Mardi Gras: from politics to business
By Pip Hinman As the month of gay and lesbian Mardi Gras cultural, sporting and community festivities comes to a close, and the big parade night and party draw near, hundreds of thousands of people have been gearing up for one of the biggest public statements of sexual tolerance — the Mardi Gras parade. But while participation and publicity for the Mardi Gras have never been greater, the extravaganza bears little resemblance to its origins. Mardi Gras started out in Sydney, in 1978, as a radical political event. It was organised in response to a call by gays and lesbians in San Francisco who were seeking international solidarity in their struggle against the Briggs Initiative — an anti-homosexual bill proposed by Californian Republican Senator John Briggs. Activists there mounted a radical campaign which prioritised mass mobilisations over individual lobbying; it eventually defeated the ordinance. According to Ken Davis, who was involved in organising the early Mardi Gras protests, "The receivers of this letter called together a small coalition of activists: women and men from the radical Sydney University group, Active Defence of Homosexuals on Campus, from the Gay Task Force, some of whom had fallen out with a new and more conservative leadership in Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP), and from Marxist groups such as the Socialist Workers Party, the Communist Party of Australia, International Socialists and Spartacist League." Organising for International Gay Solidarity Day, the committee, which became known as the Gay Solidarity Group, was hopeful that the events would inspire more interest in gay political activism and enable it to mobilise people against an upcoming visit by British "morals" campaigner Mary Whitehouse. Initially opting for a public forum, it later decided on a Saturday morning march as well to encourage more people to attend. In addition, the Gay Task Force and CAMP suggested a night-time carnival which would move slowly down Oxford Street.
Davis recalls the first march: "On the morning of Saturday, June 24, city shoppers and workers saw an unprecedentedly large lesbian-led 500-strong street march. The march passed without incident, everyone exhilarated at the turnout and the vehemence of our demands against discrimination, the law and violence. For many it was their first demonstration, their first coming out. "Yet this broader participation created new tensions, between more conservative men and radical lesbians, between feminists and sado-masochists, between Trotskyists and Zionists ... there was internal conflict about what a proper image of lesbian and gay rights should be." That afternoon, a packed meeting in the Paddington Town Hall debated the state of the lesbian and gay movement in Europe and the Americas. By 10pm, the official starting time of the Mardi Gras, only a handful had gathered in the freezing cold. According to Davis: "The experiment looked like it would be a fizzer". Later, however, a sizeable crowd began to congregate and a truck led the way into the street. "Some of us were dressed festively, or at least in bad drag, some were drinking, some were singing, some even danced a little, and many of us called passionately to the pavements: 'Out of the bars and into the streets!'." Police broke up the march at Hyde Park. However, more people joined as the crowd, becoming more militant, responded to organisers' calls for a march to Kings Cross. Police moved in to arrest people; in all 53 were taken away that night.
The next day, the CAMP offices in Glebe became the organising and media centre campaigning for the arrestees. The press and government railed against the demonstrators.
Campaign, then the only national gay paper, not known for its radicalism, editorialised, "What happened ... was the finest display of gay pride and unity every witnessed here ... We also have every reason to be enraged ... What happened just before midnight at Kings Cross was one of the worst police-demonstrator confrontations experienced since the Vietnam protest era beginning." After this, 400 people turned up to a community meeting at which there was a passionate debate about what to do next. According to Davis, while some wanted another night-time march without police permission, the prevailing view was for a day-time march, with the police given prior notification. "The aim was to gather together in public the largest possible number of supporters, around the demand to drop the charges against the Mardi Gras arrestees, while trying to avoid triggering fears of violence and arrests." More than 2000 people, including gay and lesbian, women's, left and trade union groups, attended the July 15 march, which called on the NSW Labor government and police to drop the charges. It was the largest gay rights event held in Australia to that time. A popular protest song was heard throughout the march: "Get your laws of my body/ I want them outta my bed/ It's none of your fucking business/ what I do in my bed". After marching through Kings Cross to Taylor Square, the demonstrators stopped in front of the Darlinghurst police station, where wreaths of pansies were laid. Scores of police jumped out and arrested 11 women and three men. The new arrests sparked even more debate about what strategy was needed to win democratic rights. Had the most militant demonstrators provoked the police? Or would they — given the level of homophobia — have responded like this regardless? What sort of "image" should gay men and lesbians be projecting? Which was more important, image or issues? This march had galvanised the movement around the country: Melbourne held a march of around 600 people, and Adelaide and Brisbane also held solidarity demonstrations.
