Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyPosts Tagged As: Victoria Australia
May 24th, 2016
The word “amazing” is so overused. Everyone is Amazing! Everything is Amazing! I’ve really come to hate the word and roll my eyes quite visibly whenever I hear someone say it.
With that said…. okay, this is amazing.
David Andrews, the Premiere of Victoria, formally apologized for the “abominable” laws which had criminalized gay relationships. He spoke before the state’s Parliament in Melbourne for nearly twenty minutes. “Please, let these words rest forever in our records. On behalf of the parliament, the government and the people of Victoria, for the laws we passed and the lives we ruined, and the standards we set, we are so sorry. Humbly, deeply sorry”
“This won’t erase the injustice, but it is an accurate statement of what I believe today — that these convictions should never have happened,” added Andrews, who described the laws as “nothing less than official state-sanctioned homophobia”.
Citing several examples from newspapers from 1977, 1976, 1967, 1961, 1937 and 1936, Andrews lamented that the law required the courts, police, media and the general public “to be bigoted.” “I can’t possibly explain why we made these laws, and clung to them, and fought for them. For decades, we were obsessed with the private mysteries of men. And so we jailed them, we harmed them, and in turn, they harmed themselves….”
The formal apology came after Victoria began allowing those with convictions under these anti-gay laws to have their records expunged. Six men have done so, with many others still going through the process. The Guardian highlighted the case of Tom Andrews, who was convicted of the anti-gay statute after his boss raped him at the age of 14. When Tom Anderson went to police to report the rape, police ended up charging Anderson with gross indecency and buggery.
He went before the children’s court in 1977 and was told to plead guilty and apologise for his perverted acts.
“I actually had no idea what was happening to me. I couldn’t comprehend what was going on,” Anderson told KIIS radio on Tuesday. “To me it’s going to be a big acknowledgement, that finally a formal apology, a formal statement saying that I did nothing wrong,” Anderson said.
Anderson, now in his mid-50s, has lived his whole life trying to work out what he did wrong, and why he was charged for reporting his sexual assault. “I think a lot of young people today would really fail to comprehend … there are still people alive who have suffered the indignity of being charged with [the] crimes,” Anderson said.
Victoria’s anti-gay laws were repealed in 1981. Victoria’s laws were particularly harsh; its buggery law included the death penalty until 1949. After that, the penalty was up to 15 years in prison. In 1961, Victoria added an additional law against homosexual soliciting and “loitering for homosexual purposes.” According to one report (PDF), “Crime statistics show that the law against buggery was enforced 172 times in 1973, 81 times in 1974 and 92 times in 1975.”
Click here to read a transcription of Premier Andrews’s apology
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