Brisbane’s Pride Festival hatched off the back of a Sunday morning yarn among house-mates on the veranda of a workers’ cottage in West End 36 years ago.
Within weeks, a motley crew of soon-to-be Pridesters formed a collective and met around kitchen tables and in community centres. Despite this casual beginning and our laconic Queensland postures (we were often lounging on old sofas or lying on floors), the idea for a Pride event arose out of the particular social and historical context of Queensland in 1990.
New forms of activism
The end of National Party rule was an opportunity for significant social progress and there was a brave and effective lobbying campaign underway to change the criminal code so sex between consenting men would no longer be illegal. The Pride Collective was part of a growing demand for a new kind of queer politics, called coalition politics, which challenged the way power and resources were concentrated mostly among gay men. We were at the end of the first decade of HIV and AIDS savaging our communities. We were generating new forms of activism, community organising and cultural practice. We were two years on from the Bicentennial ‘celebration’ of colonisation and the protests some of us were involved in, supporting ongoing resistance and demands for justice for First Nations people. We were a year on from the unrest on university campuses with the attacks on Radio 4ZZZ by the National Party dominated student union executive at the University of Queensland, followed by an attempt to sack the queer editors of the UQ student newspaper.
It was a time of rapid and exciting change.
From its outset, the Pride project was about changing the hearts and minds of the mainstream while giving full expression to our queer identities. While we thought it was important to change the law, we also felt it was critical to change the culture that perpetuated homophobia, transphobia and sexism. We came up with a festival that took queer politics and culture to the streets, to occupy mainstream spaces, public squares, buildings and parks.
The first Brisbane Pride march across the Victoria Bridge in 1990. PHOTO: Ivan Nunn
When we thought about the idea of our queer human rights, we realised we were complex. Yes, we were queer, but we were also women, men and trans (before we had the language of non-binary). We were black, white, Asian and all the colours of the rainbow. We were First Nations people struggling against the ongoing effects of colonial occupation. We were variously abled and challenging a supremely ableist culture.
Justice for everyone
We were working on intersectionality before we had the language for it.
It was important to seek permission of Traditional Owners to use Musgrave Park for our Pride Fair Day. We were proud to platform trans hero Toye de Wilde at the first Pride Fair Day. We paid our performers a fair fee for their work and ensured queer parents could enjoy our events by offering free child care options. Our events were accessible.
We knew we couldn’t fully claim our human rights as queer folks if we ignored struggles in other areas of society. If we were to stop with decriminalising sex between men, or even fast forward to marriage equality, without standing in solidarity with First Nations queers then we were saying we only cared about the oppression of the white and well-off.
We had a responsibility for every gain we made, for every freedom we achieved, to look around and use that new freedom so others could walk through the holes we tore in the oppressive structures of society.
Brisbane Pride 2024. PHOTO: David and Angela Photography
Fast forward 30-something years and we often talk about supporting young queers so they don’t experience the kind of discriminations and violence we did growing up. Yet we’re watching trans lives increasingly placed at risk. I recently read the Hansard from the 1990 Queensland parliamentary debates on decriminalisation of sex between men and it struck me that some of the rhetoric from conservatives at the time challenged our very right to exist, let alone to love without fear of the law. Some 35 years later, we are seeing conservative forces marshal in the same way against the very idea of trans identities.
Our work is not done
As we watch our planet slowly cook, we should be asking what kind of a future are we creating for young queers growing up now or queers not yet born? Will we be able to see the rainbow flags flying through the smoke of bush fires? Will we be able to hold a parade when temperatures are four to five degrees higher? What will a queer community look like on a planet fraught with conflict over water, food supply and energy resources?
We can’t stand fully proud until there is climate justice, and justice for First Nations peoples, including First Nations queers. Treaty, yeah, treaty, now. There is no pride in genocide. No pride while we tolerate high rates of gender-based violence. No pride while trans folks are excluded from public spaces and health care. No pride while we burn the planet down.
There is pride in resistance. There is pride in love. There is pride in action.
There was a chant the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) used in the eighties and nineties that is relevant today.
Silence = Death, Action = Life.
Let’s choose life, let’s choose action. That’s the spirit that founded Pride.
