being a lawyer.

Most of my friends are young these days, and they often seem to get into trouble. I've actually been very disappointed in John Howard. I think I should have been offered something "Like what?" "Oh, a job. Ambassador, judge. Disappointed is the politest word I can use.

I was told by someone, if you want something, ask for it. I replied, I find that too ing. But I wrote to John Howard and he didn't reply." So he wrote again, saying again that he would like the opportunity to pursue some role in public life. Eventually he got a reply, but he says it was a "nothing "He's not a with that human touch, that personal involvement. I gave my practice, life and health to the Liberals, and then to John Howard.

And I don't seem to have got much in return." "What do you think of the Howard Government?" "I suppose they're not too bad. They're reasonably good but they should remember they're not the first government of all time." "Have you retained your membership of the Liberal Party?" Brown thought about that. When he speaks, he sounds as though he has taken elocution lessons. Every syllable is very pre- cise and the vowels are inordinately round. "I have and I haven't.

I didn't renew it actually. I was very disappointed in the way I was treated." "Maybe it's because you admitted to being gay." "It's possible. It has been suggested to me that that is so." "Why did you come out of the closet?" and "outing" himself, Neil Brown says he has lived a fuller, freer life. still feels let down by the Liberals he served so loyally. Big bangs ahead for the man who played God Since leaving politics But he "Because I got to know the owners of Bluestone Media.

They said they thought it was time. I said yes because it was the first time anyone had asked me." (Bluestone Media is the publisher of Outrage, the gay magazine in which Neil Brown was willing to be named as homosexual in 1996.) "Do you mean," I said, "that if someone had asked you when you were a prominent parliamentarian if you were gay, you would have said yes?" "I would have said: to the extent that I am, it's a small part of my life. 1 certainly wouldn't have evaded it. It's probably hard to get across, but your whole life doesn't revolve around one thing." I asked how his declaring he was gay had affected him. "It makes life much easier, I must say.

It doesn't destroy you. It probably widens your circle. One less thing you have to worry about." "Did you lose any friends?" "Yes. But my life has moved on, so I wouldn't miss them. In any case, I have a lot of new friends, a lot of whom are not gay." "This is a different Australia, a different world, in the 1990s," I said.

"It wasn't always like this. When I was at school, 'poofter-bashing' was quite a normal attitude. How was it for you in the 1950s?" "I don't know that I knew I was gay, necessarily. I know it sounds silly but I've found quarters, not 10 minutes from the White House. A moon-faced man with the physique of a pillar box, Clarke delivered his coup de grace with the delight of an inquisitor nailing a heretic: "Heston once signed a letter demanding restrictions on the sale of guns through the mail.

That tells you everything you need to know about Mr Chuck Heston." Well, actually it doesn't. Not by a long chalk. For decades, legions of interviewers have been unable to resist the temptation to pepper their Heston pieces with references to Moses, God or Ben Hur. When he assumed the NRA's top office last week, at least one cartoonist depicted him descending from the mountain with an assault rifle in each hand rather than the Ten Commandments. Cartoonists are expected to do that, of course: reduce the complex to simplicity with a few cutting strokes.

But with a subject like Heston, such treatment is an injustice. While he is a proud and aggressively unrepentant conservative, he remains a peculiar mix of discordant beliefs. Heston is an outspoken admirer, for example, of the late Dr Martin Luther King and a man who jeopardised his movie career in 1963 by ignoring studio warnings not to lead a Hollywood delegation to the famous March on Washington. Yet today he infuriates King's old organisation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, by campaigning against the quota system that sees blacks admitted to American universities while whites with better marks are turned away. "It has nothing to do with race," he says.

"Itls just a conversation because he didn't try to alter its course. "Do you ever look back on that life you led for so many years," I asked. "Do you ever think, what a waste of time?" "In that sense, yes. I think I could have been a great roue. I do wish that half the stories about my sexual accomplishments were true.

