What was happening in Australia at the time?

On a balmy February night in 1971, a small group of about 50 gay men and lesbians gathered in a church hall in Balmain. They met to establish a group called the Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP). It was the first ever open public meeting of homosexuals held in Australia.

How did this come about?

Australian society in the late 1960s was hostile to homosexuals or, at least, its institutions were. The law treated gay men as criminals who could be locked away for 14 years for the “abominable crime of buggery”, and the police actively tried to prosecute them. The medical profession regarded lesbians and gay men as sick, and some even tried to change their orientation in horrific ways, often with legal sanction. The painful techniques of aversion therapy (such as the administering of electric shocks) were mild compared to one physician’s chosen method - a lobotomy. In comparison, the Church’s attitudes seemed modest - we were just all sinners dammed to hell.

Standing up and attempting to counter the negative images and stereotypes about homosexuals was a very brave act indeed. But that is just what two people did in September 1970. When John Ware and Christabel Poll came out in an article called ‘Couples’ in The Australian newspaper on the 19th of September, they became the first openly self identified lesbian and gay man in Australia. Of course, there were many other identities known or whispered to be gay or lesbian, but nobody had dared identify themselves.

Christabel and John were announcing the formation of an organization called CAMP (Campaign Against Moral Persecution) that aimed to counter all the negative perceptions of homosexuals. John, a psychology student, and Christabel, a public servant, had long talked about forming such a group. What they hadn’t anticipated was that they were initiating the beginning of open gay and lesbian activism in Australia.

There had been organizations attempting to make change before this – the ACT Homosexual Law Reform Society in 1969, the Humanist Societies of Victoria, Daughters of Bilitis and the Council of Civil Liberties – but these were either not gay, or openly gay groups.

What were the aims of CAMP?

John and Christabel’s aims were modest. They saw their organisation as a small, informed group of people or experts who could speak out positively. And John thought any open demonstration by homosexuals, and homosexual law reform (as had happened in England in 1967), to be still decades away.

They were astounded by the response and the enormous volume of mail they received after their coming out - so much so that they now had to revise their intentions. Over the next few months, plans were put in place for a more formally structured organization, and a magazine, CAMP Ink, was launched in December. In February 1971 the public meeting was held to launch CAMP, where John and Christabel were elected the first Co-Presidents.

CAMP focused on a variety of activities, including law reform, publicity and support. In 1973, they established what would eventually become the Gay and Lesbian Counselling Service that still functions today. Within a year, a loose federation of CAMP groups had been formed in most capital cities and on several university campuses.

Then, in October 1971, CAMP held the first ever demonstration in Australia, outside Liberal Party Headquarters. It was a colourful, noisy, fun-filled demonstration that did much for the self-esteem of the participants – three people immediately telephoned home and ‘came out ‘- and thus vindicated the formation of CAMP.

Other gay and lesbian activism in the 70s

Over the years CAMP evolved as groups joined and left. Younger activists believed the organisation to be too conservative, and broke away to form Sydney Gay Liberation in 1972. Women felt unwelcome in the organisation and later formed the CAMP Women’s Association, with some later leaving to become active in Women’s Liberation. This was the beginning of the diverse community and organisations we have today.

This, however, did not stop co-operation. A noisy joint protest was held in October 1972, when Peter Bonsall-Boone lost his job as church secretary after appearing with his partner Peter de Waal, and with Gabby Antolovich and Sue Wills on an ABC TV program, Chequerboard.

Protests against the discrimination of gay liberationists at Macquarie University, Jeremy Fisher in 1973 and Penny Short in 1974, also received strong CAMP/Sydney Gay Liberation support.

There was plenty of other types of activism as well. Gay Liberationists participated in ‘Zaps’, outrageous actions in public places. For example, mass same-sex kissing on public transport. Most notable involved several activists tipping a bucket of blood and sheep’s brains into the foyer of the notorious Dr Harry Bailey, well known for his lobotomies.

