Category: religion

The Decline Before the Fall

Reagan, Trump, and the Decay of the US Empire

Published on the anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s death, and in memory of my friend Kate Doolan, who was an enthusiastic student/author of US and NASA history.

Those of us who lived through the 1980s might remember them fondly despite ourselves. It was the decade when hippies became yuppies, when “greed is good” stopped being a punchline and started being a philosophy. The stock market report appeared on the nightly news for the first time, as though share prices were suddenly everyone’s business. A fictional teenager named Alex Keaton — conservative, ambitious, briefcase-toting — became one of the most beloved characters on US television, and audiences on both sides of the Pacific adored him.

The actor who played him, Michael J. Fox, also played Marty McFly — a kid who travels back to the 1950s and finds it charming, wholesome, and full of promise. Back to the Future was the highest-grossing film of 1985. It also contained one of the decade’s quieter jokes: when Marty tells Doc Brown, living in 1955, that the President of the United States in 1985 is Ronald Reagan, Doc Brown reacts with comic disbelief. An actor? President? Impossible.

US audiences laughed, then went home to a country where it was true.

What neither Marty nor the decade’s nostalgia registered was what else the 1950s contained: McCarthyism, segregation, the systematic exclusion of women and other marginalised groups from public life, and a conformity enforced by fear. The past looked wonderful only once you’d edited out everyone it had harmed. That selective memory wasn’t a movie plot. It was a deliberate political choice.

The mood crossed oceans: Thatcher caught it in Britain; Jeff Kennett in Victoria caught it too, dismantling public services with the same breezy conviction that government was the obstacle rather than the solution. Reagan didn’t just reshape the USA; he exported a worldview: one built on the promise of restoring a greatness that had somehow been stolen and could be reclaimed. Versions of Reaganomics surfaced elsewhere: Thatcher in Britain, Mulroney in Canada, Kennett in Victoria, and Rogernomics in New Zealand, each advancing the same conviction that government was the problem and the past held the answers.

This piece asks what that worldview cost. Not to fight old battles or mock the people who found it genuinely hopeful — many did, reasonably — but because the bill from those choices is still arriving, and it helps to understand who is paying for it.

The Myth Before the Reckoning

Ronald Reagan’s presidency is often remembered as an era of renewal: the optimism, the rhetoric, the promise of a “shining city on a hill.” But the reality beneath the mythology tells a different story. His administration marked a decisive turn in US life, away from collective responsibility and toward a politics built on deregulation, moral panic, religious nationalism, and the erosion of public institutions.

The consequences did not end with the 1980s. They shaped the economic, cultural, and political landscape that produced the crises of the twenty‑first century, culminating in the rise of Trumpism. This is the story of how decline begins long before anyone notices it happening.

When Ronald Reagan died in 2004, the obituaries were reverential. The New York Times described him as a leader who “restored the nation’s confidence” and embodied a uniquely American optimism. The Guardian called him “the great communicator,” a president whose genial style reshaped the political landscape. Across memoirs and retrospectives, Reagan was celebrated as the man who won the Cold War, revived the economy, and rekindled national pride.

Even his critics often conceded the power of his image: the Hollywood polish, the reassuring voice, the fantasy of a country made whole again — a sentiment that would later return in a cruder form under a different president. Over time, Reagan became less a political figure than a national myth, invoked by those who longed for a simpler, more certain America.

From Hollywood to White House (Art by CoPilot AI)

But mythology is not memory. And the record beneath the glow tells a different story. Behind the rhetoric of renewal lay policies that reshaped the country in ways that were less visible at the time but far more consequential: the dismantling of public institutions, the rise of moral panic as governance, the retreat from civil rights, the fusion of religion and politics, and the elevation of ideology over evidence.

This article looks past the eulogies. It examines the structures Reagan weakened, the movements he empowered, and the long tail of consequences that stretched far beyond the 1980s — consequences that shaped the crises of the twenty‑first century and helped pave the way for Trumpism. To understand the present, we must first look clearly at the past, without the soft focus of nostalgia.

The Economic Pivot That Broke the Middle Class

From the 1940s through the 1970s, the United States built a broad middle class through strong unions, high taxes on the wealthy, public investment, and a robust social safety net. Inequality shrank. Mobility rose. Life expectancy climbed.

By the late 1970s, the economy faltered — and voters turned against the postwar consensus.

Reagan promised renewal. What he delivered was decay.

He slashed taxes on the rich and corporations, gutted regulations, weakened antitrust enforcement, and championed supply‑side economics — the idea that prosperity would “trickle down.”

It didn’t.

To be fair to Reagan’s supporters, the stagflation of the late 1970s was real and painful. Carter-era interest rates crushed small businesses and family budgets. Something had to change, and the argument for deregulation and tax cuts was not irrational given that context. The tragedy is not that people believed it, it’s that the evidence since has been so consistently disappointing, and the promised correction never came.

Recent analysis underscores how deep this rupture ran. As The Atlantic observes, the broad middle‑class prosperity of the mid‑twentieth century was not organic or inevitable; it was the product of deliberate New Deal structures that “made the middle class possible.” Those foundations began to erode in the late 1970s and were aggressively dismantled under Reagan, accelerating a shift toward a winner‑take‑all economy. What followed was a slow, measurable collapse in mobility, wage stability, and shared prosperity — a trajectory that continued across subsequent administrations and helped create the political volatility that later defined the Trump era.

Inequality soared. Living standards stagnated. Life expectancy fell behind peer nations. No other advanced economy pivoted so sharply to free‑market ideology, and none experienced such a dramatic reversal in mobility and public health.

A child born today in Norway or the United Kingdom has a far better chance of outearning their parents than a child born in the United States.

Reagan’s economic worldview did not stop at US borders. Through the influence of the IMF and World Bank, it became the backbone of what economists later called the Washington Consensus: a global program of deregulation, privatisation, weakened labour protections, and shrinking public sectors. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, these policies were imposed on developing nations as conditions for loans and debt relief, reshaping economies from Latin America to Eastern Europe. The result was a worldwide shift toward market fundamentalism whose social consequences — rising inequality, fragile public institutions, and declining mobility — echoed the trajectory already unfolding in the United States.

This was not an accident. It was a choice — and it reshaped economic realities.

The Educational and Civil Rights Retreat

Reagan’s hostility to public education was ideological, not fiscal. He viewed schools as battlegrounds for moral instruction, not engines of equality. His administration pushed for a return to “traditional values,” aligning with organisations like the Heritage Foundation and the Family Research Council.

