An Australian History
Just as homosexuality has a history we need to understand, so does hostility towards homosexuality - homophobia. This book explores that murky history in a scholarly but highly readable fashion, and in doing so illuminates a tangled story. We are living a paradox: homosexuality has never been more accepted in Western societies, but the virulence of the fear and loathing against it remains a nasty minority sport. The book helps us to understand how this has occurred, but also inspires the continuing resistance. It documents the horrors, but also encourages hope that homophobia can be overcome, by human agency. - Jeffrey Weeks, Professor, London South Bank University, author of 'The World We Have Won'. [an] important anthology...the volume is a considerable achievement. Its accessibility and the general clarity of the writing it contains is also a welcome feature. - Australian Historical Studies, 40, 2009
Introduction Shirleene Robinson Mapping Homophobia in Australia Michael Flood and Clive Hamilton 'What They Were Doing With Their Clothes Off I Don't Know': Homophobia, Lesbian History and Responses to 'Lesbian-Like' Relationships, 1860s-1890s Lucy Chesser Homophobia in Fin de Siecle Colonial Queensland Yorick Smaal and Clive Moore 'Filthy, Obscene and Mad': Engendering 'Homophobia' in Australia, 1940s-1960s Ruth Ford From 'Vice' to 'Homosexuality': Policing Perversion in the 1950s Graham Willett 'Hit Him With Your Handbag!': Homophobia in Australian Magazines of the 1960s Julie Ustinoff 'Someone Who is Sick and in Need of Help': Medical Attitudes to Homosexuality in Australia, 1960-1979 Emily Wilson 'The Continuing Homosexual Offensive': Sex Education, Gay Rights and Homosexual Recruitment Steven Angelides On the Frontline: The Queer Press and the Fight against Homophobia Shirleene Robinson Older Gay Men's Recollections of Anti-Homosexual Prejudice in Australia Peter Robinson The Repeal of the Sodomy Laws in Tasmania in 1997 and the Status of Homophobia in Contemporary Australia Alan Berman Index