The first arrest of a gay man – David McDiarmid – took place in early 1972 at a gay demonstration. McDiarmid, who was later important for his artistic input to the Mardi Gras, was charged with disorderly conduct.

The following year, twelve people were arrested when the police busted a demonstration during the nationally co-ordinated Gay Pride Week, as activists tried to lay a wreath on the Cenotaph in Martin Place, Sydney. The 1975 arrests at Black Rock beach in Melbourne proved a spur for law reform action in Victoria. The possible complicity of police in the death of Dr George Duncan in Adelaide in 1972 directly lead to law reform in South Australia.

By 1975, however, a lot of sting had gone from gay activism (except possibly in Adelaide where CAMP and the Gay Activists Alliance remained active). Some student radicals and activists worked with the Australian Union of Students to organise the First National Homosexual Conference in 1975. People began to move more into grass-roots activism, such as within the Trades Union movement. A commercial bar scene had begun to appear in some cities, especially Sydney’s Oxford Street, emitting a siren call that attracted many. But it really was only with the violent Police attack of the first Mardi Gras Parade in 1978 that public activism was again sparked into action.

Remembering the achievements of early activists

In a sense, some of the aims of the early movement were achieved. There was now greater visibility. The media (apart from the tabloids and, notoriously, the Sydney Morning Herald) was starting to come onside. The Police and the Parliament remained a problem (and would do so for another decade) but the medical profession had changed its attitudes. In 1973, the Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists declared that homosexuality should no longer be considered an illness, a world first.

The actions of John, Christabel and the early activists, have unfortunately largely been lost from the community memory. We as an organisation of 78ers believe that this loss of history is regrettable because the diverse political and socially complex gay and lesbian communities that we know today would not exist without their actions, their boldness and their bravery.

Additional Resources

Click here to listen to an interview on the Pride in Protest podcast where Mardi Gras board member Charlie chats to Ken Davis, a life-long left-wing activist who helped organise the first Mardi Gras in 1978. They discuss the history of the gay liberation movement in Australia right up to modern day LGBT politics. They cover huge ground across revolutionary politics of the 60s and 70s, internationalism, queer culture, and facing the crisis of liberalism's inevitable slide into right-wing nationalism.

An article written by Diane Minnis and Ken Davis, titled ‘How did the first Mardi Gras happen and why is it still important to fight for LGBTIQ rights?’

What was happening in the rest of the world?

The formation of the first lesbian, CAMP and gay freedom groups in Australia from 1970 was influenced by the rebirth of a revolutionary women’s liberation and gay liberation movements in Europe and North America in 1969.

1967 had seen the ‘Summer of Love’ and hippie/peace movement in California, and in 1968 there was a global youth rebellion: the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, intensification of independence/anti-Apartheid struggles in South Africa (and what was then South West Africa and Rhodesia), students massacred on the eve of the Olympics in Mexico, and democratic struggles against authoritarianism in Brazil, Thailand, Pakistan and Turkey.  There were the convulsions of the ‘Cultural Revolution’ in China, and rebellions in Yugoslavia and Poland, along with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia to end the ‘Prague Spring’. In the advanced capitalist countries workers and students in France launched a revolutionary wave that almost toppled De Gaulle, in USA Martin Luther King was murdered, and rioting shook the Democratic Party convention in Chicago, along with significant rebellions in Italy, Germany and Japan. Australia saw a general strike to defeat anti-union laws.

Out of this ferment, a new wave of feminism and gay liberation was born, with new radical gay and lesbian groups formed in USA, France and Mexico, soon followed by groups in Canada, Europe and Latin America.

The international gay liberation movement grew during a decade of revolutionary change, alongside the overthrow of the Greek, Portuguese and Spanish dictatorships, struggles against repression in Asia and Latin America, independence struggles in the Pacific, in Europe and Africa, the end of the American War in Vietnam, the Nicaraguan, Iranian and Grenadian revolutions of 1979, and the growth of an anti-Stalinist resistance that would end the Soviet world after another decade.

