This is not the End

By the mid 1970s the Gay Liberation Front in Melbourne had passed its peak.

The splintering off of members into different political camps and the opening up of new social opportunities meant attendance numbers at meetings began dropping off. The Melbourne Gay Liberation Front wound to a close formally at its last meeting in 1978. In its place a group 'Gay Society' was formed.

Though it existed only for a few years, Melbourne Gay Lib left a strong legacy. Gay Lib and the early Gay Civil Rights groups of the 1970s began important work in counselling, law reform, equal opportunity and anti discrimination, work which continued after the demise of Gay Lib and which started to bear fruit in the 1980s and 1990s. As the decades went on, founding Gay Lib members took the political lessons learned in these formative years and became leaders in Australian society. And collectively, this group of young people who took the brave step of coming out publicly, who owned their sexuality and were proud of who they were, contributed to a revolutionary change in attitudes towards homosexuality in Australian society. They had found their voice, and Australia would never be the same again.