This Saturday, when roughly 8,000 people march down Oxford Street to commemorate the 37th annual Mardi Gras parade before a crowd of up to 500,000 people, the NSW police will have their own float, and openly gay members of the police force will march in uniform. Just a few floats away, the original gay activists who marched down Oxford Street in 1978 – who are dubbed the “78ers” – find this irony bittersweet. On the one hand, it is a sign of the progress to see openly gay police officers, first responders, military personnel and politicians proudly marching in a parade that began with bloodshed. Mardi Gras was Australia’s “Stonewall” moment – the first time gay and lesbian people came out of the bars and into the streets to march for their rights and were attacked by police. 53 people were arrested by Darlinghurst police and hauled into divvy vans, in some cases beaten and later publicly outed when their full names, occupations and addresses were published by the Sydney Morning Herald, in a particularly shameful episode in that newspaper’s history. While the outrageous treatment of those activists prompted nationwide protests and eventually the charges were dropped, some of those who were involved still lost their jobs.
It comes as a surprise to many people that the NSW police force have never issued a public apology for the brutality of that fateful night. Neither it should be added have the Sydney Morning Herald who were cleared on any wrongdoing by the Press Council at the time.
This year, however, Mardi Gras organisers are pushing for a public apology on behalf of those arrested and brutalised by police. A cross-party LGBTI committee of NSW state MPs have unanimously supported the idea. We can only hope that the same police force who are happy to march are also willing to make a mea culpa. I also hope that the editors at the Herald are willing to follow suit.
They aren’t the only ones trying to right historic wrongs. In the UK, following the Alan Turning biopic The Imitation Game, a petition is gaining steam in the UK to see more than 49,000 men convicted of under anti-sodomy laws pardoned. Turing was one of the code breakers who broke the Nazi’s Engima code and created the world’s first computer, but who killed himself after being convicted under the antiquated British gross indecency laws. Last week, the petition with half a million signatures was delivered to British Prime Minister David Cameron by Turing’s relatives.
The Victorian parliament passed a similar law for gay men with historic spent convictions had their criminal records expunged last year. NSW has indicted it plans to do the same, albeit 30 years after homosexuality was decriminalised in that state. Tasmanian gay rights activists are pushing for their state to follow suit, while WA and Queensland are yet to move on squashing their spent convictions for gay men.
Before we feel too progressive, it’s worth remembering that while we don’t treat gay people like criminals anymore, you can still be fired for being a gay teacher at a religious school or you probably earn less than your straight counterparts. A recent University of Melbourne study into the disparity between wages earned by gay men and heterosexual men reveals a so called “gay pay gap”, which revealed gay men earn on average 18 per cent less than straight men in the same jobs. (Interestingly, lesbians actually earn more than heterosexual women – perhaps because they are perceived by employers as less likely to leave the workforce to have children).
This Friday March 6, CLOSET kicks off the Labour Day Weekend with its Fifty Shades of Gay party, with Salvador Darling, Mimi and 6am At The Garage on the decks. From 10pm till late at Little & Olver and $15 on the door. Visit facebook.com/closetpartyoz for all the details.
Next Saturday March 14, long-running queer party Grouse will move to its new venue Woody’s (above Forrester’s Hall where Bar Called Barry once stood) for its Sisterhood edition. The whole DJ lineup with be sisterly DJ duos. For details, visit grouseparty.com for all the details.
For the boys, you can also snap up presale tickets to Trough XVII, now at sex-on-premises venue Club 80 on Saturday March 21. Tickets are available from troughx.com.
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