Group fights to keep gay and lesbian mardi gras inclusive

A new group has emerged to defend mardi gras's inclusive spirit after activists narrowly failed to ban police from last year’s parade.

A group of mardi gras members have organised themselves in an effort to halt the steady creep of another group who sought to ban police from participating in the parade indefinitely.

At last year’s AGM, the board of mardi gras put forward a motion to prevent police from walking in this year’s parade in the wake of angst within the LGBT+ following the murders of Jesse Baird and Luke Davis, allegedly by Beau Lamarre-Condon who was a serving NSW police officer.

The motion was narrowly defeated by just over 60 votes.

A group of activist members who call themselves Pride in Protest, moved a stronger motion which would have seen police banned from the parade without recourse to return.

NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb at the 2023 Sydney mardi gras Parade.

Now, a group of ordinary members have joined to prevent that from happening again and to ensure the core reasons mardi gras exists aren’t lost to activist fringe groups.

“We want to keep mardi gras inclusive, visible and strong,” organiser Peter Stahel told The Daily Telegraph.

“Over the last five years (Pride in Protest) have come to every AGM with pretty much the same motions – ban police, ban the military, ban conservative politicians, even ban some sponsors, the sponsor who make (the parade) possible and it has just worn people down.”

Another person involved in the group is Peter Murphy who was one of the original participants in the first mardi gras in 1978 and passionately believes that mardi gras should remain open and inclusive.

“That (first mardi gras) was meant to be a street party, it was monstered by police and never really given a chance but that was the thinking that created it and carried it forward for the first few years,” he said.

“We needed to do something different to enable many more LGBTQI people to come into a public event to show who we are and also show that we are a lot of people.”

Murphy was arrested that night and brutally beaten by police in a cell, the fact that he advocates for police to be included in the parade is especially powerful.

“In 1998, twenty years after that first parade, LGBTQIA+ police officers participated in mardi gras for the first time. It wasn’t a free pass for bad behaviour. It was a victory. A hard-won, deeply symbolic sign that change was possible,” he said.

“Once you start making the mardi gras parade a battle ground for who is in and who is out the divisiveness is very repulsive.”

Protect mardi gras will run an information campaign in the lead up to the next AGM as well as encourage disenfranchised former members of the organisation to vote to ensure the parade remains inclusive.

A spokesman for the mardi gras declined to comment.

Originally published as Group fights to keep gay and lesbian mardi gras inclusive