He attempted to dismantle the Department of Education entirely — a department originally created after the Civil War to educate formerly enslaved people, and revived in 1979 to enforce civil rights and equal access. Historical documentation confirms this origin and purpose.

Reagan’s administration:

  • undermined desegregation orders
  • opposed affirmative action
  • intervened in court cases to dismantle busing
  • weakened federal civil rights enforcement

In 1982, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights accused the administration of deliberately retreating from the nation’s commitment to educational equality. Commissioner Clarence Pendleton warned that Reagan’s policies would “lead us back to a separate‑but‑equal society.” He was right.

The Human Cost Reagan Ignored

Reagan’s response to AIDS cannot be separated from his administration’s broader hostility toward LGBTQ+ people. The Religious Right had already framed queer existence as a moral threat (Britannica overview), and the White House absorbed that framing through silence and omission. By the time Reagan first mentioned AIDS publicly in 1985, thousands of gay men had already died (ACT UP timeline). Funding was delayed, warnings were dismissed, and public health was subordinated to the culture‑war belief that some lives fell outside the nation’s moral concern — a belief rooted in Christian nationalism and the New Right coalition that shaped the administration’s moral priorities.

Reagan’s presidency unfolded against a widening social divide. His administration cast poverty as a matter of personal failure rather than structural neglect, attacking welfare programs while cutting the supports that kept millions afloat. His cuts to mental‑health funding deepened the emerging crisis of homelessness, shifting care from hospitals to the streets and, eventually, to prisons. The rhetoric of “welfare queens” and “dependency” hardened public attitudes and narrowed the nation’s moral imagination. By the mid‑1980s, homelessness surged, child poverty rose, and the social ideals that had defined the postwar decades began to fray.

The administration’s “Just Say No” campaign reduced addiction to a matter of personal virtue, treating drug use as a moral failure rather than a public health issue. It ignored structural causes — poverty, trauma, lack of treatment — and reinforced the punitive logic of the War on Drugs (DEA historical overview). The irony grew sharper as Reagan himself began to show signs of cognitive decline, later diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease (New York Times), while Nancy Reagan’s reliance on prescription medications was widely discussed in Washington (Washington Post). The rhetoric of purity masked a reality of dependency and deterioration. What the campaign offered was not policy but performance: a moral narrative that justified punishment while deflecting attention from the social conditions that made addiction a crisis in the first place.

Image by Oberholster Venita from Pixabay

As AIDS spread through communities already pushed to the margins, the White House remained silent. For years, tens of thousands died without acknowledgement from the president. Public health agencies were constrained. Funding lagged. Activists begged for action while the administration treated the crisis as a moral problem rather than a medical one.

“By the end of 1989 and the Reagan years, 115,786 women and men had been diagnosed with AIDS in the United States, and more than 70,000 of them had died.” — ACT‑UP

Writer and activist Larry Kramer captured the fury of those years with devastating clarity. In a 1988 speech, he said: “Our government has the blood of thousands on its hands. Ronald Reagan is responsible for more deaths than any president in history.” (Village Voice)

It was not until April 2, 1987 — deep into his second term — that Reagan finally addressed AIDS publicly. Even then, he used the moment not to mobilise resources or acknowledge the scale of the crisis, but to moralise:

“How that information is used must be up to schools and parents, not government… AIDS information can not be what some call ‘value neutral.’ After all, when it comes to preventing AIDS, don’t medicine and morality teach the same lessons.”

This was the truth about his presidency: suffering was a moral failure, public health was a matter of personal virtue, and government intervention was suspect unless it enforced traditional values. The result was predictable and devastating. A generation was lost. Trust in public institutions collapsed. And the administration’s silence became part of the tragedy itself — a political choice that allowed a preventable catastrophe to deepen unchecked.

The Rise of the Religious Right and the Culture Wars

Reagan’s presidency cemented the alliance between conservative politics and evangelical Christianity. He recognised the growing electoral power of the Religious Right and aligned himself with its agenda. In return, he championed:

  • opposition to abortion
  • prayer in public schools
  • “traditional family values”
  • the moralisation of public policy

The most influential of these groups was Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, founded in 1979. It mobilised millions of conservative Christians around a narrative that framed social change as moral decline. Alongside the Southern Baptist Convention and the broader
New Right coalition, it provided the organisational machinery that powered Reagan’s rise and reshaped the Republican Party.

This movement did not emerge in a vacuum. It was built on the demographic realignment produced by the
Southern Strategy — a political shift that drew white evangelicals into the Republican coalition through appeals to cultural grievance, states’ rights, and racialised moral panic. Together, these forces created a durable political bloc that fused religious identity with conservative governance.

Reagan often grounded his politics in explicitly religious terms. He praised the Ten Commandments as superior to “millions and millions of laws,” presenting them as the foundation of legitimate governance. This was not a neutral appeal to heritage; it was a declaration that public policy should reflect a specific religious morality.

This was not a neutral appeal to tradition. The Ten Commandments, examined objectively, are a narrower moral framework than the civil and human rights principles democracies have spent centuries building through careful, methodical debate and reason. Invoking the Ten Commandments was a political claim about whose values counted… and whose did not.

This merger of religion and conservative politics laid the groundwork for the culture wars that define US politics today. Attacks on LGBTQ+ people, bans on teaching Black history, and the policing of gender and sexuality all trace their lineage to this moment. Reagan mainstreamed a form of
Christian nationalism that would later become a defining force in the Republican Party.

The culture wars did not begin with Trump. They began with Reagan. His moral politics reshaped the nation’s cultural landscape, and the consequences of that ideology soon collided with science, engineering, and public safety — with catastrophic results.

This moralised worldview extended into foreign policy. Reagan cast global conflict as a struggle between righteousness and evil, solvable through willpower, military spending, and technological spectacle. The Strategic Defense Initiative, quickly nicknamed “Star Wars”, promised a missile shield that physicists warned was unworkable. It glamourised Hollywood‑style sci‑fi militarism and absorbed billions of dollars that could have strengthened social programs hollowed out by budget cuts. SDI functioned less as a defence system than as an ideology: a belief that US ingenuity could override scientific limits. The diversion of resources and attention into an unworkable fantasy reflected the same confidence in story over evidence that would soon collide with the realities of engineering and risk.

