Political protest returns to Mardi Gras

Rachel Evans, Sydney

One-hundred-and-fifty people joined the Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH) contingent in the 27th annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade on March 5.

The Socialist Alliance, the Canterbury Bankstown Gay and Lesbian Group, Australian Marriage Equality, Resistance the socialist youth organisation, the Council of Australian of Postgraduate Students, Gay and Lesbian Equality (GALE) and the Ethnic Communities Council of NSW (youth wing) marched behind the CAAH float.

CAAH led a number of rallies last year against the federal government's same-sex marriage ban and brought together 14 groups from across Australia for its "Repeal the Marriage Ban, End Discrimination" float.

Altogether, some 130 floats entered the parade, with police estimating that there were 450,000 spectators.

The lead float, a secret before the night, highlighted the 80 countries where homosexuality is illegal — clarifying the official Mardi Gras theme of "Our freedom: your freedom". The float featured a call for homosexual civil rights in Afghanistan, India and Iran. However, no official theme featured the call to repeal the marriage ban.

Despite this, corporate media coverage of the parade painted it as a protest against the Coalition government's same-sex marriage ban. The March 6 Sydney Morning Herald, for example, reported: "Protest against discrimination returned to the forefront and rain made a timely departure as Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras enjoyed its smoothest sailing — and noisiest — parade in years...

"Prime Minister John Howard and US President George W. Bush featured heavily in a procession steeped in more than the usual mix of politics, affrontery and joie de vivre...

"The political and legal discrimination against same-sex marriages featured in the 2005 parade."

New Mardi Gras co-chairperson Mark Orr was quoted by the SMH as saying: "Mardi Gras started as a protest. Over the years it's had a great political content, lots of political satire and I think we're actually taking it back to those sorts of heydays."

From Green Left Weekly, March 16, 2005.

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From GLW issue 619