Law Commons^™

Pinkwashing The Past: Gay Rights, Military History And The Sidelining Of Protest In Australia, Tanja Dreher

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper explores the implications of the militarisation of Australian history and the dilemmas of increasing public support for same-sex marriage in Australia at a time of renewed assaults on Indigenous rights, austerity measures and the silencing of dissent. The paper analyses the celebratory rhetoric which increasingly typifies both marriage equality campaigns and the commemoration of Australia's First World War or 'Anzac' history in popular media and public debate. Against the confluence between ongoing debates on same-sex marriage and the 'Anzac myth', I highlight four key challenges: the silencing of dissent; forgetting of the Frontier Wars; untold stories of civil …