You wouldn't believe the stories I've heard. Seen in drag. Having an affair with an Arab spy He gazed at (he wall sadly. "I wish it were true." "Was the Liberal Party itself oppressive through those years?" Brown stirred his coffee, fiddled with another cigarette, looked into the haze, and speculated. "Well, Malcolm Fraser's view would have been: look, we all know that sort of thing goes on, but we don't talk about it He chuckled, and thought a little more.

By now, he was definitely having fun, although at one stage he implied that he was only smoking constantly because he'd been nervous about the interview. "John Hewson would have thought it a good thmg to show the party to be broad-minded. "Andrew Peacock? He would have said, don't worry mate! Because he never ever disagreed with anyone on anything. )ohn Howard would not have liked it. I Ie would have been rather censorious.

Rather snig- Heston addresses the NRA. killer was out of ammunition when they recognised the sound of a hammer striking an empty chamber. The next day, when the young heroes met the press, their father sat beside them in an NRA cap. Any efforts to restrict the sale of guns, he said, would be the act of a government bent on controlling every aspect of its citizens' lives. It was the same message Heston took to the NRA's convention some few days later.

"Mr Clinton, sir," he began, "America didn't trust you with our health care system. America didn't trust you with gays in the military. America doesn't trust you with our 21 -year-old daughters. And we sure, Lord, don't trust you with our guns." Yet the NRA's setbacks continue and for Its loss of influence, the group has only itself to blame. Starting about 10 years ago, the same sort of people who were joining America's right-wing militias began running for senior positions on the NRA board.

These were diehard bullet-heads, It 51 I 6 other things are more important. Sex interferes with reading, and all sorts of other things." "But you can't dismiss it completely," I suggested. "No. But some people imply that it's the major thing of your life. That's not the case." Brown has no children of his own, but I was aware that he had been married to Margaret, and that she had children from a former marriage.

Neil Brown and Margaret divorced a few years ago, and she has since remarried. I asked him if he had married for the sake of appearances. He shook his head. I had noticed he was quite genial about having his personal life scrutinised. "1 was married because I was in love with my wife.

Still am, I think. Yes, she knew I was gay before we got married." "So you're bisexual?" "1 suppose so. No no, that was not the reason for the break-up of the marriage at all. It was caused by the pressures and tensions of politics. I've kept a very close relationship with the two stepchildren.

They're now in their 20s." "So was the break-up upsetting to you?" "Yes it was. Very. I think it was something we couldn't control. We drifted apart." "Did other people know about your sexuality over the years?" "A lot of people assumed I was gay, but I fundamental question of fairness." A tireless denouncer of "the cabal of man-hating, intolerant, doctrinaire he has also raised millions of dollars for breast cancer research while prodding his congressional admirers to draft laws protecting women from domestic violence. In the '80s, he funded a lobby group to fight moves for a nuclear freeze.

Then he hailed Ronald Reagan as "a world savior" when his old Hollywood pal cut just such a deal with Mikhail Gorbachev. He makes ham-fisted fun of "tree-huggers like Vice-President Al Gore" but contributes generously to a variety of conservation groups. "With the wisdom of my years I have come to realise that few things in life are simple," Heston said last week. He was talking about the NRA and the rifts that have both bankrupted America's most Sowerful lobby group and split its mem-ers into two armed camps but he might just as well have been talking about himself. "I know that I am not simple In my views, or in how I have arrived at them.

So what I would ask of the people who opposed me is straightforward: Listen to what I say and weigh the strength of my arguments. Don't simply dismiss me for what you think I represent. Hear me out and then, if you disagree, dismiss me. It's your right and rights are what America is all about." Heston's job at the NRA is daunting, particularly for a man with his limited diplomatic skills. For years the NRA was the envy of every other Washington lobbyist.

After lack and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, Reagan wounded and John Len-non cut down, there would be yet one more outcry to ban guns. And each time, the NRA would swoop into the debate, fling riches from Its formidable war chest and buy the loyalty of politicians. So great was its clout that, until Bill Clinton stopped it, the Army gave the NRA millions of dol 441 do wish that half the stories about my sexual accomplishments were true. Seen in drag. Having an affair with an Arab spy I wish it were true." 99 don't know that I was.

1 was certainly not active. It's a terrible indictment of me, I suppose. But I found other things more interesting. When I left the Parliament my circle of friends changed enormously. I started to knock about with a few gay friends.

