I’m not saying we are anywhere near the level of a witch hunt, an anti-Semitic pogrom or ethnic cleansing. There has been no physical violence (yet), and most Australians are either disengaged from the far right’s moral panic or disdainful of it.
But what we have seen raises serious questions about how easy it is for anti-gay forces to undermine even the most modest gains of the LGBTI community, and how weak some of our national leaders and institutions are in resisting this. [...]
Australian democracy, indeed our national identity, was born in the 19th century movement against convict transportation. To achieve its aims, that movement sought to discredit the convict system by associating it with homosexuality. [...]
They stirred up such fear and loathing of homosexuality in Australian society that, at its climax in the late 1840s, disdain towards homosexuality ran deeper than in any other comparable 19th century society. Hughes believed Australia was born in homophobia.
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