Up until the early 20 th century, gay sex was considered something all men could be tempted into with criminal laws acting as a deterrent to immoral lust. The small number of prosecutions that did occur under Australian buggery laws were ambivalent as to whether anal sex was consensual, remaining preoccupied instead in the sexual corruption of youths.Īlthough not often taken to trial, the existence of criminal laws against buggery were often used to blackmail men as well as to provide pretext for police harassment. Instead there was a preoccupation with anal sex between men. There has never been a criminal law against homosexuals as people in Australia, although Victoria’s stand-alone offence of “ loitering for homosexual purposes” came close. In Victoria, gay sex carried the death penalty, a punishment harsher than British law at the time. Up until 1924, the punishment for gay sex in NSW was imprisonment for life (although later reduced to 14-year imprisonment). The penalties for gay sex under the early Australian criminal laws were severe, albeit rarely prosecuted. The offence criminalised anal sexual intercourse between men, as well as bestiality, seeing these acts as similarly immoral.Ĭriminal laws have tended to remain silent on lesbian sex, focusing instead on men who have sex with men. In 1533, The Buggery Act entered into British law, punishing what was called “ the detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery committed with Mankind or Beast“. The crime of buggeryĪustralia inherited its anti-homosexual laws from England.
The history of homosexual law reform in Australia, and NSW in particular, is one of resistance against injustice and a recognition of the rights and dignity of LGBTIQ Australians.
0 kommentar(er)
