Pride in PROTEST The ABC’s Riot and the Birth of Mardi Gras

Last year, the BBC launched ‘Gay Britannia’, a series of programs marking the fiftieth anniversary of the UK’s Sexual Offences Act 1967, which saw the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality. The series brought audiences a suite of LGBTQIA+ content, including the flagship drama miniseries Man in an Orange Shirt; based-on-true-events telemovie Against the Law (Fergus O’Brien, 2017), about journalist Peter Wildeblood; archival patchwork Queerama; documentaries including Olly Alexander: Growing Up Gay (Vicki Cooper, 2017) and Gluck: Who Did She Think He Was? (Clare Beavan, 2017); and a collection of podcasts as well as radio and TV specials.

Compared to the commemorated moment in UK history, it would take eight additional years for the first Australian state to decriminalise homosexuality: South Australia, in 1975. The rest of the states and territories would follow suit over the next twenty-two years. As a result of this scattered local history, the closest that LGBTQIA+ Australians have as a defining historical moment is the event we now know as the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. The events of 24 June 1978 began as a night of celebration designed to pay tribute to the Stonewall riots in the United States,