The original '78ers - a group of activists who, with up to 1000 others marched down Oxford Street to Taylor Square in 1978, when 'acts of homosexuality' were still illegal in Australia. There they were met by baton-wielding police who proceed to beat and arrest many of the marchers. Some almost lost their lives. The Sydney Morning Herald printed the names of those arrested in their paper the next day as an act of public shaming. In the proceeding years, the march was repeated along the same route, in what has now become known as the Mardi Gras.
In 2016, 38 years after the first march, the New South Wales parliament, police and the Sydney Morning Herald apologized for the violence and mistreatment against these pioneers of human rights for LGBTI communities in Australia.
Happy Mardi Gras folks!
