Gay men in Sydney

Abstract

Early in February 2005, the Governor of New South Wales, Professor Marie Bashir, launching the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival, noted that this event had been 'absolutely priceless' in helping change social attitudes to sexual variation. This had helped create a more tolerant society:

Most Australians are increasingly taking pride in that sense of freedom which springs from the considerable diversity within our society – diversity of race, religion, culture and also sexual orientation. Increasingly we have seen this diversity engender a greater environment of inclusiveness, respect and tolerance. Indeed, more than 'tolerance' – rather 'acceptance' – an acceptance and respect.

Such public approbation from the head of state is in stark contrast to the views, expressed over 200 years previously, by the first governor, Arthur Phillip:

There are two crimes that would merit death – murder and sodomy. For either of these crimes I would wish to confine the criminal till an opportunity offered of delivering him as a prisoner to the natives of New Zealand, and let them eat him.

In the intervening centuries, attitudes to same-sex sexual activity, affection and relationships underwent dramatic changes, to the point where Sydney has acquired the reputation of being one of the iconic gay cities of the contemporary world. Yet the process has not been easy, and the major changes are only relatively recent. Indeed, over most of Australia's history since the white invasion of 1788, governments have actively persecuted those men who have been caught expressing their homoerotic desires, even though lesbian identity and behaviour were never criminalised in the same way.

Further adding to the complexities of social change, men with same-sex desires have seen themselves transformed from persons who might commit an act – sodomy – to persons with an identity inextricably bound up with their sexuality – homosexual or gay. Two centuries have seen attitudes and conceptualisations change dramatically.

A problem for writing a history of groups or communities designated criminal, demonised and persecuted over so much of our white history is both the relative paucity of records, and the bias in those that exist.

Three institutions of society – the law, the Christian churches, and the medical profession – have played particularly important roles in setting the parameters for controlling homosexuality, both directly and by conditioning the wider society's attitudes to homosexuality and thus how gay people can live. This can be seen when we look back over the emergence of gay, lesbian, and what some now refer to as 'queer', life and subcultures in Sydney, from criminal secrecy within a disapproving society to such open activity, and at the more general changing attitudes to homosexuality in Australia.