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Pinkwash

By Rodney Croome - posted Monday, 7 April 2008


One that comes to mind is the Salamanca Market protests that marked the start of the campaign to decriminalise same-sex relationships.

In August 1988 the Hobart City Council banned the then Tasmanian Gay Law Reform Group, together with its card table and gay law reform petition, from the council’s Saturday morning “family market”. The Group defied the ban, the police were called, and over seven consecutive Saturday mornings 130 people were arrested for staffing the stall, signing the petition or displaying support-posters with the words “gay” or “lesbian” printed on them.

There could be few more blatant examples of a public authority infringing the right of free speech, free assembly and freedom from discrimination. But Parliament did nothing to stop it, nor could outraged public opinion move an intransigent council.

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In the end the council only backed down because the protests grew so large, and its legal authority was exposed as shaky.

Another critical moment in the gay law reform debate was a 1994 ruling from the UN Human Rights Committee that our former laws criminalising male-to-male sex with life imprisonment violated the world’s ultimate Charter of Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

This was a watershed for the gay law reform movement. Before the UN decision, prejudice had consistently dominated public debate and obstructed reform. After, it was increasingly accepted in the general community that (even) gay people deserved basic human rights.

In particular, the UN decision gave the Federal Government and the High Court a mandate to step in and render the offending statutes inoperative and invalid.

Here The Mercury might interject and say that even though the outcome was fine the process proves charters of rights do in fact, to use its words, take “power away from the people and their elected representatives and towards a tiny group of judges”.

Not so. Gay law reform had already passed the Lower House twice. It had the support of a majority of Tasmanians. The only snag to reform was a coterie of born-to-rule Upper House members, some of whom were elected from tiny malapportioned electorates.

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In this one example of where a Charter of Rights has impacted on Tasmanian law, power was taken away from the recalcitrant, unrepresentative few and given back to the people and the people’s House. Fittingly it was at the overwhelming behest of that House, and with the strong assent of the people, that the Legislative Council finally agreed to erase the old statutes three years later.

Clearly, today’s far-more-tolerant Tasmania owes much to the UN gay law reform decision and the UN Covenant upon which it was based.

Clearly also, Tasmania already has in that Covenant a de facto Charter of Rights.

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About the Author

Rodney Croome is a spokesperson for Equality Tasmania and national advocacy group, just.equal. He who was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2003 for his LGBTI advocacy.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Rodney Croome

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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