Young, gay & proud in retrospect: sexual politics, community activism & pedagogical & intervention.

Marshall, Daniel

It sometimes happens that teenage youth strives to show independence by adoption of some lifestyle different from that of his elders. Independence is good, but it seems to me that teachers, who are in a position to influence their pupils, should not use this influence towards turning what may or may not be nascent homosexuality into reality, which may be bitterly regretted in later years.

'Young, gay and proud' may equate with 'older, dissolute and sorry'. And is there any reason why someone who is homosexual should be especially proud of this state?

JEFF KENNETT

Danger! Danger! High voltage! When we touch, when we kiss. Don't you wanna know why we keep starting fires? It's our desire. It's our desire.

ELECTRIC SIX

INTRODUCTION

Until early 1981, all sexual contact between males of any age was still illegal in Victoria, and the proposition that females could choose one another as sexual and romantic partners over males struggled to be taken seriously in many quarters. (1) Consequently, throughout the 1970s various members of the gay and lesbian liberation movement in Victoria sought to undermine this entrenched institutional resistance to same-sex erotic and affectional relationships by organising purpose-oriented interventions into institutional systems that recirculated hegemonic ideologies. Like other activists around the world who sought to re-educate society at large about questions of race, gender and socioeconomic status, Victorian gay and lesbian activists took the broader fight for sexual liberation to the site of education itself: institutionalised schooling. (2)

In 1976, the Melbourne Gay Teachers Group--one of the earliest occupational groups to organise in the Australian gay and lesbian movement--started to attract public attention after the publication of its policy statement in the Victorian Teachers Union Journal. (3) Later that year, the Homosexual Caucus of the Australian Union of Students initiated the first 'National Homosexuals in Education' Seminar in Melbourne. (4) This meeting provided the first organised opportunity for members of the Melbourne Gay Teachers Group to discuss measures for combating heterosexism and sexism within schools with tertiary and secondary students themselves. This collaboration led to a name-change: the Gay Teachers and Students Group (GTSG). The Gay Teachers Group had already been working on a Gay Bibliography of gay-affirmative resources which it was to publish later in 1976. (5) Through this research it became obvious, perhaps unsurprisingly, that there were almost no suitable resources for gay and lesbian teenagers anywhere. (6) The GTSG identified three key criteria for determining the suitability of resources. A suitable book would:

1. clearly affirm the validity of a homosexual preference;

2. provide accurate and relevant information to the gay students; and

3. convey its message in simple and direct language. (7)

'The standard sex education works', writes the GTSG, 'were singularly unsuitable by all criteria.' (8) The realisation of the paucity of suitable material provided an immediate organisational focal point for the newly formed GTSG. Galvanised by a common liberationist purpose and driven by their own frustrations with the education system, these activist students and teachers started to work on a pro-gay book for students. In the words of Gary Jaynes, one of the people who made it happen: 'We set about writing the sort of book which we believed we would like to have come across when we were first coming out.' (9) The Booklet Collective wanted to produce a book which communicated 'a few basic truths':

* that young gay people are not alone;

* that many of their anxieties about being gay have no basis in reality;

* that there are some real hassles in being gay, but the source of these rests not in them for being gay, but in a society that is:

** anti-sex (except in so far as sex can be exploited for money-making, or contained within the heterosexual marriage for the purposes of procreation);

** obsessed with enforcing artificial distinctions between the sexes (defining one set of characteristics as human and the other as womanly);

** and brutally intolerant of relationships which fall outside the heterosexual nuclear family norm;

** that gay people's present circumstances are not immutable, that collectively gay people and others whose rights have been similarly abridged have the strength to effect change in the society that denies us our dignity, and tries to keep us isolated and afraid.

The book is written as if the reader is gay. As such, it is meant as an antidote to the countless number of sex ed. guides that assume everyone is or should be heterosexual. (10)

Some commentators would have us believe that Australia is in thrall to a 'political correctness' which reigns supreme, pushing a sepia-tinged arcadia of 'family values' back into a deep nostalgic past. This reactionary and revisionist thinking is well served by recalling the political demands of the GTSG here which demonstrate the breathtaking fact that less than thirty years ago activists needed to produce school material that did not presume a uniform heterosexuality. Historically speaking, the type of anti-heterosexist pedagogical intervention demonstrated by what would become Young, Gay and Proud is a relatively recent phenomenon.

YOUNG, GAY & PROUD

The Collective embarked on a long process of writing, discussion and re-writing to arrive at the final text. The booklet opens with an introduction that immediately addresses its prospective gay and lesbian teen readership: perhaps you are a boy who might like football because the players are 'spunky', suggest the writers, or perhaps you are a girl who might be bored by Starsky and Hutch but 'wouldn't miss an episode of the Bionic Woman'. (11) This conversational introduction, which encourages young readers to feel comfortable in identifying with same-sex desire, flows into a broader statement of the authors' position: 'They call us queers; the women lezzos and the men poofters. They try to insult us with these words, but we're not easily put down. Most books say bad things about us, but then we didn't write them. We wrote this one to try to even things up a bit'(1-2).