Reagan, Abortion, and the Politics of Selective Morality

Reagan’s stance on abortion is one of the clearest examples of the selective moral framework that defined his presidency. As governor of California, he signed the 1967 Therapeutic Abortion Act — at the time one of the most liberal abortion laws in the United States. Yet by the early 1980s, he had become the political figurehead of the anti-abortion movement.

This shift was not theological; it was strategic. It aligned him with the Religious Right and the broader
New Right coalition, which framed abortion as the central moral crisis of modern America. Reagan’s 1983 book, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation, became a foundational text for the movement. In it, he argued that abortion represented a national abandonment of moral responsibility — a claim that mirrored the rhetoric of the Moral Majority and the Southern Baptist Convention.

The contradiction was stark. Reagan defended the sanctity of “innocent life” while supporting the death penalty, a position that exposed the selective nature of his pro-life stance. Life was protected only within certain moral boundaries; outside them, the state retained the right to kill. This was not a universal ethic but a political theology shaped by the
Southern Strategy and the rise of
Christian nationalism.

The anti-abortion movement that Reagan championed was never solely about the protection of life. It was a mechanism for defining who counted as morally legitimate, and who did not. This narrowing of the moral circle would have profound consequences for public health, civil rights, and the federal response to emerging crises. It set the stage for the administration’s catastrophic inaction during the AIDS epidemic and shaped the culture-war politics that followed.

January 1986: The Challenger Disaster and Reagan’s Denialism

Challenger mission patch (NASA photo)

On 28 January 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart just 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven crew members. That evening, President Reagan addressed the nation, closing with a line from John Gillespie Magee Jr.’s wartime poem High Flight: they had “slipped the surly bonds of earth… and touched the face of God.”

What Reagan did not acknowledge was the context behind the tragedy. Engineers at both NASA and Morton Thiokol had warned that the freezing temperatures made the launch unsafe, with the O‑rings at risk of catastrophic failure. Their concerns were overruled by management under schedule pressure and political expectations.

Reagan framed the disaster as an act of fate rather than the result of ignored science. He did not address his administration’s broader pressure on NASA to maintain an aggressive launch schedule, nor the culture that prioritised political optics over engineering judgement.

His refusal to confront the systemic causes of the disaster foreshadowed a larger pattern: the elevation of ideology over evidence, the sidelining of experts, and the denial of responsibility. The Challenger explosion became a grim metaphor for the trajectory of his own nation: a system pushed beyond its limits, warned repeatedly, and ultimately undone by choices its leaders refused to face.

The Challenger disaster was not an isolated failure. It was an early warning of a political culture that would, decades later, embrace conspiracy, reject expertise, and elevate ideology over evidence.

This is perhaps the most politically neutral tragedy in Reagan’s record, because it transcends ideology. The engineers who raised alarms were not liberals or conservatives; they were professionals doing their jobs, and they were overruled by institutional pressure and schedule politics. Any honest conservative who believes in competence, accountability, and getting things right should find the management failures here as troubling as any critic does. The Rogers Commission report, which Reagan himself commissioned, confirmed everything the engineers had warned. Credit where it is due: he ordered that inquiry. But the culture that silenced those engineers predated the disaster and outlasted it.

What Reagan Got Right — And Why It Makes the Failures Harder to Accept

Before tracing that long tail of consequences, honesty requires a pause.

Reagan restored a genuine sense of national confidence after the malaise of the late 1970s, and that mattered. His rhetorical optimism was not purely cynical — many who knew him personally attested to his sincere belief in America’s promise. The Cold War did end on his watch, and while historians debate how much credit he deserves, his willingness to negotiate directly with Gorbachev in his second term showed more pragmatism than his rhetoric suggested. These things are real.

Which is precisely why the failures cut so deeply. A presidency with genuine strengths that nonetheless chose to ignore the AIDS crisis, silence its own engineers, and build an economic model that hollowed out the working class it claimed to champion… that is a more troubling legacy than simple villainy would be. Villainy is easy to dismiss. Wasted potential is not.

It is because these genuine achievements existed that the longer legacy demands such careful examination — because a presidency capable of real vision was also capable of choices whose consequences are still unfolding.

The Long Tail: From Reagan to MAGA and RFK Jr.

Reagan’s legacy is not confined to economics or education. It extends into the collapse of public trust, the rise of conspiracy culture, and the erosion of democratic norms.

His administration normalised:

  • distrust of government
  • hostility to expertise
  • suspicion of science
  • the elevation of private wealth over public good
  • racial dog‑whistles
  • anti‑intellectualism

Reagan’s own relationship to science was uneasy. After the 1981 assassination attempt, Nancy Reagan began consulting astrologer Joan Quigley to advise on the president’s schedule, travel, and public appearances, a practice later confirmed by former Chief of Staff Donald Regan in his memoir and reported widely in the press. Decisions about timing and security were sometimes shaped not by intelligence briefings or expert risk assessments but by astrological charts. It was an early sign of a political culture willing to subordinate evidence to belief; a pattern that would deepen across the decades and culminate in today’s conspiracy‑driven attacks on science and public health.

By the time Donald Trump entered politics, the ground had already been prepared. Trump did not invent this worldview. He inherited it.

The modern anti‑science movement — antivax conspiracies, climate denial, attacks on public health — is part of this lineage. The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to oversee U.S. health policy is not an anomaly. It is the predictable outcome of decades spent undermining expertise and elevating ideology over evidence.

Reagan set the direction. Trump revealed the destination.

The Anti‑State Doctrine: From Reagan’s Smile to Trump’s Hostility

Reagan entered office declaring that “government is the problem,” a line that reshaped American political identity. His administration weakened regulatory agencies, cut public services, and framed civil servants as obstacles rather than guardians of the public good. This rhetoric did not merely shrink government; it delegitimised it.

He reinforced this worldview through appointments designed to undermine the missions of their own agencies: James Watt at Interior, Anne Gorsuch at the EPA, Clarence Thomas at the EEOC. Their mandate was not stewardship but dismantling. Legal scholarship documents this strategy.

Trump inherited this anti‑state doctrine and intensified it. Where Reagan weakened institutions through policy, Trump attacked them directly: the “deep state,” the FBI, the CDC, the courts, the press. Inspectors general were purged, scientific agencies pressured, and loyalty demanded over competence.

The result is a nation where public institutions are no longer seen as shared assets but as partisan battlegrounds; a political culture that began with Reagan’s casual distrust and matured into Trump’s open hostility.

This attitude resurfaced a generation later when Trump promised to “drain the swamp” and cut foreign aid on the false grounds of corruption and fraud, continuing the same anti‑state narrative Reagan had normalised.

