The Awful Cost of Being a True Friend
When Many People Don’t Have One?
Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli AM is an amazing woman, and doesn’t know it.
She’s the sort of friend we all crave, but few find. As the saying goes, “a friend in need is a friend indeed” — when you are most in need of a friend to stand by you, she will be there.
In the work I have undertaken to help Queer Refugees in Africa, Maria is such an inspiration. My article “Why Can’t We All Be Queer?” was meant to show this. The need for an ally — someone who stands with you in your time of need and steps back so you can shine.
Perhaps my title was too challenging, as it was misunderstood by some readers who thought I was really suggesting everyone become LGBTIQ when I wasn’t. This article and my podcast interview with Maria explains it better. Yes, an ally is a true friend.
Maria states clearly she is a happily married heterosexual woman, mother and recently a proud Nonna. She is careful to state that she is not LGBTIQ herself, but an ally and I know the community considers her a loving one at that.
A Paraclete
The word Paraclete is one I love. Typically used in Christianity to refer to the Holy Spirit, but coming from the Greek it has I think a very beautiful meaning. The Greek word paraklētos means “someone who is called to come alongside someone else.” A great picture, again of a true ally, a carer, a friend and not a judge.
Maria’s roots are from southern Italian peasant farmers. She honours her parents who “cleaned the toilets” in buildings in which she has worked. Her family was vocally critical of Catholicism for its corruption, oppression of women and the poor; and her family was persecuted by a Church that denounced those who challenged its hypocrisy as being heretics and even witches.
The Grenade of AIDS
In 1987 during the AIDS crisis, Maria’s dear friend and teacher colleague Jon Eliot was dying of the disease. Jon asked her if she was ready to catch the grenade his AIDS would throw her. “Could I stand with him, speak out with him, and know by doing that, my life would be changed forever.”
What a challenge.
Many people would have walked away from a question like that but not Maria. It was the beginning of a lifetime of compassionate and fiery advocacy for the LGBTIQ community that claims her as its own.
Her book, Someone You Know: A friend’s farewell is available on the publisher’s website (link included) and in most bookstores.
As Ita Buttrose, then Chairperson, AIDS Trust of Australia wrote:
“Someone You Know is a sensitive and loving book about friendship and AIDS. Author Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli reveals a great understanding about AIDS — how it affects the person who has it and the way friends are affected too. We learn what it means to be a gay man and have the virus. Maria’s book is important reading. It covers the issues that AIDS makes us confront and will help all of us who are involved in AIDS education, research and care.”
Our mutual friend, Geoff Allshorn, says of this book:
“Maria’s AIDS book was an opportunity for a heterosexual woman to promote LGBT+ rights during an era when homophobia and stigma were the norm, when LGBT people were dying and many others were glad of this fact. Maria had the opportunity to write a book that people with AIDS (especially LGBT+ people) could not have published.”
Member of the Order of Australia
Maria has received many awards. When presented with the Order of Australia in January 2022, her acceptance speech is worth reading in full.
I pay my respects to the traditional owners of the lands where I was raised (Kaurna), live (Wurundjeri) and work. I recognise the resilience of First Nations people and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. I acknowledge and apologise that my Southern Italian ancestors were military-settler-colonizers in the Horn of Africa, and migrant-settler-colonizers in Australia.
I commit to ongoing action, to be of use, when invited, to First Nations, LGBTIQ+, multicultural and multifaith communities now and to their future leaders, and to check and use my privilege as an ally, academic, author and activist.
On Survival Day, I accept this award on the decolonial borders of disquiet and dedication.
With gratitude and humility, I commit to the First Peoples, LGBTIQA+, multicultural and multifaith leaders who nominated me, to use this award to do better, to make better our systems and society.
This award is for Jon Eliot, who in 1987 asked me if I was ready to catch the grenade his AIDS would throw me. Could I stand with him, speak out with him, and know by doing that, my life would be changed forever.
This award is for the communities who trust me and invite me to put my privilege to good use, and to never let “historical amnesia” make me forget or deny my Southern Italian peasant, poor, working class colonizer/colonized roots.
This award is for my ancestors, especially my parents Stefano and Dora, and my Nonnas, who were wise without going to school; who raised me with stories of courage and resistance; who called out as best they could the corruption and inequities in Government and Church; who cleaned the offices and toilets I work in.
This award is for my most loved ones, Rob who waited till Marriage Equality in 2017 to be called Husband; and Steph, the best thing I’ve ever done, who is both Mother and Daughter to me in her own life-lessons, love and laughter.
And this award is for my Framily, chosen biological family and all friends from all facets of my life, for staying with me through the mistakes and messiness, exhilarations and adventures.
This award is for the Exec/utioners and Enforcers of Systemic Injustices who labelled me “difficult” and “disappointing”, “undisciplined” and “non-compliant”. They broke through glass ceilings and brick walls without stepping down, supporting up, standing alongside those who got hit by the shattering glass and crushed by the falling bricks.
This award is for my “Friends in High Places”, and First Nations, LGBTIQA+, multicultural and multifaith Leaders and Mentors like my Nominators, who keep climbing in love and justice so they can build stronger ladders and more bridges for those who follow, and then support them to go further than themselves.
As long as my brain, energy and relevance hold out, I commit to being of use, when invited, to do my bit to create a legacy for those who will come after me, who will do more, understand more, than I ever could or will.
Dr Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli (she/her)
Naarm, Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung country
Live to love, love to live
(allyship, advocacy, academia and activism)
To save the lives of good people whose failure in life is who they love, please support us if you can.
www.patreon.com/nosexplease or No Sex Please — Chuffed Appeal
My blog here, and my podcast @nosexplease on YouTube and giggling on audio apps like iTunes, Audible, Spotify, and others, tell the story of the abuse people have received through the church’s sex shaming that in recent years specialises in LGBTIQ+ people.
This blog and the podcast seek to support queer refugees in East Africa who need our help simply to survive. Many of them are killed or die from disease or hunger simply because homophobic cultures don’t merit them as human. So sad.