The booklet then starts to move through brief discussions about experiencing same-sex desire as a teenager and the social influence of the anti-sex thrust of much Christian teaching ('Getting Started'). In this same section the authors also compare the broad social acceptance--even social valorisation--of boys who engage in heterosexual sex before marriage to the blanket condemnation of girls who have any sex before marriage, or of boys who have homosexual sex. This signposting of inconsistencies in Australian sexual values of the period demonstrates one of the ways that Young, Gay and Proud encourages youths to think more critically about their understandings of sexuality.

There is perhaps only one jarring political statement in the book--quite a feat for a book written almost three decades ago--when the authors describe most bisexuals as people who are 'really' gay but describe themselves as bisexual to access heterosexual privileges (5). The policing of the 'authenticity' of an individual's sexual identity within some quarters of lesbian and gay politics since the 1970s has been the subject of sustained critical attack by sex radicals in the 1980s and queers in the 1990s. Queer activism and theoretical scholarship have articulated the prevalence of bi-phobia within the gay and lesbian community and used this conflict as an example of the importance of a radical anti-identitarian politics. Obviously, however, these critiques of identity formations within gay and lesbian sexual politics were only made possible by the political achievements--the excavation, articulation and outing of such identities--of the 1970s and 1980s. Impressively, elsewhere in the booklet the authors of Young, Gay and Proud offer a usefully prescient suspicion of sexual aetiology: 'There is no need for us to worry about how we came to be gay, just as there is no reason why straights should worry about how they came to be straight.' (15) Prefiguring the anti-explanatory tone which would so dominate queer politics just over a decade later, Young, Gay and Proud's essentialist politics demand to be seen more as a political strategy of resistance and less as the type of broadstroke philosophical mistake that unsophisticated queer critiques of liberationist politics have suggested.

In this way, Young, Gay and Proud is very much a product of the political demands of its time. Facing laws and social politics that actively constrained gays and lesbians and a national community that more often than not treated them with violence and contempt, the very real political question that the authors confronted was, 'Where are we all?' In this section, the authors rely on Kinsey's data to suggest that gays and lesbians are actually 'everywhere' but that many of them haven't let the world know that they are gay because they are afraid of institutional, economic and physical retaliation (7). In an accompanying cartoon, a woman who sees leagues of female couples walking along the street hand-in-hand dryly remarks: 'Actually, there are only twenty lesbians in Melbourne. It's all done with mirrors'(7). Her companion knowingly smiles. The booklet then features real letters written by young people to the GTSG. In 'Letters', the authors respond to a variety of concerns and issues raised by isolated youth experiencing same-sex attraction, and this flows into a more targeted discussion about stereotypes in 'Big Lies and Funny Pictures'.

After calling into question the accuracy of popular images of poofters as men who 'flap their wrists' and lezzos as women who are 'big with short hair', the booklet tackles some other 'wild stories' (12-13). These include ideas that still circulate widely today, such as 'gay couples don't stick together for very long' and 'women become gay because they can't get a man' (13). Despite the contemporaneity of these ideas, the 1970s vintage of the booklet is humorously recalled by some very unfamiliar slang, such as the terminology used for sex in this 'wild story': 'gay women and men want to con off every straight person they see' (14, emphasis added). The discussion about stereotypes and myths then segues into the seemingly obvious next question of why people are spreading these stories and who these people are. This type of gradual, structured presentation of information makes the booklet an exemplary pedagogical device for young students. Why do people believe the 'Big Lies' told about gays, ask the authors provocatively?

 Well, because they are often spread by ministers, doctors,
 politicians, judges, and newspapers, even teachers--and the man or
 woman on the street expects those sorts of people to know what
 they're talking about. Besides, it's easier--and safer--to believe
 what you're told rather than to think for yourself and ask tricky
 questions (16).

This invitation for students to think critically about authority figures in society and about institutionalised forms of knowledge is the major reason--above and beyond any concern over gay or lesbian curricula content--for the political, juridical and policing pressure that was later applied to the GTSG and its supporters. Unsurprisingly, the major institutions that the authors single out are the Church and modern psychiatry. Again, prefiguring another major theme in post-structuralist accounts of sexuality, the authors describe psychiatry as superseding the church's role in regulating deviant sexual practices in a manner that is reminiscent of Michel Foucault's account of the birth of male homosexuality. (12) While observations like these routinely demonstrate that Young, Gay and Proud has aged very well, some remarks measure the passage of time strikingly. For example, in the section on homophobia and patriarchy--'Lesbians--Getting Stepped on Twice'--the authors write 'in lots of schools girls aren't even allowed to be on the oval, let alone play football' (19). This is something hard to imagine, given that Australia now has its own national female soccer team.

