Lesbian, Gay, Transsexual, Bisexual Movements, Australia

Abstract

Gay and lesbian politics came late to Australia. An effort in 1958 to establish an organization based on London's Homosexual Law Reform Society failed utterly. But a decade later, a flurry of independent efforts showed that the time had, at last, come. In Canberra, a small group of academics and journalists set up the Homosexual Law Reform Society. In Melbourne, half a dozen lesbians founded a branch of the Daughters of Bilitis as a social and political organization. But the real breakthrough came in 1970 in Sydney with the foundation of the Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP, an acronym chosen because it was the word most homosexuals in Australia used to name themselves at that time).