The Information War and the Rise of the Leader‑Cult

Reagan mastered the art of media control. His administration restricted access, staged photo opportunities, and bypassed critical journalists through friendly outlets. The press was framed as elitist and out of touch — a soft war waged with charm and discipline.

Trump escalated this into open conflict: “fake news,” “enemy of the people,” banned reporters, and disinformation as strategy. Where Reagan cultivated distrust, Trump weaponised it.

Reagan also pioneered the modern Republican personality cult. His image — the cowboy, the optimist, the father‑figure — became a political brand. The “Reagan Revolution” was not just policy; it was identity.

Trump inherited a party already primed for leader‑worship and amplified it into a movement defined by personal loyalty rather than principles or institutions. The shift from party to persona — from ideology to identity — began with Reagan’s mythmaking and culminated in Trump’s grievance‑driven cult of personality.

The Legacy: From Reagan to Trump: The Downfall of the USA

Reagan claimed credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union, a superpower that ultimately fell under the weight of its own internal decay rather than any external triumph. In doing so, he overlooked the uncomfortable truth that he had set his own nation on a similar path.

The United States did not collapse suddenly. It declined through a series of deliberate choices: to deregulate, to defund, to divide, to moralise, to privatise, to forget.

Reagan accelerated the shift. Trump completed it.

The downfall was not a moment. It was a trajectory — one that began with a president who preached morality while ignoring suffering, who dismantled the institutions that held the country together, and who empowered a movement that would one day turn against democracy itself.

The consequences are now visible: a nation fractured, mistrust entrenched, public health weakened, and a political culture defined by grievance, conspiracy, and fear.

By Emile Prisse (1878) , digitally enhanced by rawpixel.

The United States built something remarkable in the mid-twentieth century: broad prosperity, rising life expectancy, a growing middle class. That was not a left-wing achievement or a right-wing one. It was a national one. The argument here is simply that the choices made from the 1980s onward eroded it — and that naming that clearly, across partisan lines, is the first step toward rebuilding it.

The thought was already forming in my mind in 1988, while visiting Britain, standing among the remains of a late‑Roman villa dating from the early fourth century — the final decades before Rome withdrew its legions and left its provinces to fend for themselves. I tried to imagine the villa’s last occupant watching the departing ships, knowing he lived on the edge of an empire collapsing from internal decay. Then and there, I recognised the same pattern across the Pacific: a modern empire beginning its own long decline for many of the same reasons — rot from within, and a trajectory no individual could likely alter.

Reagan promised a shining city on a hill. Then he began to extinguish its lights.

References:

© 2026 Geoff Allshorn. I show my respect for Elders past and present and acknowledge the Wurundjeri‑Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which this blog was prepared. Research/editorial assistance from Copilot AI and Claude AI.

From Fic to Future

In Loving Tribute

Published on 31 December 2025 — the birthday of Diane Marchant, visionary fan, activist, and beloved friend.

Her legacy shaped fandom as a community. This essay honours her memory and the futures she helped us build.

Diane at home, in her Star Trek room, circa 1990. Photo courtesy of Irene Grymbaim.

This essay is the fourth in a series tracing how fandom evolved from storytelling into activism. In earlier chapters, I explored early fandoms as community, speculative fiction as ethics, and storytelling as humanitarian inspiration. Now, I honour my mentor and friend Diane Marchant not only for what she imagined, but for the legacy she built.

She took traditional science fiction fandom, and rebuilt it as an extended family. She helped to shape the Star Trek fan phenomenon, and beyond that, the modern-day media fandom community.

“I was going through a bad time. My sister died and Mum was very ill. I was just coping, going to work, looking after Mum, eating and sleeping. The TV was permanently on in the background.

When Star Trek first came on it didn’t really register, but after a couple of weeks I found I was waiting for it to start every week.

Then I read in a magazine that five women in the USA were forming the Star Trek fan club.

I wrote to them and so became a founding member.”

– Diane Marchant, as interviewed by Eric Scott, “Carry on Trekking!” in TV Times, 8 July 1978, p. 36

In 1978, TV Times magazine sent a reporter to interview Diane Marchant at her home after I had written to them suggesting that she was an important personage worthy of their attention. She spoke, in part, of how her family background had led to her becoming involved with the Star Trek Welcommittee (STW) and ultimately with Australian fans including Austrek. The STW was a US-wide fan support network and information exchange that Diane expanded to encompass the rest of the world. She was spreading the word about Star Trek to fans across Australia and many other nations.

Diane’s interview was perhaps most poignant when she spoke about her personal family tragedy that had led her to become involved in fandom. The loss of her sister (believed to be named Sandra) and her quiet family home – where she and her mother Jessie mourned in solitary silence – led her to becoming attached to a TV program that gave her hope for the future.

Diane Marchant with her mother Jessie at Trekcon 1 (Australia’s first Star Trek convention) on 15 July 1978. (Photo by Helena Binns)

The interview came at an early time of Australian Star Trek fandom, but Diane was already approaching the age of forty. Diane did not disclose much about her early life, and nothing is known about her father. Although many fan friends remember Diane mentioning the passing of her sister, nobody remembers having ever been told any other details, including her name. However, a wedding notice in Melbourne’s “Age” newspaper on Monday 20 Oct 1947 reports that two nieces of the bride – named Diane and Sandra Marchant – served as flower girl and train bearer at a Melbourne wedding. If this is our Diane, she would have been seven years old, and it seems plausible from the context of the note that these two girls were sisters (*and that her sister’s name was therefore Sandra). It is also possible that Diane again served as a flower girl at another family wedding (in country New South Wales) in 1953 when she was thirteen. Both these wedding notices use the less common spelling of the name “Diane” (as opposed to “Dianne” which is more common in Australia), which suggests that the age and name in these reports both fit our Diane. Both events also imply that as a child she belonged within a healthily extended biological family, but by the time Diane became known in fandom, this appears to have shrunk to just Diane and her mother.

Diane (on the right) catches up with her friend Judith at Victoricon in 1991.

This is not to say that Diane was lonely – she had friends and made many more through fandom. One of her oldest (childhood) friends was Judith Giarusso, who remained friends with Diane up through fandom and for all their lives. As Diane was receiving palliative care in hospital towards the end of her life, one of Judith’s granddaughters visited her from Tasmania.

