Sex toys and leather-clad men cause storm at student art gallery

LEATHER-clad men and a tiny crucifix-shaped sex toy have been branded too hot by a Melbourne TAFE and removed from a student gallery.

First-year visual arts student Steven Carter says his collage, cut from free gay and music street magazines, was unfairly taken down from NMIT’s student gallery in Preston, the Moreland Leader reports.

“There is nothing pornographic about the collage … it is about the objectification of men,” said Carter, of Preston.

“If it had been a man with women, no one would have complained.”

“The work was removed (following the instruction from visual arts department head Peter Kartsounis) without anyone even asking me.”

NMIT associate director of arts and social sciences Peter Lamburd in Fairfield said that the piece was removed because teachers believed it would be offensive to some people.

In Australia, Gay couples’ access to IVF delayed

GAY couples wanting access to IVF and donor sperm will have to wait for authorities to develop a way to make sure they are fit to be parents.
Laws allowing same-sex couples access to donor sperm and extra IVF services will be delayed at least five more months amid claims the Government doesn’t have the technology or resources to implement mandatory police checks in the legislation.
The Assisted Reproductive Treatment Bill, passed in December, gave lesbian and single women access to donor sperm and additional IVF services, but it also made it compulsory for all women and their partners, and any man donating sperm, to have police and child protection record searches.
The Act was to be proclaimed on July 1, but Melbourne IVF director Dr John McBain said the Government had stalled, unable to handle the hundreds of expected record checks.
“The Government is telling us it doesn’t have the resources in place to cope with the police checks,” he said.
“The bureaucracy isn’t in place in the relevant department to screen the very large numbers of people who will be trying to get police checks.” See Gay couples’ access to IVF delayed
Melbourne Herald Sun

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