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Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 19. August 6 1979

The Gay Rights Movement in New Zealand

The Gay Rights Movement in New Zealand.

(a public lecture delivered at Victoria University of Wellington on 28 June 1979.)

1.A Decade of Gay Liberation Today is being observed internationally as a day of Gay Solidarity. Throughout the world gay men and women, together with their straight friends, are celebrating a decade of gay liberation. And we are saying it with flowers too! Hence the pink carnations in evidence here as elsewhere today.

On 28 June 1969 there was yet another police raid on a gay bar in Greenwich Village - the Stonewall Inn in Christopher Street, due apparently to some petty infringement of liquor laws. However there was no moral doubt in the minds of many present that such infringements were being used as the proverbial stick with which to be labour a hitherto largely uncomplaining gay minority. Harrassment, especially on the part of the police, is notoriously difficult to prove. I'm sure there are many groups in this country who have wondered, and felt powerless to do more than wonder, whether they are not victimized in the administration of our liquor laws. It would be instructive to compare the fate of rugby social and gay social clubs in this regard.

Ten years ago, however, the Greenwich Village gays rebelled. In a three day fracas, known to posterity as the Stone well riots, gays gave angry voice to their sense of outrage and frustration. And in that squalid violent crucible was forged a new determination to win for themselves the rights and above all, the plain human dignity of which they had been systematically and, at times malevolently, deprived. Such was the birth of gay liberation.