Tait 317M seen passing Kensington on its way to Essendon. Photographer: Matthew Davalle
(Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-SA 4.0

Diane spent her early adult life as a primary school teacher, and even used Star Trek as inspiration to encourage her students to write stories. By the time she became involved in fandom in the mid-to-late 1970s, she had already left teaching forever. This was the result of a back injury during a school excursion, when she had tried to help some students alight from a broken-down train carriage in between train stations. She told me she recalled standing on the train tracks and reaching up to lift a child who was standing in the carriage above her head – when she felt a sudden and sharp stab of pain in her lower back. She spent much of her subsequent life on a pension, battling chronic back pain, and she tried hard to live a productive life regardless. Star Trek became a new avenue for her creativity, leadership skills, and community building.

One early club member, Tracy Jackman, recalls:

“I first met Diane Marchant when I became a member of Austrek in my late teens. Long before Google and the internet, Diane was our ‘information super highway’ for all the news about Star Trek and our direct link to Gene and Majel Roddenberry and the Star Trek universe. Even more than that, Diane was a friend, a warm, funny and generous person who would have regular gatherings on a Friday night, at her home in Mordialloc, where a loyal group of Austrek members would talk into the small hours of the next morning on an array of many different life topics, not just Star Trek (Diane, if you didn’t know, was also a devoted Michael Rennie fan).

“We would all squeeze into her living room eat, drink and be merry much to the amusement (I think) of Diane’s mother Jessie. Diane also had a very special ‘Star Trek’ room full of mementos, collectables, fanzines and fan art which she would let us all enjoy. These wonderful gatherings were both entertaining and educational and a safe haven with like minded people who didn’t give you that questioning side glance which always said ‘but Star Trek, it’s just a TV show’. Diane gave generously of her time, attending many Austrek meetings and special events, Star Trek marathons and conventions and was awarded a life membership of Austrek for all her hard work and efforts especially in her official role of Star Trek Welcommittee representative for Australia (and most of the world).

“After Gene Roddenberry passed away, Diane withdrew from many of the official functions of her role with the Star Trek Welcommittee but I did my best to keep in touch with cards and letters until her passing in April, 2006. Many of us who had the pleasure of being a welcomed part of those Friday night gatherings attended her funeral and reminisced fondly of these times we spent together.”

Fandom is not a recent invention. Long before it took on its modern meaning of cultural nerdiness, it functioned as a space where people gathered to form extended family communities, imagine utopias, and practice the ethics that those imaginary worlds required. In temples, churches, forums, town centres, convention halls, schools, living rooms, and eventually in modern fan circles, fans built community across the generations – from the ancient Romans being fanboys of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, to recent US citizens cosplaying cowboys and creating the gun-happy, wild-western ethos of their modern culture.

Diane plugged into that old fan practice of enthusing, including, and reaching out to extend welcome. She helped fans across Australia (and around the world) to network by letter in the pre-Internet age. She helped clubs to form and solidify their activities, and she assisted fans to join those clubs.

Diane (left) with Gene Roddenberry (right) at the 1975 Star Trek Lives convention in New York.

Edwina Harvey in New South Wales recalled Diane in the Australian Science Fiction Bullsheet #50:

“Julie Townsend and I were in high-school when we wrote to the Welcommittee mentioned in one of James Blish’s Star Trek novelizations. Diane wrote back to us with names and addresses of other Aus. Star Trek fans who had contacted her (including Susan Batho, or Sue Clarke as she was back then.) We formed ASTREX, where I began writing fanfic and learning other fannish skills, predominantly from Sue. I wonder if my life would have been so rewarding if Diane Marchant hadn’t been the catalyst that lead me into fandom. Edwina. Rob Jan writes: Diane was one of the people responsible for me encountering fandom and was an influential lady…”

My own recollections include meeting Diane at a Star Trek film Marathon, and later having to ring a mysterious “D. Marchant” from the Welcommittee – only to discover that they were the same lady! She gave the club Austrek a great deal of moral and material support, including purchasing over 100 postal stamps for us to mail out the first club newsletter.

“Shut up…we’re by no means setting a precedent.”
– Diane Marchant’s opening words in “A Fragment Out of Time”, 1974.

Diane at the Syncon 72 convention, August 1972 (Photo by Sue Batho).

Fan fiction has been a fundamental component of fandom, from oral myths to collections of stories compiled into legends or sacred texts, or other forms of art, craft, song and dance. Many indigenous and ancient cultures continued their fanfic traditions where oral stories got retold and rebooted every generation by troubadours, griots and town criers. Beyond the epics of Homer or the fanfic of Shakespeare, what we now label ‘fic’ became a form of truth-telling; where audiences of populist culture rewrote endings, queer fans reimagined futures, overlooked minority fans recast themselves into a world of diversity and equality, and differently-abled fans crafted heroes who moved through the world with dignity.

Fanfic changed literature forever – from the Gospels collected as oral myths becoming established dogma, to Robin Hood stories empowering burglars to rob from the rich and give to themselves (the poor), or tales of Australia’s legendary drop bears scaring tourists. But medieval Europe had its own reboot that reshaped its community culture — the legends of Dark Age conflict and survival during eras of plague and pestilence, instead became the stories of Camelot, Arthur, and the code of chivalry. Knights pledged fealty not only to kings, but to ideals of love, loyalty, and sacrifice. The concept of courtly love — a knight’s devotion to a noble lady — became a cultural script, shaping literature, art, and social norms across centuries.

Troubadours and poets like Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France remixed these myths into serialized romances, complete with quests, emotional arcs, and fan-favorite pairings. These were unauthorized continuations, alternate perspectives, and moral expansions of Arthurian canon. C.S. Lewis even called it “a religion of love”. Robin Hood stories became more romantic – Maid Marion was introduced to become the romantic lead; the Sheriff of Nottingham became the villain in the Robin Hood romance tradition.

In our lifetime, Diane did the same thing to Star Trek.

Leonard Nimoy visits Diane’s house in Melbourne during the late 1970s.

The first Star Trek fanzine, Spockanalia, was published in 1967, and this led to an explosion of paper fanzines containing Star Trek fan fiction. Australia’s first fanzine, Terran Times, began in 1969. Diane began contributing stories and artwork to this and many overseas fanzines. But her biggest single contribution to fan fiction culture was arguably a ‘slash’ story called, “A Fragment Out of Time”, which she submitted to an adult fanzine, Grup, in 1974. It featured two unnamed lovers who later turned out to be Kirk and Spock. The story’s opening line about not setting a precedent was both ironic and indicative of the idea that she had not expected it to actually be published, but she had likely written it to join a series of underground, hand-written fan stories containing adult material that were circulating covertly among fans. This may explain why she never to my knowledge talked about the story or slash to me or to anyone I knew. Maybe she was shy, maybe she was embarrassed, or perhaps she was fearful that her local Catholic church might find out she had written a naughty story – or even worse, that Paramount or Gene Roddenberry might in some way censure her for doing so. They never did.

