FAST LANE OUT OF DARK AGES
With marriage equality to be voted on, Queensland has come a long way since Joh’s anti ‘condom culture’ of the late 80s
IN just six weeks, the people of Australia will have spoken over whether marriage equality will be a reality.
Forms for the postal plebiscite went out this week and are due back next month.
With the first same-sex marriages potentially happening by Christmas, it’s worth remembering how drastically life has changed for the LGBTQI community since the days of the Bjelke-Petersen era.
In September 1987, Sir Joh was in the final weeks of his 19year reign and took aim at sex as an essential issue.
He declared that the State Government would not legalise condom vending machines and would move to immediately prosecute people installing them.
Sir Joh defiantly said the state would not “be dragged into the condom culture” as calls for his resignation came from the Opposition which insisted he had shown no concern for people fighting AIDS.
“Cabinet decided that the National Party Government will not bend fundamental principles to accommodate (Wayne) Goss irresponsibility among a small section of the community,” he said.
Fast-forward two years to late 1989 as the 32-year-old conservative administration faced electoral annihilation after shocking revelations of institutionalised corruption among its members during the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
Premier Mike Ahern was dumped by the party and replaced with Russell Cooper in the hopes of mounting a lastditch fight against the resurgent Labor, led by Wayne Goss.
Cooper was forced to call an election for December 2, 1989 and decided to focus on the Nationals classic themes of social conservatism.
Dismissing corruption as an issue going into the poll, Cooper instead decided to target the gay community.
Homosexuality was still il- legal in Queensland and the Premier campaigned that Labor would move to bring the state into line with its southern counterparts if it won.
“Labor would make moral decay the law in Queensland,’’ he said to his fears that homosexuality and prostitution would be legalised.
The Gold Coast would become the gay capital of Australia and gay mardi gras would be held through Brisbane’s streets, he said.
“As far as we’re concerned we don’t recognise homosexuality in this state and that’s where the matter rests.”
Labor won the election and swept the Nationals from power and, in 1990, removed the “draconian” laws.
The Nationals, under subsequent leader Rob Borbidge, took a more moderate position on the issue as the 1990s progressed.
“What people do in their own time is their own business and I don’t think governments should be moralising,” Mr Borbidge said.
By the mid-1990s Cooper admitted he was wrong in his previous views, saying many homosexuals were “fine people with good minds’’ but said, “It’s their minds I’m interested in, nothing else.”