1969 was a VERY big year!

1969 it was a very big year for change. A lot happened in 1969 - not all of it good.

It was the year that Richard Milhous Nixon was first elected President of the United States of America, the year of the last ever public performance by The Beatles, on top of Apple Records, the year of the first flight of the Boeing 747, the Jumbo jet that would revolutionise air travel, Judy Garland died from an accidental drug overdose, Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales, Apollo 11 was launched and the lunar module Eagle landed on the lunar surface, Charles Manson and members of his cult murdered a pregnant Sharon Tate, the Woodstock Festival was held in upstate New York, The Brady Bunch premiered on American television, Sesame Street started, the first GAP store opened. It was a busy year.

Two other events were reported for 1969, events that have changed the life of every gay man and woman.

1969 is reported as being the first year that the HIV virus was documented as migrating to the USA from Haiti.

1969 was also the year of the Stonewall Riots in New York.

These two events would continue to colour our lives for the next four decades and probably for many more to come.

In Greenwich Village on Christopher St. there was a small, rather seedy bar run by the Genovese Mafia Family. It served watered down drinks, paid off the police and was frequented by transvestites, lesbians, gay men and homeless kids. On the night of June 28 the New York Police raided the club. This type of event was reasonably common in the 50s and 60s but for some reason on this particular night, people had decided that they had had enough and refused to go quietly.

No one is really sure who was first to say “Not this time”, was it a butch dyke dressed as a man or a transvestite who first resisted arrest and started to rally the crowd?

It started with the throwing of coins, a symbol of the graft that the Mafia were paying the police, (gayola) and quickly escalated to bottles, rocks and anything handy being hurled at the law. The normally meek ‘fags’ decided that now was the time for ‘Gay Power’.

Word spread through the Village and across the city; hundreds of gay men, lesbians and other minority groups converged on Christopher St. to join the protest.

The Police were woefully outnumbered and had to use the pay phone inside Stonewall to call for reinforcements. Bolstered by the Tactical Patrol Force, (TPF), riot police specially trained to deal with anti Vietnam War protesters, New York’s finest tried to regain control of the streets but every time the protesters were dispersed they would reform and challenge the TPF by forming a ‘kick line’, like a crowd of angry Rockettes, singing and mocking the police. This was a different style of protest, a protest never seen before but soon to become familiar throughout the world. A protest with panache, that would one day become the mainstay of Gay Pride marches throughout the world, proving that you could get your message across and achieve change with wit and humour.

For the next five nights the crowds, in varying numbers, would regather to hammer home the message, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.”

In July, the week after the riots, a new organisation was born in New York, the ‘Gay Liberation Front’, (GLF), whose sole purpose was to promote equality and force change on an unwilling government. During the next year lesbians and gay men, through out the world formed their own version of the GLF and took their fight to their streets.


In Australia as news of the riots filtered through, Sydney’s first political group, ‘Campaign Against Moral Persecution’, (CAMP), was formed in 1970. The first national Gay Pride march happened on 15 September 1973, with 18 arrests. In 1975 Rod Stringer with Bill McElvie launched ‘Campaign’ a national gay men’s magazine. On the night of Saturday, 24 June, 1978 the first major protest rally to demand equal rights for homosexuals was held in Sydney and from that march the ‘Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras’ was born.

Meanwhile, back in 1969 that little known virus that had migrated from Haiti to America was marshalling its own troops and by the 80’s was ready to mount its own attack on an unsuspecting populace.

1969 was for a lot of reasons a very BIG year.

The Queer Bill of Rights

For thirty one years we’ve been marching. We’ve been marching against discrimination. We’ve been marching against a disease that everyday, still takes our brothers and sisters in ever increasing numbers. We’ve been marching against inaction, self interest, prejudice and greed.

We’ve won a few battles but our march continues.

Our warriors don’t have tanks and armour; our warriors wear overalls, suits and high heels. We don’t have weapons of mass destruction hidden in our borderless country; our weapons are humour, wit and strength of character. When we march we don’t march for conquest, we march for recognition, for understanding and for compassion. Our uniform is rainbow not khaki, we have no need of camouflage yet too many of us are forced to hide.

We count each small victory as a stepping stone. We don’t see defeats we see hurdles.
We see hope rather than despair; we feel elation rather than desperation.
Our troops live not only in Darlinghurst and Newtown but also in New York, London, Beijing, Harare and Tehran. We are not restricted to any one country or religion and no amount of denial by narrow minded bigots will ever change that.