Perhaps as a way of lessening her fears or embarassment or guilt, Diane later wrote a series of vignettes called “Fragments’ which we published in our “SPOCK” fanzine for school children; this series being about a sexual relationship between Spock and Christine Chapel (they were her favourite pairing, and accordingly she loved both Amok Time and Plato’s Stepchildren).

Ultimately, Star Trek as a television series that had commercially failed – getting cancelled and forgotten after three years – was popularised and resurrected because legions of fans were reading and writing fan stories about the Kirk-Spock relationship and similar material. A billion dollar Star Trek franchise was born, in part because Diane had pioneered a form of fan fiction that can now be found in fandom everywhere: from Sherlock Holmes to Harry Potter. It is hoped that one day, the franchise will recognise the contribution of fans.

Diane with Diddums, photo by Helena Binns

Diane eventually resigned from the Star Trek Welcommittee after Gene’s death, because she felt the magic had lessened. Instead, she became active in her local church, forming a local “Welcomming Committee” to help new congregants.

The last time I saw Diane, she was sick in the hospital; and as I left, Diane flashed me a friendly smile and gave me the Vulcan salute – wishing me to, “Live Long and Prosper” even though she knew she would do neither. I will never forget her cheeky farewell grin as she sat on her bed and smiled at me (with her Vulcan salute) as I left through the door.

On behalf of her fan friends, I was able to give a fan eulogy at her funeral, where I read aloud (with Betsi’s permission) a poem from fan author Betsi Ashton, including the following words:

She had dared to dream
Of a world where hate
And nationalism were barred.
Where the countries of Earth
Were linked as states,
And minds were no longer scarred.

She had searched through
The cloudless skies, at night
Beyond the edge of the world,
And her mind leaped out
In a boundless flight,
To mingle where stars are hurled.

If only we all had such a wondrous view of the universe around us, and such positive aspirations for the future.

The Vulcan “IDIC” symbol from Star Trek, representing Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.

It will soon be twenty years since her departure, and the utopian future she envisaged seems possibly even further away now than it was during her lifetime. But I see Diane’s legacy continue:

  • Austrek has lived long and prospered.
  • Members who met their spouses in the club, continue to raise their now-adult families.
  • People whose lives were saved by the club – its social networking, its support, its existence as extended family – continue to survive and succeed.
  • Authors who began with writing fan fiction and who ultimately graduated to other, professional writing, continue to be thankful for the start that fandom gave them.
  • Fans who told Diane that they were inspired to become doctors, teachers, nurses (or astronauts!) continue to live productive, fulfilling lives and contribute to the future around them.
  • Austrek continues to inspire and excite, encouraging people to form new friendships and explore their own strange, new worlds.

I recall one fan from the early days of Austrek. She had medical difficulties and had been estranged by her family, so Star Trek fandom served as one of her newly-adopted extended families. We helped ensure she got eye surgery when needed, and although she became legally blind and moved interstate, she continued to be involved in fandom and its activities. When she recently passed away, a bequest was donated to Austrek in her memory – serving to demonstrate that even after fifty years, the importance of fandom as extended family continues to resonate in people’s lives. Diane helped to lay that foundation.

Edwina Harvey can have the last word:

“With Jacqueline Lichtenburg, Diane formed the Star Trek Welcommittee in 1972. She worked tirelessly at answering the many thousands of enquiries from Star Trek fans and putting them in contact with each other. She became known for the wacky story lines she would come out with when workshopping with other writers. Susan Batho relates: “I met Diane in 1972 at Syncon 72, and we took over a panel on Star Trek and tossed around story ideas for nearly 6 hours…And we were firm friends thereafter…And for the record: she wrote the first published K/S story in GRUP. She made a difference in many peoples’ lives and will be remembered. Live long and prosper, Diane.”

Fanthropology 101: Dreaming and Doing in the Real World

A four-part journey through how fandom helps us imagine better futures, and build them.

Part One: Forgotten Futures
How two dreamers imagined a better world, and gave us tools to build it
Published: 8 September 2025
Read Part One
Edward Bellamy and Gene Roddenberry didn’t just write stories, they sketched blueprints for justice, dignity, and shared humanity. Their utopias still shape how fans rehearse better futures.

Part Two: Dream It Forward
Why fandom isn’t just fun, it’s how we practice empathy
Published: 4 October 2025
Read Part Two
From Arthurian quests to Star Trek conventions, this chapter shows how fandom helps us rehearse courage, community, and care, turning stories into solidarity, and imagination into action.

Part Three: Fandom’s Humanitarian Legacy
How fans built real-world networks of care, long before hashtags and headlines
Published: 25 November 2025
Read Part Three
Ficathons, charity drives, and survivor support groups…this essay documents how fandom became a lifeline for many, offering help where institutions failed.

Part Four: From Fic to Future
Fan fiction isn’t just storytelling, it’s ethical and pragmatic life guidance
Published: 31 December 2025
Read Part Four
Honouring Diane Marchant and the legacy of fan creators, this chapter explores how fandom helps us rewrite injustice, rehearse empathy, and build continuity across generations.

Portions of this were reworked and republished on 15 March 2026 to add material and clarify some biographical information about Diane.

©2025 Geoff Allshorn. I show my respect for Elders past and present and acknowledge the Wurundjeri-Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which this blog was prepared.

Love without a Roof.

Introduction:
This poem was written in reflection of my own eviction — an experience shared by countless LGBTIQ+ individuals across the world who are forced from their homes simply for being themselves.
After homophobia, homelessness remains one of the greatest challenges queer refugees and individuals face.
This piece gives voice to that pain, resilience, and the hope that love, even without a roof, can still endure. – Joseph
Rainbow Sanctuary in Ruins (AI art)

They brought knives in the form of eyes,
Whispers that sliced like sharpened sighs.
My humanity — gentle, small, and true —
Branded sin on their wall anew.

The key that once unlocked my door
Now hangs useless, meaning no more.
I stand in the night with memories bare,
The stars my ceiling, the cold my prayer.

