Gay Sex Convictions To Be Removed From Records

[Graeme]

Gay sex was decriminalised here in Victoria in 1980, but it's taken until 2014 for convictions from before 1980 to be removed from the records of the people involved.

Victorian men convicted of gay sex to get convictions removed

[Jeff Ellis]

Now that I DO consider progress... decriminalising tens of thousands of men... even if most of them are dead at least their relatives will feel good about it. Well done Australia... well Victoria.

In the UK on the other hand, all that has been managed is a Pardon for Alan Turing... now that's all very nice for Turing... oh yes, but he's dead too. But, a Pardon? a pardon for what? For being gay? Being gay doesn't deserve a pardon... it deserves an apology, from the state to all the men and boys who suffered at the hands of the state.

Perhaps the place to start, for once, could be the EU Commission. If individual European countries cannot find it in them to admit a mistake, then perhaps the EU could do it once and for all for all of them... They could include in passing the thousands of pink triangles who suffered under the Nazis.

[Merkin]

The problem with apologizing is that, once stated, people think the matter is over and done with. Genocide can never be mitigated by an apology.

[Jeff Ellis]

My apologies Merkin.

What I really meant to say was that it was not sufficient for the UK government to recognise that having driven to suicide the man who single-handledly shortened WW2 took the shine off their nice museum at Bletchley Park.

That homosexuality is only acceptable in retrospect if you have done something special for the nation is profoundly insulting to those whose contributions have been deemed insufficiently special to merit a Pardon. If anything it leaves the majority in a worse position than before. The gay community of Britain isn't enhanced by this Pardon, it is diminished.

Logically the efforts of the heterosexuals who are proud to have worked alongside him diminished his validity as a person... it was after all only the singlehandedness of his effort that earned him a "pardon".

What the State of Victoria is doing is much more profound... a general acceptance that the law was wrong in the first place. It is that general acceptance that the state was wrong, that there was no crime, that the conviction was wrong in law, that the punishment was inappropriate and unjust, and finally that the state profoundly regrets all the ruined lives and many deaths that resulted from the law and its enforcement.

That was what I meant by apology, not an "oops sorry, we weren't paying attention"

Germany cannot adequately "apologise" for the Holocaust, but it has made it illegal to so much as express doubt at the awfulness of what the state did. That period is anathema to the point where it is even illegal to print the words of the Horst Wessel song. It's that level of absolute rejection of what happened to our fellow homosexuals that I would consider a state making a valid attempt at apology.

That is why it would be an act worthy of the European Union, which didn't exist when homosexuality was illegal. An act whereby the EU informed the nations of the Union that they were fundamentally wrong then and were required to set the record right now... That would be an act worthy of the Union. It would also send a message to those states that think intolerance is an acceptable vote winner.

[DesDownunder]

Apologies are only one thing. The British Government has a history of selective apologies. The Oscar Wilde movies, books and plays were all given the go-ahead, if not government funding, as an act of apology. During my formative late teens rumours were rife that when Wilde died, the English were racked with guilt for having killed the latest incarnation of Shakespeare.

But it is the generations from the 18th Century to the mid 20th century that have suffered in silence, nameless silence in the closet of fear. What is the worth of apologies to those who were led to believe that they had to label themselves as homosexual; that they were unnatural, that their love very nearly never had a name to be spoken, ever?

Generations of same sex lovers believed that they were doomed, cast out upon the discarded refuse of a social order to never be admitted as equal citizens. Less than recognised, they were despised and like Turing forced into a self hatred that beckoned suicide.

Oscar Wide in his ballad of Reading Gaol summed up this oppression into a profound lie that was for him and his surrounding generations, a great and sad truth."

"Yet each man kills the thing he loves,

By each let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!"

This is the soul of love crying out for justice; it is screaming for anyone who dares listen, "I want to love."

It is the torture, the oppression, the feeling of less than human, the making us feel like we had no right to live and love; for these departed souls, we should be given an apology, and for those who have survived with the scars of love made miserable, an unconditional apology.

The best apology is recognition enshrined in every nations' laws that never again can anyone denigrate, persecute or assassinate people who consent to love each other.

Anything less is a guilty conscience trying to deceive itself, justifying the unforgivable denial of love.

[Jeff Ellis]

Well said Des!

I knew someone could say it better than I could

[DesDownunder]

Jeff, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the way you said it. Indeed what you said inspired me to elaborate on the theme.

[Merkin]

The best apology is recognition enshrined in every nations' laws that never again can anyone denigrate, persecute or assassinate people who consent to love each other.

Anything less is a guilty conscience trying to deceive itself, justifying the unforgivable denial of love.

Amen to that.