Victoria Premier Denis Napthine Erases at Launch of Melbourne’s Annual Gay & Lesbian Midsumma Festival the Criminal Record of Men Convicted of Gay Sex
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In a landmark political decision on Sunday, Victoria Premier Denis Napthine announced at the launch of Melbourne's Midsumma festival, the city's yearly gay and lesbian event, that the criminal records of men who were convicted for engaging in gay sex in the past would be erased from state records.
About 90,000 people attended the festival opening held at Alexandra Garden.
Victoria actually decriminalised homosexuality in 1981, but gay men who prior to that year were caught having consensual sex with another male for crimes such as buggery and gross indecency with a male person, were prevented from travelling, volunteering or applying for some jobs such as teaching.
Even gay victims of crime were charged such as a case in the late 1970s when a Melbourne gay couple who reported being burgled was charged with gross indecency on the ground that their flat had only one bed, as the police noticed.
To make expunging their records official, Victoria's parliament will introduce legislation, making it the first Australian state to do so.
Mr Napthine said that consensual acts between two adult men "should never have been a crime."
He is the first premier of Victoria to launch Misdumma since the festival started in 1989. Although Mr Napthine is not a gay rights activist, his electorate office in Warrnambool has a rainbow stick on the window which is a declaration that it is safe for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders and intersex people to be there.
It seems that Mr Napthine had a change of heart when it comes to gays because in March 2013, he said in a radio interview that he does not support same-sex marriage. But by December of that year, he proposed for the federal government to hold a conscience vote on the issues, acknowledging that "the mood of the Australian people is changing."
Aussies are now hoping it would also affect Prime Minister Tony Abbott who has stood adamantly against gay marriages, although he has a lesbian sister in a long-term relationship with another woman.
