Fwd: This Pride Month, Help Honour Men Lost to Australia's History of Homophobia
Michael Barnett OAM
From: <pde...@bigpond.net.au>
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2026 at 17:03
Subject: Re: This Pride Month, Help Honour Men Lost to Australia's History of Homophobia
To: <pde...@bigpond.net.au>
Dear family, friends, comrades,
Please pass this on to friends or anyone who may be interested.
My apologies if this reaches you more than once.
Help bring posthumous pride to men persecuted simply for who they loved.
During the historic NSW Parliamentary debate on the extinguishment of records of homosexual convictions under the Criminal Records Amendment (Historical Homosexual Offences) Act 2014, Alex Greenwich said on 16 October 2014:
“Australia's history of homophobic laws is long and horrific. I acknowledge and thank Peter de Waal for documenting much of this history in his publication Unfit for Publication (UFP), which details the buggery and sodomy trials from 1727 to 1930. I am honoured to place these documents on the table for members' consideration.”
For more than two centuries in Australia, love between men was not recognised as love. It was criminalised—condemned as “unnatural”, denounced as a sin, and deemed something “not to be named among Christians”. Punishments included hanging, flogging, imprisonment, hard labour, and public humiliation.
These are not distant events. They are real lives—forgotten, distorted, and largely untold. What is forgotten can all too easily be lost ... and repeated.
My forthcoming book, Hidden Lives, Silenced Histories: Eons of Australian Homophobia, draws upon almost 1,800 documented cases and transforms some of the most compelling into readable, illustrated historical narratives that restore humanity to those who endured persecution, punishment, and silence.
In his foreword to Hidden Lives, Silenced Histories, eminent historian Professor Frank Bongiorno of the Australian National University writes:
“Historians of Australian sexuality have long been indebted to Peter de Waal AM. His monumental collection Unfit for Publication, just one example of his many contributions to the study of Australian gay life, has been a goldmine to scholars for almost 20 years, with its rich collection of records of so-called unnatural offences from 1727 through to 1930, all meticulously researched, assembled and presented.”
Bongiorno also writes: “In Hidden Lives, Silenced Histories: Eons of Australian Homophobia, Peter has selected some of the most striking of these cases and turned them into stories of his own telling: absorbing, revealing, often tragic and always evocative of the male homosexual experience in a country where homophobia was built int the very foundations.”
Bongiorno further observes: “Peter’s role – and the role of the lively field of gay history since the 1980s – has been to provide illumination where there has previously been darkness about the lives, loves, sufferings, punishments, resilience, and resistance of gay men. In the well-researched and evocative stories assembled here, you will encounter a history that is still unknown to most Australians – and yet one essential to understanding both where we have come from and what we might yet become.”
Renowned Australian queer historian Gary Wotherspoon, in the foreword to the three-volume Unfit for Publication, wrote that Peter's tireless work has resulted in:
“... this ground-breaking work; any historian working in such diverse fields as Australian social history, or legal history, or gender studies, to name but a few, will be ever grateful for this roadmap into one of the nether regions of our past.”
That assessment was reinforced in 2014 when the Honourable Michael Kirby launched the expanded online documentation, commending it as an invaluable research tool and affirming its enduring national and historiographical significance—a legacy carried forward in Hidden Lives, Silenced Histories.
The book’s foreword writer offered this concise reflection:
“Delighted to have read the book, Peter.”
Hidden Lives, Silenced Histories does more than recover history. It restores voice, dignity, and presence to those who were denied all three.
Self-published on a cost-recovery basis by a low-vision age pensioner, this work exists because it must. It is offered simply to bear witness.
For if silence was demanded then, it is broken now.
And memory, once shared, becomes a form of justice.
If this history matters to you—if these lives deserve to be known—then I warmly invite you to become a sponsor.
All contributions, at any level, are received with deep gratitude and may be made anonymously if preferred. Every act of generosity—public or private—helps preserve, honour, and share these long-silenced histories.
Each sponsorship includes a signed copy of Hidden Lives, Silenced Histories in recognition of your role in helping bring these stories beyond the archive and into our shared historical memory.
$250 — Guardian of Silenced Histories
Help preserve stories once buried beneath fear, shame, punishment, and silence. Your support assists with printing, accessibility, archival preparation, and distribution. Sponsors will be acknowledged in a dedicated section of the book and may include a personal reflection (up to 30–35 words) or an organisation logo.
$125 — Keeper of Hidden Lives
Help bring forgotten lives back into the light. Your name and a short personal reflection (20–25 words) will be included in the book as part of the historical record of those who helped preserve this work.
$75 — Bear Witness Supporter
If you would like to become a sponsor, please reply to this email at pde...@bigpond.net.au by Tuesday 30 June 2026 with your sponsorship level, name, and postal address. (For overseas sponsors, please add AU$30 for postage.)
Kindly deposit the relevant amount into the following account:
My banking details.
St George Bank
Account name: Peter de Waal
BSB 112-879
Account no. 107 706 097
For overseas transfers only:
St George Bank
257 Darling St Balmain, NSW 2041
SWIFT/BIC code: SGBLAU2S
Account name: Peter de Waal
Account no. 107 706 097
Yours with love, peace and solidarity,
Peter de Waal AM (he/him/his)
Author, Gay History Documenter, Researcher and Life-Long Activist
78er – First Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras participant – 1978
Learn more about me here
PO Box 6, Balmain NSW 2041, Australia
I live on Wangal land, part of the Eora Nation
