Flesh-eaters and dairy-lovers beware, Katrina Fox has a radical vegan agenda for the queer community.

'Do you mind if I eat meat?' This is the stock standard response I've received countless times from friends or acquaintances who have proposed meeting up for lunch or dinner. It's a bit like asking the non-smoker 'do you mind if I smoke?' The non-smoker will invariably take the polite stance and say 'no, it's fine'. But not the radical vegan. So YES! Of course I bloody mind, you idiots! Do you mind if I shout 'you're a perverted, evil queer who likes to fuck your Aunty Joan up the arse with a toilet brush' at various intervals during the meal because I enjoy it? Yeah, thought you might.

'Hmmph, angry lesbian vegan - that's so 1970s and '80s', I hear some of you crow. 'We in the GLBTI community have so moved beyond that era of caring and compassion; we are so keen to prove we can be as shallow and self-obsessed as the next person that we've spent the past 15 years or so orchestrating a magnificent backlash against the old-guard PC brigade of yesteryear and immersing ourselves fully in bland consumerism that allows us to shut off our brains and be oblivious to the atrocities perpetuated by corporations and governments in a bid to appear cool, fabulous and trendy'.

Ok, I hear you. But, taking my inspiration from the Radical Homosexual Agenda - a group of queers who venture onto the streets of New York in pink gasmasks with the aim of converting all US troops to homosexuality - I propose my own, brand new, radical agenda. True revolution for the 21st century, I postulate, is being sexy, fabulous and vegan. And, as with dance music, art and virtually anything creative and interesting, GLBTI folk are instrumental in leading the way. So get with the program, people. Here's why:

In the one minute it took you to read up to this point, 219 animals will have died in US laboratories, alone and in pain as they do every minute. Imagine living locked in a closet with absolutely no control over any aspect of your life. You can't even decide when the lights go on and off. Then imagine being injected with large needles which make you cry out in pain, repeatedly operated on and then left to suffer after each surgery without anaesthetic, and to cap it all, being yelled at, hit, or even thrown against the wall, while those inflicting these abuses on you laugh and enjoy it before killing you. This is what life in a laboratory is like for animals - from the cat and dog, just like the one you may be living with, to the rat, mouse and rabbit, whose emotional lives and capacity to feel pain are well documented.

And before you tuck into that Big Mac or KFC chicken or any other 'meat', fish or dairy dish (contestants in Stonewall's Battle of the Bulge competition, take particular note), buy 'leather' shoes or drape yourself in leather thinking it's sexy (yes, kinksters, that means you), just consider this for a moment. Cattle are castrated, their horns are ripped out of their heads, and third-degree burns in the form of branding are inflicted on them, all without any pain relief. 'Dairy' cows are drugged and bred to produce unnatural amounts of milk; their babies are stolen from them and sent to veal farms so that humans can drink the calves' milk. 'Veal' calves are kept in tiny crates, in darkness and given food deliberately lacking in iron and essential nutrients to give them that 'pale' look. Unable to turn around or even lie down, their muscles atrophy, making them 'tender' to produce 'gourmet' veal.

Battery hens are debeaked and live in cramped cages in their own shit, while millions of male chicks, worthless to the egg industry, are shredded alive in macerators. Pregnant female pigs are kept in 'farrowing' crates with not even enough room to turn around or lie down (the Australian Pig Code is currently under review, visit www.animalsaustralia.org to fill out a short survey before Monday to contribute to the submissions), and a large proportion of the 22 billion animals bred for food in the world today are female (got that 'feminists'?). And this is all before ending up in a slaughterhouse where many animals have their throats slit while still conscious, and are then hauled upside down, bled out, skinned and hacked to pieces.

Not a pretty picture eh? And now, for maximum effect, and in anticipation of the commonly-held belief that the above creatures are in some way lesser beings than humans, I will insert a quote from German philosopher Theodor Adorno, of Jewish descent, who said: "Auschwitz begins when people look at them and say 'they're only animals'".

On a more upbeat note, for the health-conscious and eco-friendly, the benefits of converting to my new agenda are substantial: vegans are generally far healthier (and slimmer) than carnivores, omnivores and vegetarians and their skins stay looking younger for much longer (see Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine at www.pcrm.org for details); a 50 per cent reduction in meat-eating in developed nations could save at least 3.6 million children from malnutrition; and going vegan would help stop the Amazonian deforestation currently escalating to create land to grow industrial animal feed (Compassion in World Farming report www.ciwf.org).

And if that's a bit too touchy-feely for you, the best part of my new agenda is you can still be self-obsessed and shallow (just use cruelty-free face creams and embrace 'faux' anything), take as much Crystal Meth and G as you like (no animal products in them), and be totally camp and glamorous (drag queens and lipstick lesbians: just be sure to check your make-up ingredients and avoid carmine and its derivatives - dried insects' blood on your cheeks and lips is so not a good look, darlings).

Vive la revolution.

More info www.animal-lib.org.au and www.peta.org

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