Editor’s note: Gary Nunn I am a journalist and author based in Sydney, Australia.he is the author of “Psychological Testing: An Adventure into the World of Believers and Skeptics.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own.read more CNN Opinion.
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This week, the world’s largest permanent LGBTQI+ The museum will open in a venue that will raise eyebrows, to say the least.
Provided by: Gary Nunn
Gary Nunn
Qtopia, Sydney’s first LGBTQI+ history and culture center and Australia’s only queer museum, will be officially opened by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Friday at the former Darlinghurst Police Station.
Previously, the makeshift museum was split across multiple sites in Sydney. However, the relocation of the old police station to a permanent location has caused a stir, especially among the so-called “78ers.”
They were marchers in Sydney’s first peaceful Mardi Gras protest in 1978, calling for gay equality and the decriminalization of same-sex relations. Many marchers were brutalized by police. 53 people were arrested. Dozens of people were held in overcrowded cells at Darlinghurst Station.
“The Darlo Police Department has a very repressive and sometimes violent history,” Steve Warren ’78 told me about the notorious police department.
“I don’t think I could have gone to the museum there because there is a history of torture for so many diverse people, including myself,” said Peter Murphy, 1978, another person who was arrested and assaulted by police. told.
It was almost 40 years later that the police officially apologized to the Class of 1978.
Like the deeply respected elders in my community, those who bravely fought for the freedoms I enjoy as a gay man today, the ’78s are Australia’s gay royalty.
And opinions are divided over the choice of venue for this landmark museum.
Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media via Getty Images
In June 1978, police arrested a demonstrator during a gay rights demonstration that later became known as the first Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
One group, including Warren and Murphy, described the police station as “the site of routine daily police bashing for decades: the state’s torture center.”
A second, much larger group of 78s will support the chosen venue. They saw an opportunity to reclaim sites of oppression and transform them into spaces of commemoration and celebration. And while I respect those who feel differently, I can’t help but stand with them.
The upcoming opening feels like the world’s greatest victory lap. This is rare good news in our time.
Qtopia handled sensitive issues well. They provided on-site therapists for 78ers who wanted to visit and videographers to record important stories off-site for those who didn’t want to visit.
A permanent place to learn and heal
There has never been a more important time to document and showcase the stories and history of my LGBTQI community. The remaining elders were among the first people in history to live an “outside” life.
Many mainstream museums have largely ignored LGBTQI history. I do visit queer exhibitions, but my community needs its own permanent space to learn, heal, and pay attention.
Permanent LGBTQI museums are rare, relatively new, and growing. At 1,950 square meters, Qtopia will be the world’s largest in some ways, according to the museum’s press office. The next largest is the Schwures Museum in Berlin, with an area of 1,600 square meters. Smaller venues have opened in other cities such as San Francisco and London in recent years.
Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media via Getty Images
LGBTQ+ activists stage a demonstration that would become Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in 1978.
Qtopia’s historic opening will also take place in New South Wales, the same Australian state that two months ago reported the world’s first study into homophobic hate crimes.
The task force found that the deaths of 25 men between 1970 and 2010 – often shamefully portrayed as acts of their own hands – were in fact LGBTQI+ hate crimes. It was discovered that there is a suspicion that Police were found to be “indifferent, negligent, dismissive, or hostile” when dealing with such crimes, and in some cases lost vital DNA evidence. As a result, a homophobically motivated murderer could remain at large. It’s cold.
Qtopia can now graph police failures against LGBTQI+ victims At the former police station. Folks, this is what we call a Full Circle Moment.
Growing up gay, I was deprived of gay role models for generations. They died from HIV, disproportionately high suicide rates, or homophobic violence.
If they were alive, they either led secret double lives or remained hidden.
Hearing their stories would give meaning and context to the pain and shame of my own past. It will show you the community you missed as a child. And it will strengthen the community that my own LGBTQI+ generation is rebuilding from the embers, and it will give future generations both the courage to be themselves and a fair warning against complacency.
Those who survived have proven that they come from a generation that is truly ready to change the world.
One of them is Qtopia’s founding chairman, David Polson, who undertook 28 grueling HIV drug trials and helped discover combination therapies. His determination to honor his doctor led to the establishment of a large-scale HIV/AIDS memorial as part of Qtopia. It will remember those we have lost, in addition to marking Australia’s “world-leading” HIV response, which has saved many lives.
This police station is a symbol of grave injustice to the queer community because of the inequity of the crimes they are arrested for. peaceful protest. Private, consensual adult sex. Homosexual sex between men was decriminalized in New South Wales in 1984, 20 years later than many other countries. (However, more than 60 countries around the world still criminalize same-sex sex, including Uganda, Malaysia, Guyana, Dominica, Nigeria, and Pakistan.)
This law drove gay sex underground, with New South Wales Police sending “young, attractive detectives” as provocateurs to lure gay men with the prospect of sex in the very underground hangouts. Police then arrested them for “homosexual crimes.” This trap happened during my lifetime. It ruined lives. (Police have not commented on the detention charges).
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Many of the gay men arrested were sent to Cooma, the world’s only known gay prison, also in New South Wales. Former employees told the podcast “The Greatest Menace” that psychologists were sent to “treat” homosexual prisoners. (The state government and police have not commented on the allegations).
It’s only fitting that the same state that hosts the world’s only known gay prison also hosts the world’s largest gay museum. Another triumphant full-circle moment will officially begin with a pro-LGBTQI+ prime minister who has consistently voted for same-sex marriage equality.
My gay community is finally able to tell its history in a venue that has imprisoned and beaten us just for being ourselves. And in a country that has tried to “cure” and eradicate us in living memory.
David not only defeated Goliath; He is trying to get Goliath to host a victory party.