Homophobia as Party Politics
The Construction of the 'Homosexual Deviant' in Joh Bjelke-Petersen's Queensland
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1321816600005249Keywords:
Queensland, gay and lesbian rights movement, political change, 1970-1980sAbstract
In 1987, years of frustration with Queensland's sexually repressive culture compelled a homosexual man named Cliff Williams to write to the national gay magazine OutRage. Williams outlined a number of the difficulties he faced being gay in Queensland and ended his letter with the exclamation, 'To hell with homophobic Queensland!' This exclamation captures many ofthe tensions in Queensland in the 1970s and 1980s. While these decades were a time of immense political change for gay and lesbian Australians, Queensland's political culture was particularly resistant to the gay and lesbian rights movement.
References
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Under section 208 of the Queensland Criminal Code, it is also still illegal for heterosexual couples to engage in anal intercourse.
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