We are a universal nation that is inclusive not exclusive. We welcome into our hearts all that seek healing and peace. We do not discriminate because of gender, race, sexuality or religion.

There are those who will persecute us, threaten us and in too many cases harm us. We will no longer simply lie quietly and die. We do not believe that we have any more of a right to exist than anyone else but neither will we accept that our right is any the less.

We know we have made mistakes but from each mistake we have learned and grown. We learn our lessons the hard way but we never have to learn them twice.

We will not stop and we will not be stopped.

Ahead of us there are the glimmers of hope that give us the strength and courage to continue this fight. Yet still we need new treatment regimes, greater accessibility to medication in developing countries and we need, now more than ever, to work together to bring about an end to the policy of greed, self interest and selfishness that keep medication from being made available to all those who are in need.

We need the help and support of ALL our elected leaders every day not just every three or five years when elections are due. We are not apart from society; we are a valuable and necessary part of it.

We’re here. Were queer get used to us.

Why We Need Another Plague

Well this is going to offend; at least I certainly hope it will. I want to hear arms being crossed and every dudgeon being set to high.

Okay what I mean is, our community needs another challenge, focus, raison d’etre. Something that will bring us back together, a common goal or purpose.

In the 50’s and early 60’s we had the one common purpose of “keeping our closet safe”. We formed groups of like minded men and women, met in secret places and kept our secrets safe. Everything was word of mouth as clubs began to open and then flourish. In the late 60’s and 70’s we found a new voice. Out of the Anti – War, counter culture protest movement and moratoriums we decided that we had something to say and we had a right to be heard. The more radical amongst us learned how to network, form cells, alliances, collectives and societies. Slowly out of those disparate groupings, we put together a cohesive force that burst onto the streets of Sydney and marched. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it! It was wonderful and exciting. It was the start of our brave new pink world. But somewhere along that road to full liberation we settled. Not everyone, but lets be honest most of us, settled for “our once a year day”. Mardi Gras. Until finally even that day is now becoming an irrelevancy. We settled for an existence rather than a life.

Then along came that big disease with the little name and suddenly we were focused again, united against a common enemy. All of that energy got us back out of the Bars and onto the streets. This time we marched under a rainbow banner and demanded that “attention must be paid”. We were dying, slowly, painfully and in alarmingly increasing numbers. Not the pretty death we had hoped for after watching “Now Voyager”. Who was going to look after us if we didn’t start looking after each other?

As the pages of this paper began to fill with the death notices of young men in their 20’s and 30’s we decided that silence really did equal death, it was time to Act Up. Each victory was hard fought and sometimes the battles took unexpected tolls on those fighting. Despair overwhelmed some and they found it impossible to go on. So we formed more groups, groups of caring, unpaid, volunteers like ANKALI and CSN. to support not just the sick but the carers as well. Then new drugs began to appear, then combinations, then a 10 year life expectancy became 15 then 20 then……what was once a death sentence has become a manageable chronic illness.

So we gave up, not everyone but most. The death notices were replaced with Real estate adverts. The quilt was wrapped up and put away and now only occasionally bought out as a relic, an example of how things were. HIV AIDS became the disease of “that generation”. Once a year the names of our martyrs are read to ever decreasing numbers of people.

We lost our focus. Our bright but brief rainbow community dissolved into fractious internecine fighting. Our crusade became a vehicle for people to hitch their wagons to, to promote their own careers and agendas. God save us all from pragmatists.

We are settling. And what is it that we are settling for? A life of self congratulatory self gratification, of selfishness rather than selflessness. We are still at war but now it’s with each other. The discriminated have become the discriminating. The one thing that the Festival of Light could never do we have done to ourselves. We’ve gone from fabulous to fatuous. We’ve become a theme park for out of “towners” to come to each weekend or on that one night in March, Mardi Gras, and point and stare and snigger at the “gays”. We’re becoming an irrelevancy, a footnote in the last part of a millennium gone by; being sucked slowly and inexorably into the mundane. We live small lives and because of that we are becoming smaller people, focused totally on ourselves.

So yes we need another plague because maybe then we will come together truly as one community and stand up for something more important than our right to drink, drug and “rut” ourselves into oblivion 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The need is out there it’s the willingness that’s lacking. All it will take to get us back on track is the desire to do something for someone else without once thinking “what’s in it for me”. Will we do it?

Maybe violence is the new plague. Maybe the “Reclaim the Street Vigil” is the start of the new Community.