Some of the most impressive passages from the booklet demonstrate the GTSG's coalitionist approach to gay and lesbian liberation: 'Our only hope of getting a fair deal is when we join with all the other groups who are fighting for their rights' (23). In 'Who are our friends and who aren't?' the authors write that while the experience of being a sexual minority may not be an experience everyone has, 'many people understand what it's like to be treated unfairly' (22). The authors point to women, Aborigines, migrants, poor people and the unemployed as groups of people who may empathise with the social struggles of gays and lesbians. To this list, I would add people who are differently abled, refugees, sex workers and transsexuals. Of course, one of the clearest lessons to be learned from the Howard years is that experiences of social difficulty can just as often encourage resentment and violence between disenfranchised groupings, leading to more extensive alienation and fear. The authors write:

 Just because people are treated unfairly does not always mean that
 they are our friends. Often you'll find that mistreated people
 believe the lies about all other groups except their own. There are
 white people who put down aborigines just as there are aborigines
 who put down gays. It's not hard to understand why this happens. If
 people are made to feel worthless they often look for someone to
 take it out on. It's hard to fight back against the things that make
 people feel worthless, and sometimes it's hard to pick what they
 are ... So these people look around for someone weaker than
 themselves to kick (23).

The next chapters introduce methods for 'Getting By'--accepting one's same-sex attraction, accessing gay-affirmative resources, rejecting false 'cures' and coming out ('Telling other people', 24-31). Helpfully, Young, Gay and Proud offers step-by-step suggestions on how to come out (it even includes a sample letter) for the 1970s student, although its advice is never programmatic or demanding. (13) In an emotive passage the booklet agrees that coming out can be dangerous and that one should be careful sometimes. 'But,' it asks provocatively, 'why shouldn't you be angry too?'

 There's no reason why we should have to run away or hide because
 we're gay. So it's an idea to start getting ready to stick up for
 yourself and fight back if you ever have to. You'll take people
 by surprise because they won't be expecting you to. And if you're
 keeping out of fights, stay angry. Bide your time (28, emphasis
 added).

This sub-theme of anger, which importantly buttresses much of the discussion of the social location of gays and lesbians in Young, Gay and Proud, hits an emotional register rarely witnessed in the more welfare-oriented discourse of GLBTIQ youth today. Anger, especially coalitionist anger on the streets, is a crucial element of the GTSG's politics which has been more often than not bleached out of government-funded material for GLBTIQ youth. Expressed in the more urbane rhetoric of liberalist diversity, we are encouraged to all get on with each other happily which has the effect, in the context of institutionalised homophobia, of occluding the structural causes of discriminatory practices. The authors then move on to some suggestions about what gay and lesbian students can do in their own schools to start effecting change on a localised scale. Among other things, these include identifying allies amongst students and teachers, requesting that the school librarian orders gay-affirmative material, and writing letters about being gay (even anonymously) to the school newspaper (33).

Young, Gay and Proud then turns to the topic of sexual practices ('Doing It') which, predictably enough, would become the touchstone for the inflammatory roasting it would later receive at the hands of tabloid journalists, conservative politicians and Christian pressure groups. Split into two gendered sections, the first offers suggestions for 'lesbian loving' 36). After making it clear that there aren't any rules for lesbian sex and that there shouldn't be any, the authors encourage female students to get to know their own bodies through masturbation as a starting point for developing a sense of female sexual pleasure. Logically enough, the section then quickly moves through an introduction of the clitoris as a pleasure-making part of the body, oral sex, and frottage (35-37). Throughout, the authors place emphasis on sex as a pleasurable way of developing assertiveness:

 Now you're not going to be the world's greatest lover at your first
 attempt. So what? Practice in this case doesn't make perfect but it
 does help. You and the woman you're with will work out what feels
 good for each of you. That means a lot of honest talking between
 the two of you about what you like and what you don't, in all parts
 of your feelings for each other, not just the sexual ones. So it all
 comes back to exploring (37).

The following discussion of sex between men similarly follows a theme of exploration, encouraging readers to get to know their bodies--using a mirror for 'all those hard places to see'--and to masturbate (to 'pull yourself off'; after all, 'almost everybody masturbates', 40). The authors interleave fairly prosaic descriptions of cuddling, mutual masturbation, oral sex and anal sex with a comforting humour, as evidenced by their advice to students to try and make sure that their teeth don't 'get in the way too much' while sucking someone off because 'they're hard' (40). The theme of self-respect, introduced in the discussion of female-female sexual practices and an implicit preoccupation of the booklet, finds explicit expression in this section where the authors encourage boys to 'experiment and do what you like, but make sure you're not forced into doing anything' (40). In this way, the booklet acknowledges the important relationship between boys' holistic health and a more pluralised understanding of male sexuality. The authors write:

 There are lots of stories about men and sex. Men are supposed to
 take pride in how many different people they have had sex with, for
 instance. Well, that's not important. Men are even supposed to be
 proud of making someone have sex with them who doesn't really want
 to. That's an unforgivable thing to do. That's just the kind of
 stupid idea we can do without! As gay men we should be showing the
 world we can be loving to each other, and that all those stories
 about what 'real' men are meant to be like are just a load of
 bullshit (41).