Gay nightclubs. Life expanded. I became a bit more active." I was thinking of the very proper, conservative, rather formal man I remembered as a senior Liberal. The man sitting opposite me now was recognisable facially, but not otherwise. His whole demeanor has changed.

He is now sprightly, charming, slightly wicked. He was clearly enjoying the 1 Reining in the rednecks Charlton lars worth of free ammunition every year for "citizen shooting Now, especially after the recent spate of deranged students blowing away their classmates, the wind may just be on the verge of changing. Two years ago in Washington a landmark bill was passed that obliged gun buyers to submit to background checks. Federally issued licences to deal in firearms are now much harder to get, and penalties for transporting unlicensed weaponry across state lines significantly stiffened. These may seem small gains by the standards of Australia, or any other relatively sane society, but in America they represent major victories over the NRA's once invincible lobbying machine.

To understand just how confused and conflicted Americans can be on the subject of guns, consider a point that Heston stressed repeatedly last week: When the latest teenage timebomb went off in Oregon, his schoolyard rampage was stopped by two fellow students who realised the Charlton Heston would be wise to heed the critics in his latest role they're armed and dangerous. Roger Franklin reports. and they prodded the NRA into an expensive and doomed campaign to kill a federal ban on "cop-killer bullets" designed spe- cifically to pierce a Kevlar vest. This was too much for Heston, who challenged the crazies in 1997 and succeeded in replacing their leader, a militia sympathiser called Neal Knox, as a vice- president. Now that he's in total command, Heston says that his goal is to restore the NRA's image as a family-oriented organisa- tion for sporting shooters.

Under Heston, the days when NRA members could seriously insist that the Constitution guarantees an individual's right to own an anti-aircraft gun are over for good. He is also on record as saying there is no reason any American would need to own a flame-thrower or a tank. Heston is attempting to cast himself as the voice of sweet reason, arguing that fame, courtly and gentlemanly demeanor will give him access to lawmak- ers on Capitol Hill. His goal, he said, will be to "build bridges and restore Trouble is, that big mouth of his keeps getting in the way. Shortly before his election was con- firmed, Heston was speaking in the heart- land when he let fly with a typically Intemperate blast at "the fringe propaganda of the homosexual coalition, the feminists who preach that it is their divine duty to hate men, blacks who raise a militant fist with one hand while they seek preference with the other and New Age apologists for juvenile At the same time, he has dismissed the NRA's Neal Knox faction as "crazies and fringe elements we don't Well, at least he is even-handed.

Will he succeed? Not if the vocal minority represented by Ray Clarke and his ilk have their way. You can't give an inch to people who want to take our guns away," he said. "If Heston wimps out, he's finished." FOR a terminally polite and entirely affable guy, Charlton Heston has a remarkable knack not only for making enemies but also for bringing out the worst in them. There is Gore Vidal for one, the author and Hollywood gadfly who has waged a relentlessly bitchy campaign against Heston ever since they rubbed each other the wrong way on the set of Ben Hur almost 40 years ago. Now that Heston has been elected president of America's deeply divided National Rifle Association, he also must contend with the enmity of people like Ray Clarke.

Heston has never heard of Clarke, who pumps out sepdc tanks in the sleepy, sylvan town of Pine Island, a 90-mlnute drive from the skyscrapers of Manhattan. At night, however, Clarke Is likely to be found closeted with his arsenal of guns in the basement of an otherwise unremarkable home. Back In sophisticated Manhattan, which boasts some of America's tightest restrictions on gun ownership, the 72-year-old Heston is damned as a dangerous fool. But in places like Pine Island, there are plenty who share Clarke's view that Heston is a sellout, a stealth candidate for gun control who opposes the constitutional right to pack the family pickup with enough firepower to wage a small war. The fact that those wars often break out In school cafeterias and crowded subway trains is deemed entirely beside the point.

"Heston doesn't want ma to have an AK-471" Clarke spluttered after last week's vote Installed Heston In the president's suite of the NRA'i opuJenCmarble-trirnmed head-.