Queer Histories: The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands
By Syaa Liesch (they/them)
Content warning: mentions of homophobia and transphobia
IN CELEBRATION OF PRIDE MONTH 2024
In 2004, over 300 kilometres off the coast of Australia, Emperor Dale Parker Anderson I officially declared the creation a new nation: The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands. The nation was formed by queer activists, who boarded The Gayflower, flying to a patch of sand and grass in the Coral Sea Islands Territory. This group of small and mostly uninhabited tropical Islands in the Coral Sea of Northeast Queensland, became the birthplace of a new queer micronation, protesting the opposition to gay rights at the time.
The rising momentum for marriage equality was met with hysteria across the West. In Australia, the conservative Howard government had attacked LGBTQIA+ adoption rights, immigration rights, trans people’s right to marriage, and the ability for queer couples to have their cases heard by the federal Family Court.
2004 brought a Marriage Amendment Bill to legally re-define marriage, replacing ‘marriage is a union between two people’ with 'the union of a man and woman to the exclusion of all others'. This legislation also explicitly stated that same-sex marriages performed in foreign countries would not be legally recognised in Australia. The Government also legislated a ban against same-sex couples adopting from overseas.
In protest of the government's bigotry, a group of queer activists at Brisbane Pride decided to create their own 'Gay and Lesbian Kingdom'. Under international law, 'oppressed people who occupy an EOT (External Overseas Territory) ... (have) the right to self-determination and self-government'. The Coral Sea Islands, recognised as an EOT of Australia, met this criteria. By asserting their occupancy, these activists could establish their own queer friendly government.
Emperor Dale and his crew flew to Cato Island, where the capital city 'Heaven' was formed and a traditional 6-stripe rainbow gay Pride flag (the official flag of The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands) was raised.
They created an official Declaration of Independence and installed a commemorative plaque which read:
‘On the 14th day of June 2004, at this, the highest point in the Coral Sea, Emperor Dale Parker Anderson raised the gay rainbow flag and claimed the Islands of the Coral Sea in his name as the homeland of the Gay and Lesbian people. God Save Our King!’
Cato Island, being a barren stretch of sand that featured a singular unmanned weather station, was not a feasible place to host a physical community, so they set up a website and various Facebook groups and forums to hold discussions surrounding what the Kingdom was and what it should do, as well as a PO Box in Southport, Gold Coast. Emperor Dale wrote to multiple Australian MPs regarding their declaration of independence and their willingness to rejoin as Australian people after the legalisation of marriage equality. Unfortunately, they did not receive affirming responses.
In September 2004, the Kingdom declared war on Australia due to the latter’s failure to recognise marriage equality. While nothing violent occurred after their declaration, a hard-right Liberal Senator did express ironic concern about the display of a rainbow flag in the lobby of the Department of Finance in 2017:
‘This particular flag, you will realise, is the flag of the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands, that declared war on Australia and you Senator Cormann would understand they did the same as Prince Leonard of Hutt River Province and now this is their official flag … Of course, it is the flag of a hostile nation if we are to believe them,
having declared war on Australia. I dare say that wasn't the reason it was
Flown...'
That same year, Australia held a postal survey regarding the question of marriage equality. When 61.6% of voters said YES, Emperor Dale announced that the work of the Kingdom was complete and signed a proclamation which dissolved The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands, returning the Kingdom to Australia's control.
The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands, whilst a creative approach to tackling discrimination, also demonstrates a radical story of micronationalism. Micronations - tiny countries declared by ordinary people - repeat and reproduce the act of establishment maintained by sovereign nations. This declaration of a right to secede is in itself a technique of remaining in visible depute with the government. It’s simultaneously a declaration of independence and a suspended moment of confrontation. The greatest challenge to a government’s power is the ability to mimic and act out the very roles they hold dear. The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom perform for their audience – journeying over the sea, stepping onto the soil, raising the flag, reading their declaration of independence – staging, imagining, and therefore claiming its place in history as a nation. It is here that nationalist roles and practices are ‘queered’ by performing the establishment of sovereignty in a way that displaces it, opening it as a reproduction that is inherently at odds with conventional operation.
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References
https://www.defactoborders.org/places/coral-sea-islands
https://micronations.wiki/wiki/Gay_and_Lesbian_Kingdom_of_the_Coral_Sea_Islands
https://www.midsumma.org.au/media/jevicu0p/tom-ballard_coral-sea-overview.pdf