Prefiguring the more commonplace constructionist approach to masculinity in contemporary pedagogical literature and policy, Young, Gay and Proud musters a powerful vision of the transformation of gendered social relations through the affirmation and enabling of same-sex desire. The discussion about sex then moves into a discussion of legal issues. At the time of printing all gay male sex was outlawed in Australia (except SA and ACT) and being a lesbian was grounds for a judge to deny a mother custody of her children (42). Routinely quotidian things such as 'catching a guy's eye can get you into trouble--if that guy happens to be a policeman' (42). The authors efficiently convey not only the type of practices criminalised under Victorian law but also the political sense that the criminalisation of homosexual sex in private and the policing of gay male 'loitering' in public both work to intimidate poofters more than they work to 'uphold the right'.

The booklet also mentions that age of consent laws mean that the State can prosecute relationships between adult males and minors. Because the booklet's target audience--the broad stretch of human sexual adolescence--are teenagers on either side of the minority line (that is, sixteen), the legal distinction of man/boy and woman/girl is very inaccurate. Thus, the authors use these labels interchangeably throughout Young, Gay and Proud. Interestingly, however, throughout the 'Doing It' sections 'man' and 'woman' are used to the exclusion of 'boy' and 'girl' demonstrating, perhaps, an acknowledgment of the (legal) riskiness of affirming the sexual desires of gay and lesbian children. The subsequent section on 'Sexual Health' dates the booklet the most by the looming absence of HIV-AIDS, and by its reference to 1970s gimmicks like 'vaginal deodorants' which, as far as I am aware, did not survive the last days of disco (45-51). (14)

As a closing epilogue, the authors provide seventeen-year-old Gary's story, which captures the mission of the GTSG ('I wouldn't want anyone to go through the troubles I had...') while underlining the accrued experience it hoped to provide to isolated young gays and lesbians ('though probably I'm better off for them', 52). This parting sentiment highlights how Young, Gay and Proud understood itself not only as a pedagogical intervention into a rabidly heterosexist curricula but, more broadly, as building towards a supportive relationship of intergenerational contact between gay and lesbian adults and teenagers. The inflamatory nature of the paedophile sex-panic propaganda that law enforcers, the religious right, conservative politicians and corporate-funded media routinely wheel out to make lesbian and (especially) gay adult-minor contact of any description controversial demonstrates the extent to which these hegemonic social institutions are profoundly threatened by gay and lesbian adults' cultivation of anti-heterosexist children. What are all but suppressed in this contrived hysteria are the affectional relationships between older and younger gays and lesbians that are a potentially valuable site for the encouragement of queerer experiences of sexuality. These relationships envelop the transmission of knowledge, such as in activist training and in the anecdotal communication of histories of resistance, as well as the provision of friendship, fun and confrontation. The GTSG's important gesture towards a much bigger vision of social networks of support and politicisation demonstrates a real confidence in the immediate political future of gays and lesbians and their ability to change Australia structurally. Closing the booklet, the authors provide a comprehensive (at the time) resource list of gay-affirmative materials, and the numbers say it all: thirty-one books and five recording artists. It also lists gay groups in Melbourne, Shepparton, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane.

Once the textual content had been agreed on, the Collective called on ally activist-artists throughout North America. Gary Ostrom, from Canadian gay lib magazine The Body Politic, produced illustrations for each chapter, and other graphics were provided by overseas gay magazines such as Christopher Street. This two-pronged organisational approach--both internationalist and situated in a local context--is an impressive feature of the GTSG's method. With the print run of ten thousand copies costing $4000--a huge amount of money for an activist organisation in the 1970s--Young, Gay and Proud was produced almost entirely with funds derived from personal loans and donations. There is even a rumour that an inner-Melbourne home was mortgaged to help pull the cash together. It is clear from Jaynes's account that university student unions and groups provided key support for the GTSG during the preparation of Young, Gay and Proud. (15) The Australian Union of Students pitched in $500 and provided essential 'moral and practical support'. (16) Queer and coalitionist students at Monash University helped out with typesetting, design and layout, while committed tertiary students across the board helped distribute the book and defend the GTSG when it later came under attack. This demonstrates that tertiary students and their unions have played an immensely important role in queer political struggles since the outbreak of gay liberation proper in the 1970s.

