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In retrospect, the first mardi gras ten years ago stands out as a decisive time for our history in Sydney. In early 1978, a group of lesbian and gay socialists and radicals got together to plan activities to mark the anniversary of the Stonewall Bar riots in New York. This 1969 rebellion was seen as a watershed in the expansion of a miliiant gay liberation movement and the June 28 anniversary had become an international birthday celebration.

In Australia the mid 70s had been fairly quiet, but in the United Slates the New Christian Right had been forging successful mass campaigns to reverse gay rights gains. In California, state senator John Briggs had called a referendum on the exclusion of all gay rights supporters from the education system. Feeling the threat, 300,000 took part in the 1978 Gay Freedom Day parade in San Francisco and later that year the referendum was unexpectedly voted down.

In the meantime, San Francisco had appealed for solidarity rallies across the world at the end of June. It was this letter that had spurred the initiative for a Saturday morning street march and late-night mardi gras parade in Sydney. Due to police harassment, what had been a large legal parade turned into a much larger riot, with 53 arrested. Within a week Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide had held unprecedentedly large solidarity actions. In Sydney, lesbians, gay men and civil rights supporters responded by calling street marches, some involving thousands of people. These were in turn attacked by police. The arrest tally became too much of an embarrassment for the Labor government, which saw no other option than to drop most of the charges and honour its pledge to repeal the Summary Offences Act in 1979.

For a time the Gay Solidarity Group was the focus for activities involving hundreds of people. The established gay groups were polarised, many denouncing the bad image that the mardi gras and subsequent marches had foisted on respectable homosexuals. Plans for a second mardi gras in June 1979 were met with hostility from the recently founded Sydney Star, and several large gay service and social groups. Despite this, thousands took part in a defiant affirmation of lesbian and gay identities. Although smaller than the maidi gras of the mid 1980s, and without the throngs of spectators, the first years of mardi gras involved more people than is often remembered.

A decade ago we had won few of the changes that have transformed our lives. The law, police and courts were every bit as repressive in Sydney then as they are in Brisbane now. Law reform seemed, and indeed was, a long way off. Non-judgemental information on homosexuality was hard to come by in schools. The media taboo had been breached in the early seventies, but still had not resulted in any decent representation of gay issues. The churches were unreformably bigoted. Psychiatrists had almost, but not entirely, given up on torturous cures for homosexuality. Inclusion of homosexuality in the new anti-discrimination laws had been rejected by the Liberals in the NSW upper house.

We weren't only after civil rights reforms, our demands for equality meant the dismantling of the heterosexual norm; our liberation implied an overturning of basic social structures, but our anger and our agitation began with obvious grievances against the police, the laws and the state.

The second half of the 1970s had seen the conversion of gambling premises into gay bars which had accellerated the development of a centralised gay male commercial scene in Oxford Street. Slogans such as Think Gay Buy Gay and talk of a Gay Community came to the fore. The solution to gay oppression was seen as the construction and consolidation of this enclave. People could move from the suburbs or from the country, socialise near where they lived, come out, and use a concentrated voting power to defend their rights. The 1981-82 economic downturn burst the optimism of these strategies. The vaunted 'discretionary spending' of the 'average gay man' saw its limits when confronted with a new rise in unemployment, a decrease in real wages and a rise in costs of living, most notably for inner city accommodation. The previous market inducements for businesses to both cater to gay men and identify as part of a gay community were reversed. Rather than an ever increasing number of customers, with an ever larger budget for entertainment, the market showed its limitations. Many venues closed or went straight; others felt the need to stress that heterosexual clients were welcome by limiting the gay community image previously cultivated. This limitation of the commercial gay community preceded the impact of AIDS.

Yet the early 1980s saw the transformation of the mardi gras into a massive high profile celebration, involving tens of thousands in a public affirmation of the gay communities. The winning of law reform in NSW in 1984 was based on the active involvement of broad sectors of the gay community in a long and very public struggle for gay rights. This pattern of intense, public and politicised mass campaigning was repeated on a larger scale in the New Zealand law reform of 1986, one of the world historic victories for our movement.

By contrast, in Victoria, with its different political complexion, consistent lobbying efforts achieved the repeal of the buggery laws. In NSW it was repeated and strong public rallies that convinced Wran that he had to solve the festering gay rights issue if he was to salvage a tarnished liberal image for the electoral future of the Labor government. Unity within the gay community around simple demands for gay rights had been backed up not only by parliamentary lobbying, but also by extensive yet underreported work by lesbians and gay men within trade unions.

In 1978 no one could have imagined AIDS, the relentlessness and horror of an epidemic that at first seemed to single us out. We should be proud of our response, of our collective efforts to take care of the sick, to mount preventive education programs, to fight the political repercussions of the epidemic.

From Melbourne the gay press has counselled that the days of gay liberation are over. Our efforts now are professional, safeguarding our co-operative and cordial dependance relationships with our state and federal governments, and with our medical establishments. The confrontational politics of our past are passe. 'Outrage' rewrote its history to denounce its own past leftism, and lesbians past and present, thereby justifying the hegemony of the 'new realism'.