Homophobia turned my home to ash,
Hatred cloaked in holy wrath.
They called it “order,” they called it “law,”
But I saw fear, and nothing more.

I am not the only one in this storm-battered street —
There are countless others with tired feet.
Brothers, sisters, souls without a name,
Each carrying love the world has shamed.

No roof for the rainbow, no bed to lie,
Yet still we breathe with defiant chests.
Our hearts will not lose their colour’s shine —
For every colour is holy, blessed.

One day, this earth will build anew:
A world where rainbows shine right through.
Where love is home, and home is kind,
And no one’s truth is left behind.

AI art

Written by Joseph K (He/Him)
If this poem moves you, please consider helping me rebuild what hatred took away.
Your support, even a small contribution toward rent, can give an LGBTIQ+ refugee like me a safe place to call home again.

This blog ©2025 Geoff Allshorn. All rights hereby returned to the poet.

I show my respect for Elders past and present and acknowledge the Wurundjeri-Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which this blog was prepared.

When I Needed A Neighbour, Were You There?

“We feel abandoned—by systems meant to protect us and by a world that doesn’t seem to see our suffering.”

As of Monday 26 May 2025, hundreds of LGBT+ refugees have been abandoned by the government of South Sudan, a nation that criminalises LGBT sexuality and identity. These desperate people need OUR help. They have been waiting for months for refugee documentation and status, and it is time for them to get assistance instead of living in limbo.

(Remembering LGBT+ refugees in Africa, whose voice is often ignored)

We Are Desperately Calling for Support and Protection

We are LGBTQ+ refugees trapped in Gorom Refugee Settlement in South Sudan. Many of us fled violence and persecution in Kakuma Refugee Camp, in Kenya, where we were threatened with arrest, denied legal protection, and exposed to constant danger. In desperation, we crossed into South Sudan—a country still in conflict—hoping UNHCR would offer us the safety and protection we were denied in Kenya.

We were interviewed for resettlement, and at one point, the U.S. had offered us hope through available resettlement slots. But that hope disappeared when the Trump administration suspended the refugee program. Since then, we have been left in Gorom, exposed to daily violence, discrimination, and exclusion.

Recently, the South Sudanese government ordered all LGBTQ+ refugees to leave Gorom for urban areas without legal documents or any support—leaving us more vulnerable than ever. UNHCR South Sudan has told us to follow government directives, but they have no safety measures in place, no resettlement options available, and no clear answers about our future.

We are at risk. We are scared. We feel abandoned.

We are calling on everyone who sees this: please speak out. Contact your government. Ask them to:

1. Pressure UNHCR to do its job and protect LGBTQ+ refugees in South Sudan.

2. Provide emergency resettlement slots for the most vulnerable among us.

3. Ensure no refugee is forced to choose between danger and invisibility.

Share this message. Raise your voice. Help us survive.

#ProtectLGBTQRefugees #TransRightsAreHumanRights #ResettlementNow #UNHCRDoYourJob #internationaltransfund #OutrightInternational #fundtranssafety #BlackLivesMatter #RefugeeLiveMatter #RainbowRailroad #UNHCR #UNHCRGeneva #UNHCRSouthSudan #AmnestyInternational #HumanRightsCampaign #HumanRightsWatch #AfricanUnion #Commonwealth #EuropeanUnion

= = = = = = =

This heartfelt plea comes from one of my friends currently in South Sudan. This week, hundreds of LGBT+ refugee were evicted from Gorom Refugee Camp, under threat of police and community violence. They now huddle homeless on the streets of Juba, vulnerable in the capital city of a nation that criminalises LGBT+ sexuality and identity. They seek food and shelter and – more pressingly – transport to a neighbouring country for asylum and refugee processing.

A Rich, Diverse History

South Sudan’s history includes diverse communities and LGBT+ acceptance:

“South Sudan boasts rich cultural diversity, with over 60 indigenous ethnic groups and 80 different languages spoken. The country’s cultural tapestry is woven from a wide range of traditions, customs, and languages, reflecting its complex and varied history…

… Traditional clothing styles in South Sudan vary greatly among the various ethnic groups, showcasing their unique heritage and identity. These attire are not merely a fashion statement but hold deep cultural significance.”

The history of the Azande people of South Sudan (and other nations across Central Africa) include known examples of same-sex relationships between young people. Male homosexuality is acknowledged as part of their indigenous history:

The topic of homosexuality in Azande culture has been regularly addressed, especially in the context of the unmarried warriors, who, during the several years spent living apart from women, had homosexual relations with the boys who were apprentice warriors. These practices, however, were not necessarily maintained as a lifelong pattern of sexual orientation. Generally, after their experiences with so-called “boy-wives,” the warriors entered into heterosexual marriages.

Lesbianism is also noted in the literature:

Vongara daughters enjoyed substantial personal freedom and independence from male control, hence their frequent association with adultery, lesbianism, etc”

In May 2024, UNESCO celebrated elect portion of the country’s cultural diversity in an attempt to heal division and violence:

With the help of UNESCO, 40 cultural groups from across the country gathered for two days in the capital Juba to celebrate the first ever cultural week under the theme: “Our culture, our identity, our diversity for social cohesion, unity and peace in South Sudan”.

The Past Creates Its Own Future:

Despite a long history of queer friendly cultures, South Sudan’s political attitudes towards LGBT+ people are deeply rooted in the ignorance of past colonial times and inherited archaic Christian bigotry. The nation’s current problems were largely birthed in Anglo-Egyptian rule between 1899 and 1956, as part of a longer history of oppression and conquest.

The end result of years of regressive colonial rule, and modern-day targeting of African nations by US Christian hate groups and Trump-era deportations, is tragic in a country teetering on the edge of civil war:

South Sudan is one of 67 countries that criminalizes homosexuality, 11 of them with the death penalty. LGBTQ advocates say even where such laws are not applied, they contribute to a climate of harassment, discrimination and violence.

Voices from the latest Holocaust

Many hundreds of refugees have sought shelter in Gorom Refugee Camp in South Sudan, the middle of a potential war zone. One report provides some background:

Gorom Refugee Settlement, a small camp outside Juba, was supposed to be our last refuge. But even here, danger follows us. In December 2024, the camp was attacked by members of the host community. LGBTQIA+ refugees were specifically targeted — tents were slashed, people beaten and robbed. When police arrived, they arrested us — including two gay men who were only released after bribes were paid. None of the attackers were punished.

