In this blog, prominent LGBTQIA+ Rights Activist Bill Rutkin (OAM) and Contributing Editor Michael Stockwell explore how homosexual men living in Queensland during the Bjelke-Petersen era used lavender language to circumvent public and political vilification.
Homosexuality: Bjelke-Petersen’s Convenient Scapegoat
“I am against the dirty and despicable acts these [homosexual] people carry out. You can’t get any beast or animal that is so depraved to carry on the way they do.”
Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen was Queensland’s Premier from 1968 to 1987, a period which is widely regarded to have been an era of ideological conservatism including, amongst other things, the repression and brutalisation of homosexual men.
Homosexuality was historically a criminal offence for all of Queensland’s colonial history prior to 1990. The Criminal Code 1899 (Qld), as in force before 19 January 1991, prohibited homosexual activity under sections 208, 209, 211 and 227, and sections 5(1)(b) and 7(e) of the Vagrants, Gaming and Other Offences Act 1931 (Qld). Convictions under The Criminal Code 1899 (Qld) routinely required proof of genital contact, while cases under the Vagrants, Gaming and Other Offences Act 1931 (Qld) could be brought forward under the more ambiguous charges of soliciting for immoral purposes or behaving in an indecent manner.
In 1957 the British Government’s Wolfenden Report recommended that homosexuality be decriminalised, marking the change in official attitudes in the English-speaking world, particularly in Commonwealth countries.
Homosexual sex was subsequently legalised in England and Wales in 1967. Australia followed Britain’s lead and homosexuality was decriminalised in most states in the 1970s and 1980s. Queensland, however resisted and only introduced reforms in 1990, the second-last Australian state to reform. Queensland’s late legislative change resulted in a proportionately lengthened stage of struggle for homosexual men compared to that faced in most other Australian jurisdictions. This meant that homosexual men residing in Queensland endured the additional political and social vilification resulting from the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s unaided by legislative protection.
Additionally, utilising the public’s now widespread use of television, the Bjelke-Petersen government weaponised the media for electoral advantage. They did so by actively cultivating moral panic by targeting homosexual men as political scapegoats. This was done by scaffolding anti-gay propaganda on the existing anti-homosexual legislation found in the Queensland Criminal Code. Furthermore, Bjelke-Petersen deliberately and falsely linked homosexuality to paedophilia and exploited the HIV/AIDS epidemic that emerged during his time in office.
Dr Wendell Rosevear recalls: “I remember them planning to make Peel Island in Moreton Bay a HIV colony, like it used to be a leper colony”.
In an insight into the depth of political sentiment against the LGBTQIA+ community, Carswell outlined that: “The evangelical homophobia of the Premier and [some of] his cabinet gave free rein to the basest forms of homophobic violence in the police, media and the wider community”.
Lavender Language
Lavender Language is an umbrella term coined by anthropologist William Leap that refers to the secretive and highly intricate cryptolects, or cants, of queer communities throughout the world. These languages are uniformly grounded in a communal need for secrecy for safety, and are influenced by a variety of languages, especially dialects spoken by other oppressed classes. If they become well known outside their intended audience, their purpose becomes lost, and they tend to fade into obscurity. Examples include Polari in Britian, Loxoro in Peru and Gayle in south Africa.
Camp Names and Vernacular
As a response to this widespread vilification, Queensland’s homosexual community developed innovative ways to communicate with each other. Of note, camp names were a unique form of language whereupon feminine names were used by biological and straight identifying MSM (men who have sex with men) to converse with each other. When a group of gay men, lesbian women and their supporters, formed an activist organisation, they took on the name ‘camp’ as an abbreviation of ‘Campaign Against Moral Persecution’. They became a prominent LGBTQIA+ human rights activist group operating during this era.