From the late 60s, the lesbian and gay movement here was influenced, informed and inspired by what was happening overseas, in particular in USA, Canada and UK. The first lesbian organisation in Australia, in part saw itself as an outpost of the American ‘Daughters of Bilitis’. Law reform here had taken lessons from the process in England/Wales, and news of New York’s Stonewall rebellion in June 1969 had been covered in the Sydney Morning Herald on 17 July by music journalist Lillian Roxon.

From 1970, campus, left and alternative newspapers carried news of the overseas gay liberation movement. In 1970, Australian hippie newspaper Playgue reprinted Martha Shelley’s manifesto ‘Gay is Good’. In 1970, a banned translation of the Danish ‘Little Red Schoolbook’ with non-judgmental guidance on drugs, sexuality and reproductive health, in a framework of children’s human rights was distributed by anarchists and radicals outside high schools.

Though not often positive, Australian lesbians, gay men and transsexuals[1] were influenced by overseas films such as Victim (1961), If (1968), The Killing of Sister George (1968), Midnight Cowboy (1969), It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives (1970), The Christine Jorgensen Story (1970), Myra Breckinridge (1970), Boys in the Band (1970), and Death in Venice (1971).

Affirmation within the international new left was also important; Huey Newtown, leader of the Black Panthers in USA in 1970 stated that homosexuals “might be the most oppressed people in the society” and that therefore could be the most revolutionary.

Dennis Altman’s 1971 book, “Homosexual Oppression and Liberation”, informed by his experiences in New York, catalysed the formation of Australian gay liberation groups.   

Australian lesbian and gay activists received in the mail, radical gay and lesbian books, newspapers, magazines, badges and LP records from Europe, Canada and USA retailed by Dr Duncan Revolution Books in Adelaide and the Feminist Bookshop initially in Eastwood, near Sydney’s new Macquarie University. After 1971, Canada’s monthly ‘Body Politic’ was particularly influential.

Our identities were influenced by international examples; here we had been poofs, homosexuals and camp. The more politicised identities of lesbian and gay were adopted from North America, along with faggot and dyke.

In the 70s, symbols of the movement were drawn from overseas groups: the pink and black triangles from the Nazi persecution of homosexuals in the labour camps, the Greek letter, lambda, and the butterfly, from Spanish and Indonesian. 

Lesbian and gay liberation in the 1970s stood alongside and learned from the international student, women’s, workers’, and anti-racist, indigenous, peace and environment movements.  Crucial to the movement in 1970s, in Australia and internationally, was participation in the contemporary anti-psychiatry, children’s liberation & de-schooling, drugs law reform, reproductive rights, sex worker rights, anti-censorship and anti-prisons movements. The Australian lesbian and gay movement in the 1970s, as with the movement in similar countries, saw itself as demanding transformation of normative heterosexuality, targeting law, courts and prisons, medicine and psychiatry, media, education, religion and sport.

As with overseas, the lesbian and gay groups in Australia in the 1970s were politically diverse. In CAMP and Gay Lib there were people from Young Labor and the Liberal Party, communists, liberals, conservatives, religious groups, Trotskyists, anarchists and counter-culturists. In the lesbian groups there were liberal, socialist and radical feminists. 

Internationalism had been central to the gay and lesbian liberation movement in Australia right from the start. Before and after the first gay and lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney in 1978, there had been solidarity activism against repression in UK, USA, Chile, Cuba, Russia, Greece, India, South Africa and Indonesia.

In the early 1970s, it was difficult to publicly demonstrate for lesbian and gay freedom. In 1973, dozens had been arrested in the first nation-wide Gay Pride Week. In the mid 1970s the main campaigns had been in defence of students or teachers such as Jeremy Fisher, Penny Short, Mike Clohesy, and Greg Weir.

The Stonewall rebellion in New York in June 1969 marked the birth of a new radical wave of gay and lesbian liberation. In 1970 annual Gay Freedom Day parades began, usually around the anniversary of the Stonewall riots at the end of June or early July, spreading initially in the Americas and Western Europe. The size and vitality of these political celebrations inspired activists in Australia.