However, throughout the 1980s and early 1990s the user-pays policies of the Federal Hawke-Keating governments increasingly limited student political coalitionism through the application of financial pressure. Alongside the escalating cost of gaining a university education, the encroaching economic rationalist agenda exerted profound social influence, not least being the encouragement of a vocational panic that disinclined anxious students--especially those most marginalised--from pursuing humanities courses or getting involved in political campaigns. One can only assume that these attacks on student politicisation under the post-Whitlam Labor governments will pale in comparison to John Howard's 'vision' for unionism and tertiary education after the federal coalition assumes power in both houses of parliament mid-2005.

THE RESPONSE

Prior to distributing the book, the GTSG were advised by a friendly lawyer that it was very likely that the booklet would be prosecuted under Victoria's obscenity laws:

 We were told that the basic test for obscenity in Victoria relied
 on three considerations: whether the tendency of the publication was
 to 'deprave and corrupt', whether there was 'undue emphasis on
 matters of sex'; both of these considerations having regard to
 'those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into
 whose hands the publication is likely to fall'. (17)

Thus, the provision of an education manual for gay and lesbian teenagers seemed to be the very thing that Victoria's obscenity laws were designed to prevent. That male homosexuality itself was still illegal in Victoria at the time demonstrates the bravery of the GTSG and its supporters. The threat of legal prosecution led the GTSG to the decision that it was better to publish the booklet anonymously (the Collective later appointed Graham Carbery, a TAFE teacher, as spokesperson during the early days after the booklet's release). Further, as its contents were regarded to be too hot for a Melbourne press to touch, the Collective had to find a Sydney publisher willing to take it on, which meant a long car trip to deliver copy. In the end, the Sydney printers of the Communist Party's paper, Tribune, agreed to print the booklet. (18) Even then, protests by various staff members at the Sydney printing house over the booklet's contents delayed publication by several months. Phil Carswell, a member of the Booklet Collective, describes the arrival of the booklet in Melbourne after printing as a scene of high farce. All of the members of the Collective were convinced that the police were going to arrest them during collection and seize the freshly printed booklets. Therefore, when the Collective had to go to Footscray Freight Yards to pick up the boxes from Sydney, there was a convoy of cars ready to dispatch boxes under the stairwells and in the back rooms of about twenty key activists' homes in the event of a police raid. As it turned out, the police did not show up, but political heat was not far away.

Young, Gay and Proud appeared on the Victorian political radar on 3 October 1978, when John Lahey wrote a provocative column in The Age after a meeting with the authors. (19) 'In retrospect', writes Jaynes, 'John Lahey's attitude was probably typical of many people at the time--not against the notion of support for young homosexuals facing a tough time, but afraid to commit themselves to practical measures to help if that meant frank airing of the issues in front of non-gay children or adults.' (20) The booklet received considerable (mixed) press over the next week and sales skyrocketed. Within a month of its press debut a quarter of the entire printing run--that is, 2,500 copies--were sold. Some teachers bought sets for their entire class, which was a radical achievement for curricular material that had bypassed the State education bureaucracy entirely. By May 1979, almost 6000 copies of the 10,000 printed had been sold not only to teachers, but also librarians, social workers, parents, supporters and, most importantly, to young people themselves. Left-wing bookstores, such as Readings and the International Bookshop in Melbourne and the Dr Duncan Revolution Bookshop in Adelaide, also helped sell Young, Gay and Proud. However, as the political heat intensified on Young, Gay and Proud throughout 1979, sales to schools became impossible, and the remaining copies of the booklet were bought largely by overseas gay bookstores, campus gay groups and youth support networks.

While Young, Gay and Proud had been the source of considerable tabloid debate throughout the remainder of 1978, the GTSG had largely been able to distribute the booklet to schools unharassed. However, the start of 1979--with the impending State election looming large--changed all of that. In late January, editions of the News in Ballarat and Geelong--both marginal seats--published almost identical front-page articles attacking the booklet under the headline: 'Homosexual Education in our Schools?' These articles attacked unions--such as the Technical Teachers Association of Victoria--which supported the booklet's distribution, and prompted readers to write in expressing their outrage. As election campaigning began to heat up in the seats of Ballarat and Geelong, fundamentalist Christian groups, such as the Committee to Raise Educational Standards and Citizens Against Social Evil, flooded candidates, the press and voters with homophobic letters and statements. (21) They filled out a petition and sent it to Premier Hamer himself. In it they demanded, among other things, that he 'curtail'

* the distribution of all GTSG publications, including Young, Gay and Proud;

* the continued operation of the GTSG;

* the use of 'any' material depicting homosexuality in any way in any school;

* the holding of any meeting associated with any homosexual group; and

* the establishment of any support groups for gay and lesbian teachers and students. (22)