The gay and lesbians rights movement in Australia was initially sparked by the riot that took place following a police raid on a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, on June 27, 1969, in Greenwich Village, New York City. The movement in the United States, as here, grew up alongside the other mass radical social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, including the anti-Vietnam War, the women's and black rights movements. While not homogeneous, the gay and lesbian movement shared the same general critique of capitalism — that it was reactionary and needed to be radically reformed, if not overturned completely. It became clear to many in the gay and lesbian liberation movement that their oppression was an integral part of class society's need to maintain the hegemony of the traditional family unit, within which the costs of raising the next generation of workers are privatised, women bearing the main load. Gays and lesbians are oppressed not only by homophobic attitudes, but also by laws which, among other things, make it a crime for two people of the same sex to have consensual sex. While in all states — with the notable exception of Tasmania — laws against sodomy were repealed by the early 1980s, discrimination against gays and lesbians continues in a myriad of other ways despite these legal reforms. In this context, demands to end discrimination challenge and expose the status quo. So threatening was the early gay rights movement, which had found a natural ally in the civil rights, antiwar and women's movements, that the Labor Party refused to act despite the large number of ALP members who had petitioned attorney general Frank Walker and Premier Neville Wran. The following year, 1979, the Gay Solidarity Group organised a week of activities from June 23 to mark the 10th anniversary of Stonewall. On June 28, about 300 people attended a candlelight march from Hyde Park to Parliament House to commemorate the anniversary of Stonewall and the 44th anniversary of the Nazi pogrom against homosexuals in Germany. However, the highlight of the week, according to John Watkins, a journalist for the socialist newspaper
Direct Action, was the second annual Mardi Gras. "Over 3000 people danced and chanted from Taylor Square, through the city, and back to Taylor Square." No arrests were made that year — a victory for militant campaign waged the year before.
Neither were there any major clashes with the police in the 1980 march, which again drew around 3000 people. But following criticism from some lesbian groups that the parade was too focused on celebration and not militant enough, the debate about strategy resumed. A lesbian activist writing in
Gay Community News put it this way: "We chanted slogans against oppressive police attacks, and for the revolution. Unfortunately we were drowned out by the music truck. When we asked for the music to be turned down we were told by the male marshal that 'this is the music truck'! "I asked myself what the purpose of the mardi gras is. Isn't it the commemoration of a brutal attack on American gays? Didn't police attack lesbians and gay men in Sydney two years ago? Aren't gays still living in fear of brutality, conviction and harassment every day? But let the music play on ... Will the Stonewall commemoration become a rival to Moomba, or are we going to use it as a chance for political comment and power by sheer numbers and solidarity?" The organising committee initiated a formal debate on the future direction of Mardi Gras in its 1980 report. Questions raised included: What is the goal of Mardi Gras? Should the Mardi Gras continue to be in gay pride week? Should it be run at a profit? Sharp differences were expressed at a public meeting at the sixth national conference for lesbians and homosexual men in Sydney in September. According to Graham Carbury, author of
A History of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, the key debate was between those who wanted to retain Mardi Gras as a political protest and symbol of gay and lesbian solidarity, and those who wanted to make it a celebration of gay and lesbian lifestyles. Some believed that "the ideological bias" of the organising committee had stifled Mardi Gras' potential to reach broader numbers of people. However, many activists responded that the owners of commercial gay venues were simply trying to hijack the march for their own profit-making purposes. This difference would remain a debating point for some years. Carbury argues that it is debatable that Mardi Gras has become less political — although he concedes, "1981 did mark a shift in style away from the commemoration of the Stonewall heritage, with its overtones of militancy and confrontation, towards a celebration of gay visibility and diversity". Craig Johnson, later to become a convener of the Gay Rights Lobby, writing in
Campaign, put the change down to the new, appointed, organising committee: "The Mardi Gras was no longer organised by the Gay Solidarity Group, a radical liberation organisation, but by a specific Gay Mardi Gras Task Group. The Task Group saw the Mardi Gras as a fun event, a street party, without any particular reference to politics. It wanted the Mardi Gras to spread out beyond the movement and encompass the gay sub-cultures, especially the male one ... the new direction was significant." This new direction was not simply the result of a change in the organising body, nor in its composition, although these did have a conservatising effect. It was also related to the federal Labor Party's ability to coopt a part of the leaderships of the social movements. While the success of these movements' militant and mass campaigns in the 1970s and early 1980s had forced some concessions from governments, it had also convinced some of their leaders that working through the Labor Party would be beneficial to the movements — if not the individuals concerned. The Labor Party had to be really pushed to shake off its homophobia. In 1981, George Petersen, a NSW ALP backbencher, managed to introduce a private member's bill to lower the age of consent to 16 for homosexuals and heterosexuals, and to repeal all homosexual offences. While it was supported by the Gay Rights Lobby and a sizeable majority of public opinion, the ALP refused to support the bill. In 1983, gay activists set up an "embassy" outside NSW Premier Neville Wran's house to demand law reform because police were still raiding gay sex clubs and charging same sex couples for "scandalous conduct". In 1984 Wran was finally forced to introduce a private member's bill on law reform.
