Queensland's queer history: From a premier's 'passionate friendship' to same-sex marriage | ABC News

A growing number of LGBTIQ+ people now live openly in Queensland, according to the 2021 Census. But it's been a long road to acceptance and equal rights.
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Late at night on the banks of the Brisbane River, two young men settled on a spot between a Moreton Bay fig and a fence.
It was 1968. The teens had nowhere else to go and thought nobody could see them.
The liaison was short lived. A harsh light ripped away the darkness like a bed sheet. It was a policeman's torch.
"They thought we were trying to break into the milk factory," Bill Rutkin says with a chuckle.
"When they worked out we were both gay men and probably about to commit an offence, they just gave us a good thumping and told us to go and see a psychiatrist."
Now 72, Mr Rutkin shrugs off the beating as a "common occurrence" during Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen's reign as Queensland's premier.
"Violence was part and parcel," he says.
He describes how police commonly used "entrapment" methods to make arrests.
"Some attractive young constable in plain clothes would go into the toilets ... and expose himself.
"And then if anyone responded to that invitation, they would be grabbed. And usually some older sergeant or someone would appear from nowhere, and you'd be dragged away."
Police at the time denied the use of such tactics.
For most of his life, consensual homosexual activity was illegal - punishable with up to seven years in jail.
In 1988, a male couple on the Gold Coast was committed for trial for having sex in their own home.
They admitted to the offences during a police interview on an unrelated matter.
"We were like a normal couple. I had found a guy who I loved, and who loved me. We made a commitment for a long-term relationship," one of the men told the Sydney Morning Herald at the time.
Bill Potts was their lawyer. He says the couple ultimately admitted to the charges.
"There they were, a loving couple in a committed relationship, standing in the dock, holding hands and crying," Mr Potts recalls.
He says the judge was sympathetic and sentenced them to a good behaviour bond.
"Ultimately these men left the dock with a stain of a criminal conviction on their names."
The couple did not live to see their names cleared. Two decades after the trial, laws expunging homosexual convictions were passed.
Mr Potts says he represented hundreds of men charged with homosexual offences.
"Police were actively criminalising what was essentially private behaviour.
"This was a 19th century law that was out of date with 20th century morality."
The then Labor opposition used the case to advocate for the repeal of anti-gay laws.
Despite conservatives warning of a "gay flood" if the party was elected, Wayne Goss became premier the following year.
In 1991 the Sunshine State became Australia's second-last jurisdiction to decriminalise homosexual acts between consenting adults. It would be another 26 years before the age of consent was equalised.
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