The Christian lobby argued that the teachers involved in the production and distribution of Young, Gay and Proud were 'using the State education system to promote behaviour contrary to the moral law, and the laws of Victoria' and Roberts Dunstan, MLA for Dromana, described such teachers as 'aberrant colleagues'. (23) He also supported calls during the election for homosexual teachers to be fired. Reverend Bruce Barker, then President of the Baptist Union of Victoria, demonstrates the bloated, indulgent flavour of the all-out attack on gays and lesbians at school with his remark that 'our schools are, or ought to be, centres of character building, not hot beds of iniquity'. (24)

On 9 February of that year, the Geelong News reported that Premier Hamer had ordered the Minister of Education, LHS Thompson, to immediately investigate the distribution of Young, Gay and Proud. (25) About a month later, on 19 March, the Minister's office issued an edict to all secondary school principals directing them 'to ensure that copies of books seeking to foster homosexual behaviour are not available to children'. (26) Subsequently, Thompson established the Orwellian-sounding Literature Review Committee that was charged with the opaque responsibility of officially determining which titles 'fostered' homosexuality and should therefore be censored. The Thompson edict intimidated schools from including the booklet in their libraries and classes and few young Victorians gained access to the booklet after this time.

Clearly, the edict cannot be considered outside of the political context of the 1979 State election. Throughout the late 1970s Hamer's premiership was beset with difficulties from without and within. Victoria was experiencing an economic downturn, encouraging public disapproval of the government, and the ruling Liberal party was divided over Hamer's agenda of social liberalist law reform. As it turned out, Hamer only won the election by one seat. Clearly, the religious right's campaign against Young, Gay and Proud was delayed (the booklet had been in circulation for months before the feigned outrage of the News) for two reasons. First, by waiting until the start of a tight election campaign, the opponents of Young, Gay and Proud sought, successfully, to wedge potentially sympathetic politicians on the issue. Second, it produced a high-profile platform that the social conservatives in the State Liberal Party could use to advance their own gay-hating politics, contra Hamer, within the government. All the ingredients in this homophobic episode should be familiar to us: narrow elections, a ruling Liberal party split between social conservatives and social liberals, and an electorate anxious about economic stability. The resonances between this affair and more recent dirty deals between John Howard and the Family First Party suggest that there is a great unwritten history in Australian politics detailing the relationship between the Liberal Party, the religious right and the genocidal dream for queers to simply disappear.

Another significant issue to consider about the edict is that it itself sought to repress Young, Gay and Proud by acting outside of the State's official classificatory bodies. Unbeknownst to the GTSG, on 3 May 1979--six weeks after the Thompson edict--the State Classification of Publications Board determined that the booklet could be sold without restriction to persons under the age of eighteen. (27) The questionable legal status of the government's 'effective ban' (28) on Young, Gay and Proud is further accentuated by its ridiculous position later that same year that 'there has been no ban imposed' on the booklet because it had not been mentioned by name in Thompson's edict. (29) Despite this (deliberate) confusion, the legality of the ban became largely irrelevant in the political flow of events. After Hamer's narrow election victory, Thompson was replaced as Minister of Education by Alan Hunt who took the intimidatory tactics exemplified by the Thompson edict to another level. Throughout May 1980, almost identical articles appeared in Victorian papers which effectively put all gay and lesbian Victorian teachers on notice. For example, articles entitled 'Minister Warns' (Frankston News) and 'A Warning From on High' (Southern Peninsula Gazette) declare:

 Teachers who aid, abet, counsel, or procure school students, or any
 other persons to engage in homosexual acts will be open to criminal
 prosecution. Education Minister Alan Hunt made this clear to
 Roberts Dunstan, MLA for Dromana, following representations on
 behalf of the Committee to Raise Educational Standards. The
 Educational Department has been instructed to investigate the
 display of a notice announcing the availability of the book Young,
 Gay and Proud on the notice boards of several high schools. (30)

The government's propaganda communicates several things very clearly. The bundling together of terms like 'aiding' or 'counselling'--ordinarily a teacher's role, one would think--along with terms like 'procuring' and sexual 'acts' construes gay teachers' pedagogical interest in gay students as being equivalent to, or at least indistinguishable from, those teachers having a sexual interest in children. It is in the context of this wilful hysteria and misinformation that Hunt can justifiably introduce his petty, micro-level policing of the GTSG and ally teachers--a scrutiny from which, it appears, not even noticeboards were safe. Hunt's article also demonstrates the extent to which the 1979 State election was a success for the religious right, with the Committee to Raise Educational Standards now having direct access to the Minister. In retrospect, it is difficult to know what would have been more difficult for those people who had worked so hard on Young, Gay and Proud to face: the belligerent threats of being fired and criminally charged for being queer educators, or the way in which the government and the media seemed happy to give oxygen to whatever nonsense argument could repudiate the GTSG's political claims. This type of stifling stupidity is demonstrated by Dunstan's remark that 'the Education Department draws a clear distinction between information which may reduce prejudice against homosexuals and information which may foster homosexuality.' (31) Bureaucratic double-speak like this can only produce an ambiguous meaning that helps to cloak the government's homophobia.