At this time the Mardi Gras organisers were encouraging more gay-owned businesses to become involved. Brian McGahen, on behalf of the organising committee, told the
Oxford Weekender in 1982, "We're keen to have maximum commercial participation". This coincided with moving Mardi Gras to the summer. Mardi Gras quickly became such a financial success that it prompted much animosity between activists and gay business operators over the parade route. But the politics of the march were considerably watered down. In 1983, theorganising committee, in part fielding criticism from activists, issued a statement which said in part: "We do not see 'politics' in any narrow sense. Our right to lead our chosen lifestyle is our major political demand. Therefore, a Mardi Gras which makes a positive expression of our lifestyle, where everyone — straight and gay — has a great time and everything happens smoothly and according to plan, is the most important political statement we as an organising committee can make." Mardi Gras did grow, almost exponentially, from then. In 1985, more than 30,000 people participated. This figure jumped to 100,000 in 1987, the year in which the parade became the largest night-time event, and
the event on the gay and lesbian calendar. Up to 200,000 participated in 1989; marchers travelled to Sydney from all over Australia and around the world. With the exception of anti-violence and anti-racism banners and the Gay and Lesbian Immigration Task Force, political floats are rare. The profitability of Mardi Gras has — for some — helped to make it more palatable. NSW chief executive of tourism Tony Thirwell was quoted in the February 15
Sydney Morning Herald as saying that Mardi Gras helped to promote Sydney as a sophisticated city in the international marketplace. Yet as recently as 1990, the NSW Tourist Commission had instructed its staff not to display copies of the Mardi Gras Festival Guide. In 1991 Dr Ian Marsh from the Australian Graduate School of Management and consulting economist John Greenfield calculated that the Mardi Gras generated $38 million for the state of NSW. Of this, $26 million was spent within the boundaries of the South Sydney and the Sydney city councils. The survey found that Mardi Gras attracted more international and interstate visitors than any major cultural festival in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth or Adelaide. It earns Qantas something in the vicinity of $1.5 million. International visitors were estimated to have spent close to $6 million — much more than those attending the Grand Prix. This year, the ABC has sold its coverage rights in San Francisco, Taiwan, Britain and New Zealand. While the ABC is coy about revealing the exact cost of the production — $100,000-200,000 — there's no doubt that it is set to make a tidy profit. While some Mardi Gras parade themes have increased community awareness of certain issues — more money for HIV/AIDS research and the need for the same legal relationship rights as heterosexuals — Mardi Gras' success has largely been measured in financial and economic, rather than political, terms. At the same time, gay men and lesbians have yet to win many of their democratic rights. In Tasmania, homosexuality is still illegal. According to a 1994 Gay Men and Lesbians Against Discrimination (GLAD) survey, 45% of lesbians and 45% of gay men reported some form of discrimination or harassment in employment, including loss of jobs, because of their sexuality; in education, 29% of lesbians and 26% said they faced harassment; 70% of lesbians and 69% of gay men reported being verbally abused, threatened or bashed in a public place; and 41% of lesbians and 25% of gay men reported inadequate service or refusal of service on the basis of their sexuality. Law reform, without the backing of an active movement to keep the pressure on the establishment, has a limited impact on improving the everyday lives of gays and lesbians. The early Mardi Gras blazed the way for the gay and lesbian rights movement. Its militant political nature was its strength.