In the largely heteronormative world, camp (sometimes referred to as drag) names are most often associated with female impersonators and performers. Rutkin notes that the difference between camp and drag lies with camp inferring homosexuality and drag transvestism. Distinctions aside, in the context of Bjelke-Petersen era Queensland, they were a survival tool. By using feminine names in place of their given names, homosexual men could refer to other members of their community directly without onlookers being made aware of their sexuality. Leading LGBTQIA+ activist Bill Rutkin recalls,
“My camp [drag] name is Pearl. You either chose your own name, or it was given to you. Mine was given to me by Laurie Dean aka Dame Sybil Von Thorndyke because I did drag one night when I was working at the Union Club Hotel, in Petrie Bight, across the road from the Wharfies Club. My jewellery consisted of a roped strings of very cheap plastic pearls purchased from ‘Alice’ a flamboyant queen who presided over the fabric department of Coles in Queen Street [located in the Brisbane CBD]”.
Furthermore, a unique variety of conversational jargon was employed extensively by homosexual men as a way to safely discuss the more clandestine aspects of their romantic dalliances in public. For example, the camp vernacular term for performing oral sex on another man might be spoken of, in Bill Rutkin’s words, as ‘kneeling and offering thanks at the cathedral’. Bill recalls another example in the same vein being when one said they were, ‘going to church’, this meant they were going to do the ‘beats‘. A ‘beat’ refers to a public space, often discrete, where men meet for casual sex or sexual encounters. The use of these lingual subtexts empowered the users to discuss openly the otherwise vilified and illegal aspects of their life. While Queensland’s camp vernacular shared some similarities and was influenced by English Polari, it is not alike enough in nature to be deemed a Polari offshoot.
Gay venues of the time often employed veneers of heteronormative activity, thus avoiding public and media scrutiny and police harassment. Gay bars and other such venues would often employ women allies as their public face. These women acted as gatekeepers to entry, reading and acknowledging these secret cues to permit entry. These carefully constructed facades were vital to the safety of the patrons. As Phillip Carswell recalls:
“In terms of the gay community itself, I was told of people being arrested outside gay venues, strip searching on the street and examples of young gay men stopped outside venues, being interrogated and when they revealed that they had engaged in gay sex, being arrested and subsequently jailed.”
The interesting and important element of this interactional discourse is that the participants were not only using camp names and vernacular to avoid attention and circumvent potential harm. While it was primarily a form of disguise and subterfuge, for many these sub-cultural expressions signified a personal choice that was a representation of their true identity. Ultimately, it was never the goal to deceive out of spite, but rather to navigate a society that, at the time, could be extremely hostile.
Although the Bjelke-Petersen era has passed, and LGBTQIA+ citizens are afforded protection under the Anti-Discrimination Act and other legislation, it is the unfortunate reality that the vilification of this community still remains. While the protection that this widely deployed social duplicity is fondly remembered by those it served, Queensland has a chasm of ingrained homophobia still to be addressed. The difference now is that this genre of denigration is often as covert and insidious as Bjelke-Petersen’s ideology was overt in its orthodoxy.
Bill Rutkin (OAM) is a prominent Queensland LGBTQIA+ activist. Some of his many social justice and activist associations include: Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP), Queensland AIDS Council (QuAC), Queensland Intravenous AIDS Association Inc (QuIVAA), Queensland Injector’s Health Network (QuIHN), Just-Equal and many other Australian and International LGBTQIA+ support groups where he continues to fight for LGBTQIA+ legal equality and social justice. Bill is also part owner of Queensland’s foremost LBGTQIA+ publication Q News.
Michael Stockwell is a PhD candidate with the Centre for Heritage and Culture, and the School of Law and Justice at the University of Southern Queensland. He has a background in hospitality, classical music, education and law and works in the law and IAS departments at the University of Southern Queensland. His doctoral research investigates the prosecution, persecution and vilification of homosexual men in Queensland during the Bjelke-Petersen era and how the experiences in their formative years affect their willingness to engage with legal and administrative systems later in life. After initially beginning his tenure at the Australian Women’s History Network as an intern in 2024, he has since become a Commissioning Editor working under Managing Editors Dr Paige Donaghy and Dr Ana Stevenson.
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