Soon after, Minister Hunt began sending letters to bodies that had supported the GTSG, informing them that the Literature Review Committee had assessed Young, Gay and Proud and that, unsurprisingly, it was determined to 'foster homosexual behaviour' and that 'students should not therefore have access to it'. (32) Whether or not this constituted a formal ban, however, was still open to debate. The success of the GTSG in circulating the booklet throughout other parts of Australia also meant that it found itself under attack by politicians outside of Victoria. By the middle of 1981, the New South Wales Government 'officially' banned Young, Gay and Proud by classifying it as 'restricted' under the Indecent Articles and Classified Publications Act, 1975. This prohibited the provision of the booklet in any form to everyone under eighteen. (33) By the end of that year distribution of the booklet had virtually stopped, the GTSG had disbanded and its members had moved on to different projects.

CONCLUSION

'A big regret', writes Gary Jaynes, 'is that we never received much feedback direct from young people.' (34) His comment suggests sadness about the loss of generational contact and community sharing. It speaks of educational links uprooted before their time and, in most places, never allowed to found themselves in the first place. This melancholy threatens to incapacitate activists as it goes to the very heart of the genocidal plot to root out the aberrant queer--to keep us separate from one another in order to erode knowledge, love, pleasure and care.

However, of course, grief is only part of the activist story of the GTSG and Young, Gay and Proud. Another huge part of that story is the broad influence of their courage, conviction and vision. As the GTSG was 'happy for sections of the book to be reprinted without permission', (35) a highly successful American version was published. (36) Further, activist groups in the Netherlands, Germany, England and Switzerland planned versions of their own. While these never emerged, the plans demonstrate that Young, Gay and Proud was an inspirational and organisational focal point for queer educational activism throughout North America and Western Europe in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Needless to say, today's advances in queer content in Australian schools--while still limited--owe much to the pioneering efforts of the GTSG and the political risks they negotiated.

ENDNOTES

(1) With thanks to Gary Jaynes, Ken Lovett, Phil Carswell & Graham Willett for their feedback and suggestions. Please note that all images featured in this article are from Young, Gay & Proud.

(2) Much of the historical information in this retrospective is drawn from Gary Jaynes's excellent 'Young Gay and Proud: Twenty Years On', in Michael Crowhurst & Mic Emslie (eds), Young People and Sexualities: Experiences, Perspectives and Service Provision, Youth Research Centre, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 2000. Copies of this article and copies of all articles, letters and other GTSG-produced material that I refer to below can be found in the Young, Gay and Proud box kept at the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives.

(3) Among others, John Lewis worked hard in getting this policy statement from the GTSG published in the VTU Journal. On another issue, the 'gay' in the title of the Melbourne Gay Teachers Group, Young, Gay and Proud and the activist discourse surrounding its publication is intended to reference both gay males and lesbian females: 'in this era the word 'gay' was intended to include lesbians--although there was already vigorous debate about the movement's recognition of lesbians' (Jaynes 8). To the extent that the 'gay' movement sustained critique throughout the 1970s for excluding those it putatively spoke for--that is, lesbians--the 'gay and lesbian' movement has, since the 1980s, received justifiable criticism for its exclusion of more marginalised sexual identities and practices, such as transsexuals, sex workers and bisexuals.

(4) The Homosexual Caucus of the AUS was the first gay caucus in any Australian union and was instrumental in the establishment of the influential National Homosexual Conferences.

(5) Melbourne Gay Teachers Group, A Gay Bibliography: A Select, Partially-annotated Bibliography, Melbourne Gay Teachers Group, Melbourne, 1976.

(6) I say that there were 'almost' no resources as Jaynes refers to two publications--the twelve-page British pamphlet 'Growing up Homosexual' (1975) and the forty-page American booklet 'Growing up Gay' (1976)--that were doing at least some of the work that the GTSG wanted its then-untitled booklet to do (see Jaynes 8).

(7) The Booklet Collective, Melbourne Gay Teachers and Students Group, Young, Gay and Proud: A rationale, and some guidelines for use by teachers, counsellors and parents of gay students, The Booklet Collective, Melbourne Gay Teachers and Students Group, Melbourne, August 1978, 2.

(8) The Booklet Collective, Young, Gay and Proud: A rationale, 2.

(9) Jaynes, 'Twenty Years On', 8.

(10) The Booklet Collective, Young, Gay and Proud: A rationale, 2.

(11) An Autonomous Collective of the Melbourne Gay Teachers and Students Group, Young, Gay and Proud, Melbourne, 1978, 1. All future page references are included in the text.

(12) Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality Volume 1. 1976. Trans. Robert Hurley. London: Penguin, 1998, 43.

