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Love was high on the agenda when gay medico Wendell Rosevear attended the 2020 Summit, writes Alistair Sutton. 
As always, Dr Wendell Rosevear was aiming high.
HIV/AIDS and preventative health for LGBT people were high on his agenda at the Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra last month, but so too were issues such as social inclusion, ageing, drugs, prisons and suicide.
“Fundamental is the concept of valuing people for themselves and respecting honesty,” Wendell explains.
“To be inclusive and non-judgmental of others is the mindset we need to cultivate. Love is the key to achieving this. Abuse is the absence of love, whereas the healing process is the restoration of love.
“I want to restore treating people how they want to be treated. Otherwise we get a revenge culture of treating people how they treat us.”
As founder of Men affected by Rape and Sexual Abuse (MARS), he’s helped 1,000 male victims. For 33 years he’s been a prison counselor, assisting perpetrators and victims in dealing with the consequences and causes of abuse.
“Only by addressing the root causes of crime and understanding what led to the abusive behaviour can you hope to succeed in breaking the cycle and preventing it in the future,” he says.
“If you can help people regain a sense of their inherent value and self worth, then healing and understanding can be achieved, for victims and perpetrators alike.”
To achieve this, he says it is imperative we reject the current ‘zoo mentality’ of the prison system.
“We need a healing environment where people are valued for themselves. Everybody needs to be treated with dignity and respect, even if they’ve made a mistake.
“It’s imperative that individuals, especially victims and offenders, have choices.”
Wendell relates choice to a sense of self worth in order to effect change and only the individual can achieve this for themselves. It can’t be forced.
“But to deny choice is to dehumanise. Providing support will empower people to start making healthy choices.”
Wendell, who founded GLADS, the Gay and Lesbian Alcohol and Drug Support Group, as well as Gay and Lesbian Alcoholics Anonymous, has always been anti-drugs personally.
He rejects the government’s current approach to the illegal drug trade, seeing it as ineffective, arguing that legislating against drugs only ensures their continued profitability and guaranteed supply.
“I want to generate a culture where to not use drugs is ‘cool’. I’m not optimistic this message will be endorsed at the Summit, but I cannot witness the level of suffering I see without deducing that our current strategy not only doesn’t work, it makes it worse.”
Wendell has deeply held religious beliefs, which he had to reconcile with his sexuality.
“Initially I wanted to ‘save the world’ and I think this was a denial of being gay,” he explains.
“If I was good, then nobody would worry about my sexuality. Religion taught me the value of people. Prison taught me to apply it and the spinoff was that I learnt to accept and love myself.”
A keen runner and gardener, Wendell is also an avid amateur home renovator, with the enthusiastic support of his loving partner of eleven months, Tom.
And it all comes back to love, which he says forms his personal motto: “to make love infectious”.
Wendell Rosevear is the principal physician at Stonewall Medical Centre. He was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in1998.
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