Its easy, but not accurate, to think of the 80s, as a period of conservatism. As in France and Greece, the impact of right wing Labor governments has demoralised and disoriented many sections of the left. With union leaders cooperating in lowering wages while profits soar, many socialist organisations have gone into crisis and retreat. Despite this, social movements remain strong, creative and combative. On many issues public opinion is still progressive, or at least contradictory and volatile. We aren't back in the 50s.

The cynical, and at times bitter, 'realism' within the gay politics is short sighted and dangerous. Its strategy lacks the flexibility, mobility and participation that we need. It does not correspond to the situation internationally, nor in most parts of Australia.

In France, the reforms won in the first years of Mitterand are falling under the shadow of the mass support for Le Pen, who peddles a fascism as loudly anti-homosexual as it is racist. In Britain, lesbians and gays in recent months have mobilised in unprecedented numbers against Thatcher's attempt to re-close the closet doors. Since the miners' strike, the movement in Britain, more than any comparable country, has shown the impact of class struggle politics. In the United Stales frustration at the criminal inaction of the Reagan administration in the face of AIDS, and serious attempts to curtail lesbian and gay freedoms, have led to an inspiring outburst of local civil disobedience actions, and the half million strong October March on Washington, one of the most important demonstrations in North American history.

In Australia, by contrast, many benefits have been won in recent years through work 'within ihe system'. Though it remains important, we can't confine our tactics and strategics to professional lobbying, That's never been the tickct in Queensland, and while it wasn't enough with Wran, its certainly no longer adequate in NSW under the Liberals.

That there is a feeling for mass action and public response is clear: from the AZT rallies, from the candlelight memorials, from Sydney's rally against Thatcher's Section 28 in April, and from the interest in ihe re-establishment of the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby as an active campaigning focus.

Overseas there is a turn towards increasing unity in action between lesbians and gay men. In NSW the defensive agenda forced on us by the new government will make coalition work more and more essential, not only between lesbians and gay men. but with the Aboriginal movement, ihe trade unions, international solidarity activists, students ecologies and the women's movement.

Our rights are neither fully won, nor guaranteed against easy reversal. 1988 sees a need for the up front lesbian and gay liberation agitation that made 1978 memorable.

Gay Solidarity and the newly reconstituted Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby have initiated preparations for a rally outside Parliament between 5.30 and 7pm on Friday 1st July. Speakers include Julie McCrossin, Gary Cox, David Buchanan, and Simon Ferguson. The Solidarity Choir has agreed to sing, and the rally will be sign interpreted. The Greiner government is reintroducing the Summary Offences laws, threatening to limit the powers of the Anti-Discrimination Board, hoping to abolish funding for lesbian and gay services, is entertaining anti-abortion resolutions, and is keen to reinforce wowserism in schools. It is essential that lesbians and gay men show Greiner, Nile and Carr that our equality is not up for negotiation; our response will be every bit as militant as the recent trade union and Aboriginal mobilisations.

Enola Gay: Lesbians/Gays for Nuclear Disarmament will be making one of their semi-annual appearances on Saturday 6 August. I988 marks the 43rd anniversary of the first use of atomic weapons in war. Each year the peace movement mobilises around the slogan Never Again. Demands for the dismantling of American bases, against uranium mining, and against visits by nuclear warships are more pressing than ever, given the recent pronouncements of Prime Minister Hawke. Assemble with the Enola, Dykes for Disarmament, and Poofs for Peace banners, at Belmore Park at 11am. March to Hyde Park South via George and Pitt Streets.

Already available from the International Bookshop in Melbourne, and we hope soon on sale in Sydney, is 'The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement' by Canadian, Barry Adam. This textbook traces our history from the l9th century German organisations, through the Holocaust, ihe re-establishment of the homophile groups, Stonewall, Gay Liberation and Lesbian Feminism, the new Right attacks, and the challenges of the 80s. The work is concise, fairly comprehensive, well formulated, and seems to be of liberal Marxist persuasion. Yet the author's opposition is made clear to trends within the feminist movement he sees as reactionary/moralist. The book is part of the Social Movement Series from Twayne Publishers in Boston, and retails for $16.50.

GSG meets on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 8pm in the Men Opposing Patriarchy room, 4th floor, 56 Foster St, Surry Hills, The next meetings will be: Thurs 14 and 28 July, Thurs 11 and 25 August

CURRENT NEWSLETTER AND ARCHIVE OF PREVIOUS NEWSLETTERS

Mannie has a personal web site: RED JOS: HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISM

Mannie's blogs may be accessed by clicking on to the following links:

MannieBlog (from 1 August 2003 to 31 December 2005)

Activist Kicks Backs - Blognow archive re-housed - 2005-2009

RED JOS BLOGSPOT (from January 2009 onwards)

This page updated 18 SEPTEMBER 2014 and again on 26 APRIL 2017

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