Another report confirms ongoing problems in the camp:

In early April the South Sudanese authorities wanted to kick all the LGBTQ refugees out the camp, and at the time the UNHCR managed to stop this from taking place. Now, however, refugees in the camp report that the new policy is back in place. LGBTQ refugees tells us that the UNHCR has asked the refugees to move to Juba in a few days.

According to these refugees the UNHCR has told them refugees that the agency will provide them with support in Juba. However, the refugees have been told by the South Sudanese not to stay together in one place, and they have not been offered transportation or new homes. Given that they are very poor, this is a recipe for disaster.

One of my LGBT+ friends currently in South Sudan, sent me an urgent appeal for help:

Dear Geoff,

I’m writing to you with a heart weighed down by pain, fear, and exhaustion. As you already know, our journey from Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya was one of survival. We were forced to flee because the Kenyan government, through the camp management, threatened us with imprisonment, stripped us of legal protection, and exposed us to violent attacks. Faced with no choice, we took the unimaginable risk of crossing into South Sudan—a country torn by conflict—in desperate hope of finding safety under UNHCR South Sudan’s protection.

At first, we had hope. We were supported by UNHCR South Sudan and even underwent resettlement interviews. We believed we would be resettled to the United States, which had offered refugee protection for vulnerable groups like ours. But when the Trump administration suspended the refugee program, our chance at safety was crushed. Since then, we’ve been trapped in Gorom Refugee Settlement—unprotected, unheard, and constantly at risk.

We have endured beatings, threats, sexual violence, and unbearable isolation. But the most recent blow came when the South Sudanese government, through the Commissioner for Refugee Affairs, ordered all LGBTQ refugees to leave Gorom and relocate to urban areas, without any legal documentation, support, or protection. We are trans refugees. We are visible and extremely vulnerable. This order is a death sentence.

When we pleaded with UNHCR South Sudan for protection, they told us to follow government directives—even when those directives compromise our lives. They said they can not offer us protection in Gorom and have no resettlement slots available. Yet they are also unable to tell us when any future opportunities might come. How do we survive in the meantime?

We feel abandoned—by systems meant to protect us and by a world that doesn’t seem to see our suffering.

Geoff, we are calling on you not just as an ally but as a voice that can reach places we cannot. Please raise your voice and ask your government to:

1. Urge UNHCR South Sudan to fulfill its protection mandate, especially for LGBTQ refugees who face targeted risks.

2. Provide emergency resettlement slots for the most at-risk LGBTQ refugees in South Sudan.

3. Hold UNHCR accountable for the safety and rights of all refugees, including us.

We are not asking for favors—we are asking for our right to live, to be protected, and to be treated with dignity. Please help make our voices heard before it is too late.

In hope and solidarity,

Another friend tells me:

Greetings dear,I hope you doing well.

I would like to inform you that Government of outh Sudan has decided to evict us from Gorom camp. They gave only ten days to organize and go to stay in the town. We tried to raise the matter to UNHCR to the highest level in Geneva, but they are all silent. Our time in Gorom is about to run out.

As I am experienced with similar incident in Kakuma.

We don’t have to wait for police brutalities and torture.

We don’t have to wait for police lorries to come to take us to prison,

We don’t have to wait for court since being LGBTQIA in South Sudan is one of the toughest countries criminalizing that status.

We are in perilous situation.

People are leaving one by one mostly those who have means to rent in the town.

I am now requesting you to stand with me and support.

I may need to go and get house as others and be away from the incident which would take place on that day.

Kindly consider helping please

Appreciated

Our moral imperative

If you want to consider whether hell actually exists, South Sudan is a good candidate. And the measure of how we respond – as individuals, human rights activists, members of LGBT+ or other minority communities, as constituents demanding humanitarian action from our national governments or international agencies – is a mark of how we might aspire towards (or fail to reach) civilisation.

We need to act immediately to save lives.

What Can You Do?

Appeal to Australia to intervene on the international stage on behalf of these refugees. They need shelter and food, safety, and urgent processing of their documentation as refugees.

Contact Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and ask the Australian government to use its influence to intervene and assist.

Contact your local LGBT+ community groups, community churches or secular organisations, human rights groups, aid groups, refugee advocacy groups… anyone you can think of… and appeal for their immediate action.

Contact the UNHCR in Australia or internationallyand ask for their intervention. Remember that the UNHCR in South Sudan isIf the Australian office tell you that they are only an information service, ask them for information on how to contact Geneva or South Sudan directly. working under difficulty, so be respectful and polite.

DONATE MONEY to assist these refugee to find transport, shelter, food and safety. You might like to contact the UNHCR in Geneva and offer a donation to go directly to the refugees. Alternatively, you can contact me (send me an email via the email facility below and I will respond) and any donations will be directly and immediately forwarded to refugees.

What sort of world do we want to create? What sort of people does our collective conscience want us to be?

“When you are doing something that is right, you just do it and take care … Someone has to do this.” – Alice Nkom.

Bibliography:

“Grim Perspectives for the Protection of LGBTI Communities in South Sudan”, International Law Blog, 9 December 2021.

“Country Overview: South Sudan At A Glance”, Outlook International, 2025.

“Defunding Freedom – Impacts of U.S. Foreign Aid Cuts on LGBTIQ People Worldwide”, “Celebrating culture, identity and diversity for social cohesion, unity and peace in South Sudan”, UNESCO, 15 May 2024.

“Zande/Azande”, Africa: 101 Last Tribes, date unknown.

Lorna Dias and Melody Njuki, “US hate groups fuel anti-LGBTQ rights movement in Africa”. , Washington Blade, 23 May 2025.

Abraham Junior, “We Exist, We Resist, We Are Not Invisible: Queer, Atheist, and Humanist Refugees in South Sudan”,The Humanist, 28 May 2025.

Matthew LeRiche, Matthew Arnold. South Sudan from revolution to independence. 2012. Ethnic Groups and Flashpoints. p. xv. Columbia University Press. New York. ISBN 978-0-231-70414-4

SEmeka Onwubuemeli, “Early Zande History”, Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. 53, University of Khartoum, 1972, p. 47.

Shaan Roy, “South Sudan’s Cultural Diversity: Exploring Ethnic Groups And Indigenous Languages”, AfroDiscovery, 15 March 2024.

This website ©2025 Geoff Allshorn. Individual rights are returned to authors who kindly submitted their material for publication; their names have been withheld for their protection.

I show my respect for Elders past and present and acknowledge the Wurundjeri-Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which this blog was prepared.