There was barely a ripple

"It was February and it was hot and he wore an orange jumper, very heavy type, and yellow corduroy trousers, and Rosetta Stone Language so then he heard my accent and the next question was, 'What do you think of von Ribbentrop?', which confirmed my first impression that after the clothes, this is a mad guy. My luck. But his voice was interesting." They ended up back at Kirby's place in Kirribilli and have been together ever since. "We've often talked about ... the chance that each of us made a decision to go to that venue that night and how different our lives would have been had we not made that decision," Kirby says, calling it a reminder of how "propinquity and chance play a great part in human relationships". "And when you speak to straight people you find the same stories, it's just a matter of luck. You've got to be very lucky in life to find somebody who will put up with you ... I have been very lucky." It's when Kirby describes his life leading up to that meeting that you understand why he considers it such a gift. In keeping with the times, his sexuality something of which he had been aware since puberty, and which he regarded as an unchangeable fact of life nonetheless had to remain hidden. "At the time," he says, "I thought, 'Well, this is just how it is.' Not the natural order of things but the way society mistakenly was organising itself and this was just what was expected of me. I had a sexual life but it was always a fantasy life. It was all suppressed. And that was a hard journey, especially suppressing things to the people who were most important to you." Did he have girlfriends? "No. And I never had walkers. I had women friends. But I never really pretended to be something that I wasn't. I wasn't always direct about who I was but I wasn't deceitful about it or suggesting something that I wasn't." Kirby was acutely conscious of what was at stake. Growing up, his family firmly believed he might one day be prime minister, and a political career did cross his mind. But: "Two things stood like the Titanic iceberg in the way." Attending a Labor Party branch meeting, he discovered he was bored numb by the political game. "And the second impediment was my sexuality. It was rumoured in my youth that Edward Heath in Britain was gay and he rose to be prime minister but he had a very empty life. I'd Language Learning Software grown up in a loving family and with loving relationships, and I just didn't see that as an option really." So he focused on the law, a career that would take him to the pinnacle of the Australian legal system in a profession in which he believed he could at least lead a discreet gay life. "I obeyed the rule of don't ask, don't tell, which is essentially a rule imposed by the majority which can handle variations within it, of knowing that there are gay people and not worrying too much about that but they don't want to think about it. And they don't want to have its reality forced upon them." Kirby and van Vloten grew adept at keeping their relationship under wraps. "Sydney was like most towns, where homosexuality was not pronounced," van Vloten tells the ABC. "You had to camouflage ... as best you could. There were things you could not do ... We always realised that was going to be a difficulty, [and] he had far more to lose than I had." Though their families knew and were accepting, outside their inner circle "don't ask, don't tell" remained the rule. But as attitudes towards homosexuality loosened, Kirby says, he increasingly came to believe that his being gay was an open secret particularly when he became a high-profile campaigner on AIDS issues in the 1980s. "That was sort of code language for my sexuality," he says. Paul Keating, he is certain, knew the truth when he named Kirby to the High Court in 1996. Three years later, the judge came out in Who's Who. There was barely a ripple. "The non-secret is out," The Canberra Times editorialised. "I think it is a good thing to have done it," he says now. "Mind you, I think the attack on me in the Senate was one consequence of that, so you shouldn't deceive yourself into thinking that it's all an easy road. Some people get very upset about such things." Some people, indeed Liberal senator Bill Heffernan in particular. In 02, Heffernan used the protection of parliamentary privilege to unleash an extraordinary attack on Kirby and van Vloten, quoting from a fabricated document to accuse the justice of using Commonwealth cars to pick up male prostitutes in Sydney. The senator was forced to resign his parliamentary secretary's post when the fraud was exposed and he publicly apologised not before Kirby and van Vloten had endured a week of public humiliation. Eight years on, Kirby betrays no sign of anger but insists it is a subject he hates having to discuss. "I'd rather not talk about it really because every time I do so, it becomes part of my life," he says "Do you know, if you Google Johan's name, what comes up is not Rosetta Stone Italian this prudent, loving, faithful companion.