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NSW Police to March in 2025

Rita Bratovich

The NSW Police Force has always had a complex relationship with Mardi Gras and with the LGBTQI+ community.  


Even during the early colonial years in this country, those endowed with the responsibility of enforcing the law chose to do so with physical and verbal aggression when it came to gay men (lesbians, like all women, were virtually invisible). 


Sodomy was considered a crime punishable by death until 1836 when the death penalty was revoked in the UK. After that date, those arrested for sodomy were still at the whim of law enforcers, and that often meant a brutal beating or worse. 


Pride Square Newtown

Beats arose around Sydney during the late 1800s in pretty much the same locations that became known as gay haunts in modern times: Bourke St, Hyde Park, and areas around Darlinghurst. Even back then, police often lured and entrapped gay men at these beats.  

In 1958, a particularly homophobic NSW Police Commissioner ordered an aggressive crackdown on homosexual behaviour. This galvanised the queer community to band together and begin advocating for freedom against discrimination. 


Throughout the 1960s, the queer community became more emboldened. Dozens of venues were established in Kings Cross, Darlinghurst, and the CBD, and though they were not advertised as queer, it was an open secret. By the early 1970s, groups like CAMP were publicly advocating for homosexual rights. 


Police hostility persisted, culminating on the historic night of June 24, 1978, when a 53 people were arrested, dozens were injured, and a movement began in earnest.  A tense relationship began between organisers of what became an annual Mardi Gras parade and the police who were required to keep order for the event. That relationship deteriorated during the mid to late 1980s when the community was rocked by gay hate crimes, including murders, to which the police seemed, at best, indifferent, at worse, complicit. 


NSW Police Mardi Gras Parade March

In 1990, the LGBTIQ+ Liaison Officer Program was established by NSW Police in an effort to improve relations with the community. Then, in 1998, a contingent from the NSW Police Force marched in the Mardi Gras parade for the very first time. 


They have participated in the parade ever since, although from that first time until now, their presence has been highly contentious. 


Most recently, a call by certain community groups to ban the police from the parade was voted down, and a NSW Police float will be in the 2025 parade.

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