# 45984

BURNS, Richard; ROFES, Eric and MARKO, Jim (editors)

[FIRST SYDNEY MARDI GRAS]. Gay Community News. Vol. 6, No. 2, July 29 1978.

$125.00 AUD

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Boston : Gay Community News, 1978. Tabloid newspaper, folded as issued, pp. 16, illustrated.

The Gay Community News (1973 – 1999) was Boston’s leading queer newspaper, focussed on political rather than social affairs.

The lead article (with a photograph of NSW Premier Neville Wran), titled ’53 arrested, scores injured in Sydney. Violence, arrests mar celebration in Australia’ documents the first Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, held on June 24, 1978, as a celebration in solidarity with the lesbian and gay community in San Francisco who were fighting the Briggs Initiative. Despite holding a valid permit to ‘assemble and march’, the attendees of the 1978 event suffered police harassment and brutality on the streets of Sydney and in the cells at Darlinghurst Police Station that evening. Further arrests were made later, with most of the charges later dropped in court appearance.

In 2016 the NSW Parliament issued an apology to those participating in the events of 1978 for the harm and distress experienced, with the NSW Police Commissioner issuing a similar apology in 2018. The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras has been held annually since the dramatic and violent first iteration in 1978.