We have 7 states.
The state known as 'South Australia' decriminalised some homosexual acts in 1972 due to a murky gay-bashing murder and a closet-queen Premier.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2002/s552142.htm.
A few other states followed after that.
The oldest and most populous state is known as 'New South Wales' (its capital is Sydney. It decriminalised homosexual acts in 1984 after lobbying behind closed doors and a few years of street rallies. There were a number of 'Stonewall-type' street riots over instances of police raids of gay saunas and bars during the 1980s.
Sorry for my inattention, Kallipolis. I think it was 1975 that SA decriminalized homosexuality, with the ACT coming along the following year. Otherwise, further to those quick notes from Pat Grimshaw: Western Australia decriminalized homosexual acts in 1990, I think without checking my notes. Up until then we could still get up to five years hard labour, and the WA Police force kept 'secret' files on men they suspected of being gay. Even after the decriminalization, cops here have remained frequently completely open with their disdain and as recently as five and a half years ago, two police officers (one female) harassed me for making out with my lover. They were more aggressive with him and tried to tell me they would charge me with impeding an investigation if I didn't back away from him while they demanded his details and tried to make him feel very, very uncomfortable. I gave them my details (very long name pronounced traditionally to make it impossible to write down) and took theirs and called my mate who's a lawyer and told them he wanted to speak with them at the first opportunity. They backed down, but ruined our kissing...
Tasmania was the last Australian state to decriminalize homosexuality after a nine year long very nasty and aggressive debate. Senator Dr. Bob Brown is our long serving National Greens leader who is openly gay, and it is not without great and inspirational leadership from him in this arena that progress was finally made in
1997! Tasmania now has the most progressive laws in the land regarding homosexuality. Research 'Rodney Croome,' too.
1967 was really only of interest to those researching law reform in Australia because that was the year that Australians finally voted in a National referendum to allow Aboriginal peoples the right to participate as citizens with full rights equal to those of everyone else in this wide, brown, backwards land of ours. Yes, gay indigenous folk got to lose some of their rights instantaneously of course, but now they were real people.
It wasn't until the end of the 70's ('78) in Sydney that DRAG QUEENS and other openly gay activists had had a gut full, and inspired by success in the USA nine years earlier decided that enough was enough and they showed the perverted, corrupted pigs calling themselves police officers in NSW that the time had come for equity with the straight population. Many people were hospitalised and imprisoned, but that violent night was the first march that went on to become the Sydney Gay (and later, '..and Lesbian') Mardi Gras - which is now just a fun parade more about partying and keeping it cool with the dominant straights, he said kindly - hhhmmmm, I don't know why I have so few straight friends...
The news broadcasts were full of fear and disgust for gays, I remember, and when the first couple of Mardi Gras marches were reported in subsequent years, the dislike for gay people remained clear and apparent. It took a while for the straights to realize the amount of MONEY pouring into their own coffers but then all was forgiven and okay. Now the 'parade' is about tourism and, as I said, partying.
Nothing wrong with either, but lest we forget the DRAG QUEENS and openly gay and self-sacrificing queers who began the liberation of all GBLT's in Oz, please let's hold a dear place in our hearts for all those who came before and opened a pathway for us to better enjoy our lives. Just a couple of months ago, I took a sickie. I sat on the sofa with my little pussy cat and turned on the news on Ten (normally I only watch the various SBS or ABC stations, but I wanted to avoid thinking), only to see a news anchor 'interview' a rep from the
New SGLMG. It was embarrassing to see the anchor try to humiliate and chastise the interviewee, even bringing up his personal feelings back when he was in the news room in '78! Needless to say, I wrote a really sharp fax off.
THere is much more than what I've touched on here, and clearly I haven't made the important personal and human connections, but this gives some indication of the newness of decriminalization of homosexuality in Oz, and the bearing that those seen in varying degrees as effeminate have had on advancing our liberation. THere are many laws that are still on our books here to discriminate against gay men, left there for the occasional remaining pig to pull out to harass gay men, eg. If my straight neighbours want to have sex in their front room and the drapes are opened but the sheer curtains pulled, and I can see it, there's nothing for the police to do because the bonkers have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their own home with the curtains across - I needn't look. If my neighbours complain about me and a male lover doing the same (obviously in my own home - not in theirs!
), the police can arrest me and mine for public indecency and I can go to jail. A male teacher in WA has to be very careful of showing any support for male students for fear he be branded a peadophile. No school teacher can actively show any support for homosexuality in WA public schools for fear of being accused of 'promoting homosexuality' in the public school system - that would be illegal. Guys under 21 yo in WA cannot have sexual relations with anyone more than one year in either direction difference in age: minimum age is 16. If you are 20 and your bf is 16, you are a paedophile, permanently on public records and on websites; if you are a straight man and your gf is 16 - that's okay. 19 and you'd still have to answer the case in court and show that you had reason to believe your beloved bf lied to you and that it was all his fault, thereby ruining his reputation instead. REMEMBER: AGE OF MAJORITY IN AUSTRALIA IS 18!!! I'm rambling far too far.
But just before I go, I want to revisit the fact that numerous attempts, many successful, have been made in Supreme Courts in Australia, most significantly in South Australia - long time home of Dunstan, the gay Premier of SA who over-saw the decriminalisation of homosexuality in that state before the others! - of using the defence of 'homosexual panic' in murder cases. This is where defendants claim that they murdered a gay man or men because of an immediate perceived threat to their person by the perceived as gay man/men, and that such a reaction was reasonable and necessary to defend his heterosexuality.
But we've had enough side issues in this thread to spin off at least ten more reality shows.
Now gays are getting sick of each other. If the community can't even be tolerant of itself, do you know what that means? CATFIGHT!! 