Tasmanian gay rights advocates have called on the state’s three main political parties to commit to expunging criminal records for gay sex and to an official apology from State Parliament for the criminalisation of homosexuality.
The call comes after the Victorian Government committed yesterday to expunge that state’s criminal records related to gay sex.
Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group spokesperson, Rodney Croome, said, “As the last state to criminalise homosexuality and the state which had the heaviest penalties, Tasmania should lead the way on expunging criminal records for male-to-male sex and apologising for the deep damage caused by criminalisation.”
“Expunging records will benefit those men who were arrested, but an official apology will go further by benefitting the far larger group of men who suffered, and still suffer, from the prejudice and stigma criminalisation fostered.”
“An apology will recognise and begin to heal the pain Tasmania’s former anti-gay laws criminal laws inflicted, including blackmail, social exclusion, hate crimes and suicide.”
“Tasmania’s laws had a particularly onerous impact because they lasted longer than in other Australian states and because they prescribed the most severe punishment in the western world, a maximum of 21 years in gaol.”
“The Hobart City Council apologised in 2008 for arresting gay law reform advocates at Salamanca Market in 1988, and now its time for the State Parliament to follow suit with a full-blown apology for making criminals out of law-abiding gay men.”
Mr Croome said expunging of records and an official apology should only be in relation to private, consenting, male-to-male sex between adults.
The Office of the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Commissioner is currently examining the issue of expunging criminal records for male-to-male sex.
In 1997 Tasmania became the last state to decriminalise homosexuality after a decade-long campaign involving the UN Human Rights Committee, the Federal Government, the High Court, Amnesty International and a boycott of Tasmanian products.