After 1976, it was obvious that the Christian Right backlash against very limited lesbian and gay rights social and legal gains in various cities in the USA would threaten progress globally.

In early 1978, lesbian activist Alison Britton relocated from Sydney to San Francisco, and became involved in the mass action wing of the response to the planned Briggs Initiative, a ballot proposition by a conservative California state legislator which would remove any supporter of gay rights from any job in the public school system. 

In San Francisco the Gay Freedom Day parade, on the Ninth anniversary of the Stonewall riots would be the focus of resistance to the Briggs Initiative. In March 1978 Alison got her friends in the San Francisco organising committee to include her socialist friends in Sydney, Anne Talve and Ken Davis, in a letter appealing for international solidarity activities.

They convened a meeting in May at Sydney University Students Council of people from gay, lesbian, university, socialist and religious groups to plan a Day of International Gay Solidarity for 24 June 1978. The idea was to join gay and lesbian activities across the world on that day, and to start a response to our own problem of the Christian Right backlash. In the case of Australia, this was primarily the Festival of Light, with a British sister organisation.

Initially the coalition planned a forum at Paddington Town Hall on international struggles, a dance the night before at Petersham with women’s band, Sheila, and a street march in the city on the Saturday morning.  

Inspired by seeing footage of the parades in USA and Europe, people from CAMP in the emerging political action group, (including Ron Austin, Dr Jim Walker, Marg McMann, Lance Gowland, Robyn Plaister) suggested a late night street party or festival in Oxford Street, so that people could celebrate lesbian and gay freedom, without the danger of being seen by family or school or work colleagues. The group agreed, and people sprang into action, getting police permits, hiring a truck, making banners, leaflets and posters, liaising with media, organising participants. Marg McMann suggested the organising coalition take the name Gay Solidarity Group. The planned “festival” was soon called a mardi gras.

The morning march was a success, with 500 people. Gay media reported that 2,000 participated in the night time Mardi Gras. Never before had we collectively occupied space for a public celebration at night. Towards midnight on 24 June the unprovoked violent police attack on the Mardi Gras in College St and Kings Cross was traumatic. There was sudden urgency to our chants of “Stop police attacks on gays, women and blacks”.

It led to a long and successful campaign to drop the charges of those arrested, and to repeal the Summary Offenses Act, which gave police extensive repressive powers over all activities in public places. The arrests at the first Mardi Gras and at subsequent demonstrations made two questions central in NSW politics: lesbian and gay rights, and the broader democratic rights issues of the freedom of assembly and abuse of police powers.  This elicited substantial support from the women’s movement, civil libertarians, liberals, the Labor party and left, unions and students.

There were significant emergency demonstrations in Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. Internationally, in New Zealand, California, Berlin, London, Canada, Boston and New York, gay newspapers and activist groups reported the attacks on the Mardi Gras, held solidarity actions, and urged protest letters to the NSW Premier. In January 1979, NSW premier Wran was met with small protests at Sydney airport, in USA, UK and Germany, during a promotional trip.

On 24 June 1978, 300,000 people had marched in San Francisco’s Gay Freedom Day, and 85,000 in New York. Tens of thousands marched in Gay Freedom Day marches across North America and Europe. In November the Briggs Initiative was defeated by a strong action coalition of the lesbian and gay, African American, women’s and labour movements. This was a globally significant victory.

In 1979 and 1980, despite opposition from police, and some gay businesses, groups and media, larger night-time Mardi Gras were held successfully to coincide with the Stonewall anniversary International Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day events across the globe, at the end of June. But for us in Sydney, it was not only an international solidarity focus, but also the anniversary of our own watershed moment.

International solidarity was central to the birth of our movement in Australia. This was consolidated by the first Mardi Gras, and has continued ever since. Veterans of the movement in the 70s and of the first Mardi Gras remain committed to action against oppression and repression of lesbians, transgender people, gay men and queers overseas, and for the rights of queer refugees.

[1] Using the identity terms in use in the 1970s

Thanks to Ken Davis for the information on the International Context used on this page.