Loud and proud 40 years on

Former gay liberation activist Ken Davis remembers fighting for social change rights in a time vastly different from today.
It was a time when the world was threatened by nuclear war, most lived under dictatorships, and persecution of homosexual men and women was rampant.
As a teenager of the global youth rebellion, Davis was emboldened by the Stonewall riots that took place June 28 1969 in New York City, an event that received international coverage as the first push towards a gay rights movement.
“We could be proud because we could see that lesbians and gay men and drag queens…were fighters,” said Davis.
“It really shifted the way we looked at ourselves because we weren’t pleading for a place at the table in the movement for social change. We…proved ourselves by fighting.”
Former president of the Pride History Group – a collective of those who confronted police brutality in the first Sydney Mardi Gras in June 1978, and were active in the Sydney Gay Liberation movement and the Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP) – Davis has celebrated the anniversary of the riots every year.
Now 40 years on, leaps and bounds have been made in the fight for equality. Davis says it is nothing like the “old world”.
This Saturday marks the 40th anniversary of the event that saw patrons and police violently clash at the Stonewall Inn, in New York’s Greenwich Village, prompting the worldwide mobilisation of gay and lesbian movements.
In commemoration, the Sydney Pride Festival is taking on a more celebratory tone, hosting regular events until July 1, including a massive street party featuring a number of venues, the Pride Art Exhibition at Darlinghurst’s Tap Gallery and the return of the Taylor Square Markets on Saturday June 27.
The Pride History Group will be hosting a forum at Benledi House on Glebe Point Road to discuss the impact the riots had on social justice movements in Australia. Speakers will include original campaigners Ken Davis, and Sue Wills and Lex Watson of the CAMP movement.
“The riots in fact did have an effect on Australia. It’s really the acknowledged beginnings of the gay and lesbian liberation movements,” said Pride History Group secretary Robert French, who spoke at the launch of the Sydney Pride Festival last Thursday night at the Stonewall hotel on Oxford Street.
The Pride History Group will also soon be announcing a year-long schedule of events to celebrate 40 years since the start of the gay and lesbian rights movements in Australia in 2010