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THE PATH TO FULL EQUALITY RODNEY CROOME AM Rodney Croome is a long time advocate for LGBTIQA+ human rights. He fronted the campaign to decriminalise homosexuality in Tasmania and was the national director of Australian Marriage Equality. He has also been heavily involved in campaigns for LGBTIQA+ discrimination protections, family and relationship recognition, improvements in education, health and policing policies, anti-suicide and anti-poverty measures, and blood donation. He is currently a spokesperson for national LGBTIQA+ advocacy organisation, Just. Equal Australia. In 2003 Rodney was made a Member of the Order of Australia and in 2015 he was named Tasmanian Australian of the Year. (Image by Ann-Marie Calilhanna; Star Observer)
Australia is progressing towards LGBTIQA+ equality. In 2017 we voted for it. But the backlash to that progress poses a serious threat. The question before us is how do we continue to make progress despite the backlash. FROM BIGOTS ISLAND TO THE RAINBOW ISLE Thirty years ago, my article for the first edition of the Human Rights Defender explained a ground-breaking appeal I was involved in to the UN Human Rights Committee against Tasmania’s then laws criminalising gay intimacy with up to 21 years in gaol. That appeal was ultimately successful. It gave us a platform to seek federal legislation and a High Court ruling against the offending state law, it gave the Commonwealth Parliament a mandate to prohibit anti-LGBTIQA+ discrimination, and it set a precedent for decriminalisation in other countries from Belize to India.
The Tasmanian UN decision has played a critical role in LGBTIQA+ emancipation. But it would be wrong to attribute change in Tasmania and elsewhere solely to that decision. Its ramifications have been greatest where there was already a community-based campaign in place. In Tasmania this campaign involved everyday LGBTIQA+ people reaching out to potential allies and telling their personal stories about why decriminalisation mattered. It was because of this larger campaign of community engagement that when the dam of criminalisation finally broke, with repeal of the offending laws on May 1st 1997, some of the world’s most progressive LGBTIQA+ discrimination, hate speech, relationship and gender recognition laws flowed out. Attitudes have also turned around: Tasmania went from below-national-average support for decriminalisation in the early 1990s to a marriage equality ‘Yes’ vote above the national average in the 2017 postal survey. In the last 30 years Tasmania has gone from worst to best on LGBTIQ+ equality, from being labelled “Bigots Island” by the UK press after the UN decision to being the Rainbow Isle today.1
