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This article details the history of the LGBT rights movement in Australia, from the colonial era to the present day. == Pre 1951 == Early laws in Australia were based on then-current laws in Britain, which were inherited upon colonisation in 1788. Lesbianism was never illegal in Britain nor its colonies, including Australia. Sodomy laws, however, were part of Australian law, from 1788 through to 1994 under ''Human Rights (Sexual Conduct) Act 1994''. The punishment for "buggery" (sodomy) was reduced from execution to life in prison in 1899.〔(The Development Of Homosexuality )〕 Throughout the transportation period there was a severe imbalance between the sexes, convict and free, and large numbers of convicts were kept in relative or complete isolation from the other sex. Ample evidence exists of the prevalence of homosexual behaviour; it is intermittent in the early years but more abundant after the term of Governor Lachlan Macquarie. Some historians have suggested that anti-sodomy rhetoric was utilised effectvely against the practice of transportation, resulting in its eventual conclusion in the 1840s, although the emergence of gold mining also led to an increase in free migration and settlement. In 1796 Francis Wilkinson became the first man to be charged with buggery (but acquitted). Class differences appear to have been involved in tolerance and indulgence of gay sex amongst convicts, with little attention paid by working-class convicts, but condemnation from middle-class or upwardly mobile transportees.〔Babette Smith: Australia's Birthstain: The Startling Legacy of the Convict Era: Sydney Allen and Unwin: 2008〕 In 1822 an official inquiry into the sexual scandal that resulted from the movement of thirty female prisoners to the male prison farm at Emu Plains reported the rumour that the women had been placed there to prevent "unnatural crimes" on the part of the men. In a secret dispatch of 1843 the Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land stated that women in the Hobart female factory have "their Fancy-women, or lovers, to who they are attached with as much ardour as they would be to the opposite sex, and practice onanism to the greatest extent." Select committees of the British Parliament inquiring into racism in 1832 and 1837 heard much evidence of the prevalence of scandalism. Major James Mudie testified that the prisoners called each other "sods" and that at Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney boy prisoners went by names such as Kitty and Nancy.〔Wayne Dynes, The Encyclopaedia of Homosexuality, London 1990〕 In 1932, an Australian tabloid, ''The Arrow'', described the growth of the "pervert population" of Brisbane, largely men aged 18 to 25, whose activities presented "a scandal of evil almost unprecedented". It called for police action to suppress and end their gatherings. It reported clandestine weddings between gay men there: "In the last two weeks there have been two 'weddings'—ghastly, horrifying spectacles of painted men and primping lads united in a sacrilegious blasphemy that they call the 'bonds of matrimony'." In 1951, the New South Wales Crimes Act was amended to ensure that "buggery" remained a criminal act "with or without the consent of the person", removing legal loophole of consent. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「LGBT history in Australia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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