Decriminalisation, apology and expungement: sexual citizenship and the problem of public sex in Victoria

This article examines two instances when the relationship between homosexuality and the state was contested and redrawn in Victoria. It traces how the spectre of sex in public haunted the edges of public debate in both the moment when male homosex was ostensibly decriminalised at the beginning of the 1980s and during more recent moves to offer forms of redress to individuals convicted of sex crimes in the past that would now be considered legal acts. In both instances the spectre of sex in public unsettled a neat liberal solution. By focusing our attention on the less ‘respectable’ elements of these histories, we can see the ways in which claims for sexual citizenship retain an unruly and unpredictable edge.