(13) Apart, that is, from its presumption of the universally revolutionary aspect of being 'out'. While the Collective was aware that people could be out while being opposed to a progressive politics of sexuality (Young, Gay and Proud, 23), the implications of this had not yet been fully theorised in relation to the politics of outing as a revolutionary practice. A decade of Republican, yuppie gays and fascist anti-sex lesbians in the United States helped to inspire, in part, a radical re-think of the presumption that being out was in and of itself an aid to a progressive politics of sexuality.

(14) A doctor was consulted in the preparation of the sexual health section.

(15) Some occupational unions were also instrumental in demonstrating community support for the distribution of the GTSG's booklet throughout 1978 and early 1979. Typically, this support was demonstrated by hands-on help to distribute Young, Gay and Proud and by the publication of supportive motions. For example, State Secretary of the Australian Social Welfare Union Laurie Bebbington wrote to the GTSG on 13 February 1979 confirming that: 'The Victorian Branch of the ASWU welcomes the publication by the Melbourne Gay Teachers and Students Group of Young, Gay and Proud as an important step towards providing accurate and positive information to young people ... and supports making this booklet available in all public, secondary and technical school libraries. This resolution has also been conveyed to the three teacher unions, the Minister for Education and the Director-General of Education. We hope that this might assist in the campaign to have the booklet as widely distributed as possible.' Another example is the comment by Tony Dabbs, Assistant Secretary of the Technical Teachers Association of Victoria, that the TTAV 'would probably support the distribution of the book' (see 'Homosexual education in our schools', the Ballarat News, 31 January 1979).

(16) Jaynes, 9.

(17) Jaynes, 9.

(18) Phil Carswell, a member of the Booklet Collective, has pointed out that the relationship between the Communist Party and Young, Gay and Proud is reflected not only in the use of the Party's Sydney printer to produce the booklet but also by the booklet's coalitionist tone, which Carswell identifies as being influenced by the coalitionist discourse within the Party during that period (personal correspondence, 27 February 2005).

(19) 'Here' writes Lahey 'is a scandal if ever there was one ... [the booklet] would undoubtedly offend many people.' See John Lahey, 'A gay young time at school', The Age, 3 October 1978, for more examples of his scandal-inciting rhetoric.

(20) Jaynes, 9-10.

(21) Phil Carswell recalls surreptitiously visiting a protest meeting in Ballarat in 'straight drag' where he heard 200-300 locals condemning the 'godless gay liberationists'. 'If only they knew', he writes, 'we were sitting in the audience' (personal correspondence, 27 February 2005).

(22) See 'Ballarat people petition against "gay" teaching', Courier, 30 March 1979 and 'Dunstan down on homo advocates', Southern Peninsula Gazette, 28 February 1979.

(23) 'Dunstan down on homo advocates', Southern Peninsula Gazette, 28 February 1979.

(24) 'Homosexual education--No says Hamer', News, 9 February 1979.

(25) In an undated letter from the Premier to Ms. J Munro (Coordinator of the Sexism in Education project in the Victorian Teachers Union), Hamer writes: 'I refer to your letter of the 14th February, 1979, about the promotion of homosexual literature in schools. I confirm that I have asked the Minister of Education to carry out an immediate investigation and to have the practice stopped forthwith.'

(26) LHS Thompson (Minister of Education) & LW Shears (Director-General of Education), 'To principals of secondary schools', 19 March 1979.

(27) J Smith (Secretary of the State Classification of Publications Board), 'Reply to Mr G Jaynes', 5 May 1980.

(28) The GTSG describe the Thompson edict as being an 'effective ban' on publicity for a public meeting (10 May 1979) to protest the edict. See The Melbourne Gay Teachers and Students Group's 'Gay Rights and Political Censorship in Schools' flier.

(29) Norman Lacy (Assistant Minister of Education), 'Reply to Mr. A Hough', 28 August 1979.

(30) See 'Minister Warns', Frankston News, 13 May 1980 and 'A Warning From on High', Southern Peninsula Gazette, May 1980.

(31) See 'Minister Warns', Frankston News, 13 May 1980 and 'A Warning From on High', Southern Peninsula Gazette, May 1980.

(32) For example, see AJ Hunt (Minister of Education), 'Reply to Mr. T Tovey (Acting General Secretary, Technical Teachers Association of Victoria)', 28 August 1980.

(33) See D Swan (Director-General of Education, NSW Government), 'Circular to Principals: Homosexual Publications', 6 November 1981.

(34) Jaynes, 11.

(35) The Booklet Collective, Young, Gay and Proud: A rationale, 3.

(36) Although there remains some anger over this issue, too. The Collective had refused to copyright the booklet to allow free dissemination, but they had attached a condition to its duplication that sought to secure acknowledgment of the GTSG in international editions as well as guarantee that the booklet could not be used by anyone for financial gain. The American publisher secured copyright for the booklet without the Collective's permission and it has since become a lucrative title for that publisher. The GTSG has never received any acknowledgment or payment.

DANIEL MARSHALL recently completed a PhD in the Department of English with Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne.