Category Archives: Gay Interest

The Hidden Faces of Domestic Violence

Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, Health Information, Opinion Piece, ,

Sometime, I just don’t get the one-eyed views of our modern world, how we discern that one aspect of an issue is important, but other aspects aren’t! Our current anti-domestic violence campaigns are a classic example of blinkered views. The whole domestic violence issue, which for many decades has been a problem swept under the rug, has recently – thanks to a public outcry, and government incentives – had one corner lifted for a good spring clean.

Let’s get one thing straight right from the start – I am not trying to trivialise domestic violence! I detest any “man” who raises  a hand to a woman, or a child! It is the ultimate abuse of trust, and power! It is pure cowardice! I grew up in a generation where this just did not happen – or so we thought, as it was either well hidden, or people just turned a blind eye! 

What I don’t get is – why are we only focusing on one aspect of domestic violence…that of men-to-women! Why is female to male, female to female, and male to male domestic violence been overlooked? Surely that ANY form of domestic violence happens should be of concern to all of us! That one woman a week dies as a direct result of domestic violence is a frightening statistic. However, the fact that the “One In Three” site exists – dedicated to female to male domestic violence – speaks loudly that the problem is a lot bigger than that being focused on. The definition of domestic violence from their site is “Family violence and abuse is a serious and deeply entrenched problem in Australia. It has significant impacts upon the lives of men, women and children. It knows no boundaries of gender, geography, socio-economic status, age, ability, sexual preference, culture, race or religion. Domestic violence between partners, boyfriends and girlfriends (also known as intimate partner violence or IPV); violence between other family members (siblings, parents, children, aunts, uncles, and grandparents); most elder abuse, child abuse and sexual abuse are all different forms of family violence. Thankfully reducing family violence against women and children has been firmly on the agendas of government for many years. Now is the time to move to the next, more sophisticated stage of tackling the problem: recognising men as victims as well.” (http://www.oneinthree.com.au/).

According to their statistics, one in every three instances of domestic violence is a male. 94% of these instances is committed by a female. Between 2010 and 2012, 75 males were killed as a result of DV by a woman. This equates to one death every 10 days. Yet these acts of DV are neglected by government agencies such as Our Watch, and ANROWS. 

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, 30 May 2015, same-sex violence in relationships is a “silent epidemic”. Roughly one in three lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) couples experience domestic violence. Those statistics are echoed among the general population. (http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/domestic-violence-a-silent-epidemic-in-gay-relationships-20150415-1mm4hg.html#ixzz3sTIxDpWL). 

Imagine this personal scenario from the early 90s. I was picked up one night in a local gay bar my a guy – Graeme, who I fancied – and his partner Peter – who was okay – for a threesome. Everything went fine back at their home, with no indication of any undercurrants…until breakfast the next morning. Right in front of me, as if I wasn’t there, Peter openly abused and humiliated Peter almost continually. It was incredibly uncomfortable, and not just for me. After breakfast, Greame drove me back home, apologising for the incident almost as if it had been his fault. When I asked him in for a coffee, he declined, saying that the clock was on him, and he had to get home to avoid any further problems. I was staggered that I had actually witnessed these events. Fortunately for Peter, the relationship did end. Funnily enough, we ended up as fuck-buddies for the next five years. In that time, he never discussed that issue with me, nor did I ask.

The statistics all round are frightening. No one – adult, child, male or female – should ever have to suffer violence as a way of control, or power play, or anger outlet. It is time to shift the focus from male-to-female violence, and rackke the oroblem in its broader context.

Tim Alderman (C) 2015

   

Life in Kellett Way, Kings Cross, 1985.

Article, Autobiography, Gay Interest, Humour, , , , ,

A 1985 fluff piece by Adam Carr for “Outrage” magazine. Adam was visiting Sydney to report on Mardi Gras, and was a friend of my boyfriend at that time, Damian Guy. We were living in Kellett Way in The Cross at the time, behind a strip club. He came to visit us for dinner, and the next thing we knew…we were an article! Again, a lot of editorial license is used, and it is quite a funny piece. For the record, there was NO pink in the flat – it is one of my hate colours – and NO mantelpiece of tiny ornaments lol. For the sake of identification, Damian became “Shane” and I became “Tony”. We had no idea he was writing it, and the look on my face when reading it in Outrage, and the dawning on who it was about, must have been priceless.
  

   
Tim Alderman (C)2015

 

Living with HIV – 1987 Style.

Autobiography, Gay Interest, Health Information, History, HIV/AIDS, , , , , , ,

This is an interview on “life” with HIV that I did back in 1987 with “The Bulletin”. When I read it now, I cringe, as it seems so naive. The reporter, whose name I can’t remember now, knew absolutely nothing about HIV…or the gay lifestyle! As you can tell, his grasp of it was no better after talking to us, and editorial license is in full bloom, with distortions, misrepresentations, and fact twisting the order-of-the-day. However, the thinking of the time is evident if you read between the lines. At two years after official testing was introduced, none of us really expected to survive. It was party, party, party! At this time, I had already lost several friends. It was very scary times. Just part of my lived history now.
   
   
Tim Alderman (C) 2015

Gay History: The Society for the Reformation of Manners.

Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, History, Political, , ,

This group hold their place in gay history due to their two-years surveillance of Margaret “Mother” Clap’s coffee shop (Molly House), thus bringing about its closure in 1726, after a police raid in which  about 40 customers were arrested.

Society for the Reformation of Manners[1] was founded in the Tower Hamlets area of London in 1691.[2] Its espoused aims were the suppression of profanity, immorality, and other lewd activities in general, and of brothels and prostitution in particular.

One of many similar societies founded in that period, it reflected a sea-change in the social attitudes in England following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and a shifting from the socially liberal attitudes of the Restoration period under Charles II and James II to a more moral and censorious attitude of respectability and seriousness under William and Mary. Although inspired and fed by the moral excesses of London, branches were set up in towns and cities as far afield as Edinburgh, where Daniel Defoe was a member, though the societies never flourished in rural areas.

"A woman of all trades from Covent Garden". The caption on this engraving is a euphemism for a prostitute
“A woman of all trades from Covent Garden”. The caption on this engraving is a euphemism for a prostitute
The Society was arranged in four tiers, with the “Society of Original Gentlemen” at the top. These eminent professionals (lawyers, judges and MPs) along with the original founders, provided the expertise and financing to enable prosecutions to proceed. The next tier was the “Second Society” which consisted mainly of tradesmen, and whose role it was to suppress vice. Among other methods, the “Second Society” employed a blacklist which they published annually to shame the alleged offenders. Below the tradesmen was the “Association of Constables” who took a more active role in arresting the miscreants who offended the public morality. Finally the fourth layer consisted of informers: a network of “moral guardians” throughout the City of London, with two stewards in each parish, to gather information about moral infractions.[2] The central committee of “Original Gentlemen” collected the information with a view to passing the information to the local magistrates, so the malefactors could be prosecuted and punished. The Society would pay others to bring prosecutions, or bring prosecutions on its own account.[2]

A prominent supporter of the Society was John Gonson, Justice of the Peace and Chairman of the Quarter Sessions for the City of Westminster for 50 years in the early 18th century. He was noted for his enthusiasm for raiding brothels and for passing harsh sentences, and was depicted twice in William Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress series of paintings and engravings. In around 1770, the Society denounced Covent Garden as:
“…the great square of VENUS, and its purlieus are crowded with the practitioners of this Goddess. One would imagine that all the prostitutes in the Kingdom had decided on this neighbourhood…”[3]
The Society sought and gained the patronage of both Church and Crown: John Tillotson, the Archbishop of Canterbury between 1691 and 1694 actively encouraged the Society and his successor Thomas Tenison commended them to his bishops, while Queens Mary and Anne both issued Proclamations against Vice at the Society’s urging. The Society also had influence within the House of Lords, demonstrated by a declaration of support signed by 36 of the members. While there were undoubtedly MPs that shared the Society’s viewpoint and some which were members, there was little relevant legislation passed during the period of the Society’s activities and the Society paid little attention to the House of Commons. Jonathan Swift wrote a supportive tract in his A Project for the Advancement of Religion, and the Reformation of Manners (1709), although some detect satirical intent in the otherwise serious proposal.[citation needed]
The Society also brought lawsuits against playwrights whose plays were perceived to contain insufficient moral instruction. The new attitude to the theatre may be judged from the anti-theatre pamphlet Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage by Jeremy Collier, from 1698, who attacked the lack of moral instruction contained in contemporary plays, such as Love For Love (1695) by William Congreve and The Relapse (1696) by John Vanbrugh, signalling the end of the popularity of Restoration comedy.
The Society flourished until the 1730s, with 1,363 prosecutions in 1726-7.[4] There was a series of raids on “molly houses” (homosexual brothels) in 1725. One prominent victim of the Society was Charles Hitchen, a “thief-taker” and Under City Marshal. He acted as a “finder” of stolen merchandise, negotiating a fee for the return of the stolen items, while extorting bribes from pickpockets to prevent arrest, and leaning on the thieves to make them fence their stolen goods through him. His business may have been undermined by the success of his competitor Jonathan Wild. In 1727, Hitchen was accused of sodomitical practices, and tried for sodomy (a capital offence) and attempted sodomy. He was sentenced to a fine of 20 pounds, to be put in the pillory for one hour, and then to serve six months in prison. He was badly beaten while in the pilory, and died soon after being released from prison.
The Society was revived for a period in the 1750s, triggered by the libertine excesses of the Hellfire Club, and was recognised by George II. A later successor was William Wilberforce’s Society for the Suppression of Vice, founded following a Royal Proclamation by George III in 1787, “For the Encouragement of Piety and Virtue, and for the Preventing and Punishing of Vice, Profaneness and Immorality”.

From Wikipedia

1 ^ In 17th century English, “manners” meant “morals” rather than etiquette.
2 ^ a b c Reformation Necessary to Prevent Our Ruin, 1727, Rictor Norton.
3 ^ Burford p.192
4 ^ Commentary on Conjugal Lewdness (1727) by Daniel Defoe, from the Literary Encyclopedia.

Gay History: Henry VIII’s Buggery Act of 1533

Gay Interest, History, Political, , , ,

Buggery Act 1533

Actual text:

Forasmuch as there is not yet sufficient and condign punishment appointed and limited by the due course of the Laws of this Realm for the detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery committed with mankind of beast: It may therefore please the King’s Highness with the assent of the Lords Spiritual and the Commons of this present parliament assembled, that it may be enacted by the authority of the same, that the same offence be from henceforth ajudged Felony and that such an order and form of process therein to be used against the offenders as in cases of felony at the Common law. And that the offenders being herof convict by verdict confession or outlawry shall suffer such pains of death and losses and penalties of their good chattels debts lands tenements and hereditaments as felons do according to the Common Laws of this Realme. And that no person offending in any such offence shall be admitted to his Clergy, And that Justices of the Peace shall have power and authority within the limits of their commissions and Jurisdictions to hear and determine the said offence, as they do in the cases of other felonies. This Act to endure till the last day. of the next Parliament.”
Thomas Cromwell, House of Commons

 
Note: This act was extended through Parliament three additional times. Notable convictions under the act included: Walter Hungerford, 1st Baron Hungerford or Heytesbury in 1540; Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven in 1631; John Atherton, Bishop of Waterford in 1640; Vere Street Coterie in 1810; and Percy Jocelyn, Bishop of Clogher in 1822.

Thomas Cromwell - God's executioner
Thomas Cromwell – God’s executioner

Australian Gay Icons: Brian Patrick McGahen

Gay Interest, History, HIV/AIDS, Political, , , , ,

McGahen, Brian Patrick (1952–1990)
by Phillip Black
This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 18, (MUP), 2012
Brian Patrick McGahen (1952-1990), city councillor, social worker, gay activist and social libertarian, was born on 3 March 1952 at Camperdown, Sydney, elder son of Patrick James McGahen (d.1963), hairdresser, and his wife Monica Marie Anderson, née Pettit, both born in New South Wales. Brian was educated at De La Salle College, Ashfield, and the University of Sydney (B.Soc.Stud., 1974). At the age of 17 he opposed the Vietnam War; he refused to register for conscription and was convicted of sedition for advocating draft resistance. He joined the Eureka Youth League of Australia, the Communist Party of Australia and the Draft Resisters’ Union.
In 1974-75 McGahen was employed as a social worker and drug counsellor in the methadone program of the Health Commission of New South Wales. When the Australian Social Welfare Union was created in 1976, he was a founding member. After travelling overseas that year, in 1977 he was an organiser for the Chile Solidarity Campaign. Over the next three years he worked on projects for the State Department of Youth and Community Services. With Social Research and Evaluation Ltd in the early 1980s, he reviewed the New South Wales Family Support Services Scheme.
Sexual politics had emerged as a social force worldwide by the mid-1970s. McGahen found like-minded activists in the Sydney Gay Liberation and subsequently in the Socialist Lesbians & Male Homosexuals. In 1978 he was part of a collective that organised the National Homosexual Conference on discrimination and employment. He was chairman (director) of the Sydney Gay Mardi Gras Association from 1981 to 1984, providing the young organisation with structure, direction and vision.
Remaining a member of the CPA until 1984, McGahen stood unsuccessfully in 1980 as its candidate in the election for the lord mayor of Sydney. In 1984, having campaigned as a leader of the gay community against the Australian Labor Party State government’s failure to repeal anti-homosexual laws, he was elected (as an Independent) to the Sydney City Council for the Flinders ward. A member of various council committees, he served from 14 April 1984 until the council was dismissed on 26 March 1987. Policies were implemented to prevent discrimination against homosexuals in council services.
McGahen became a director of a Sydney home care service in 1986, hoping to extend the service to people suffering from acquired immune deficiency syndrome. He was also concerned about immigration rights for the partners of gay men. Throughout the 1980s he was a consistent advocate for a permanent gay and lesbian community centre, preferably a registered club. In 1989 he joined the Pride steering committee, became treasurer, and soon gained support to set up such a club.
In 1987 McGahen was diagnosed positive for the human immunodeficiency virus. He decided to show that his carefully considered choice of voluntary euthanasia could be achieved in a dignified manner. Never married, he died on 3 April 1990 at his Elizabeth Bay home, accompanied by five close friends, and was cremated. He had fought with determination and enthusiasm for what he believed in, often against great opposition. In 1986 a homosexual social group, Knights of the Chameleons, had made him the Empress of Sydney, and in 1992 he was inducted into the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Association Hall of Fame.
Select Bibliography

G. Wotherspoon, City of the Plain, 1991

R. Perdon (comp), Sydney’s Aldermen, 1995

Sydney Morning Herald, 17 September 1984, p 4

Sydney Star Observer, 6 April 1990, p 17

Sydney Morning Herald, 23 June 1990, p 69

McGahen papers (State Library of New South Wales)

Citation details

Phillip Black, ‘McGahen, Brian Patrick (1952–1990)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mcgahen-brian-patrick-14206/text25218, published first in hardcopy 2012, accessed online 17 September 2015.

This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 18, (MUP), 2012

  

  

An Unholy Alliance and Foxtel

Article, Gay Interest, Opinion Piece, , ,

Article from http://thevuepost.com/2015/08/10/an-unholy-alliance-and-foxtel/

We recently reported on the launch of a new anti-gay organisation in Australia, calling itself ‘Marriage Alliance.’ The organisation appears to have been set up by people affiliated with the Catholic Church, with the sole purpose of campaigning against marriage equality. We prefer to call it an unholy ‘alliance.’

As part of their efforts, Marriage Alliance produced a TV commercial alluding to some vague, horrible consequences for our society, to children, sex education in schools and our ‘rights’, would marriage equality be recognised in Australia. In our previous article we linked to the ad for your critical consideration and analysed some of the claims put forward by Marriage Alliance.
The TV commercial in question was rejected outright by Channels 7 and 10, however, it is being shown on Channel 9 and Foxtel. Marriage Alliance was quite upset by the rejections, and saw it as an affront to their ‘freedom of speech’. Meanwhile they are continuing to ban just about everyone on their Facebook page who expresses a view at odds with their hyper-inflated, and utterly unsubstantiated claims, including our Editor-at-large.
While the gay community was less than shocked by Channel 9 playing along with this new ignorant and homophobic ‘play-group’, we can’t say the same about Foxtel.
Foxtel is reportedly a good corporate citizen when it comes to the treatment of its LGBTI employees, although it does not take part in Pride in Diversity, and does not feature in AWEI’s 2015 top 20 Australian employers for LGBTI people. However, Foxtel is a proud, public corporate supporter of marriage equality. These factors make their decision to air the commercial even more baffling.
The ‘copy and paste’ Foxtel PR response to unhappy customers doesn’t help:
Hi [Name], Thanks for getting in touch. Foxtel is acutely aware that its decision to carry advertisements for the Marriage Alliance has caused hurt and distress to some our customers.
This decision was not made lightly and was made with the active involvement of gay senior executives. Foxtel has and will continue to express support for Marriage Equality.
However, as in Ireland, we believe this debate should be won by the force of the argument in favour of reform, not by refusing to engage in debate or to allow contrary opinions to be put. LGBTQI people were silenced for centuries. We do not believe that the same tactic should be used now against the opponents of Marriage Equality.
As a company Foxtel is a strong supporter of Australian Marriage Equality.
After all Foxtel’s ‘gay senior executives’ approved airing the commercial! Who are you to judge and question? We presume these are the same ‘gay senior executives’ whose jobs depends on playing the usual corporate games and whose bonuses depend of Foxtel’s profitability. Clearly Foxtel is confident that any losses from cancelled subscriptions will be offset by the ad revenue. And that’s fine, after all Foxtel is a business with the primary role of generating revenue for shareholders but, in the words of Judge Constance Harm of The Simpsons, ‘don’t spit on my cupcake and tell me it’s frosting.’
We also appreciate Foxtel, and its ‘gay senior executives’, might genuinely believe we should engage in a ‘debate’ with opponents of marriage equality, and allow ‘contrary opinions’ to be put. We believe Marriage Alliance is likely to advance the cause of marriage equality in Australia by highlighting the ridiculousness of anti-LGBTI religious bigots, however giving a significant national platform to what can only be described as ignorant, homophobic fear-mongering is another story.
Consider this for a moment: replace ‘same-sex marriage’ with the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal Australians in the commercial in question, warning Australians of the ‘many untold dangers’ of doing so – would Foxtel air such a commercial, and how would it be received in the wider community?
Foxtel is setting a dangerous precedent for any bigoted hate group that can cobble together the money for a TV campaign and assert they just wish to have a ‘debate’.
Where is the ‘debate’ in ‘opinions’ long discredited across the liberal democratic world? Where is the ‘debate’ in bigoted, unsubstantiated fear-mongering using the same old, long-demolished arguments that have been thrown around for the better part of the past two decades about marriage equality, involving children, religious freedom and the infamous slippery slope into social anarchy? And would someone please think of all the bigoted, homophobic bakers, florists and wedding photographers who may be subjected to witnessing love and happiness they disapprove of because … Jesus?!
Despite our non-theistic value system, here at The Vue Post we do support the right of people of faith to observe their respective religious beliefs. However, in a secular, liberal democracy that right cannot be unfettered. For example:
religious beliefs cannot be equated with, or override, proven observable facts and social and scientific theories; and

freedom of religion must give way when it comes into conflict with the dignity of human beings.

There must also be very limited role for religious institutions in public policy, especially in secular, liberal democracies. Religious ‘morality’ has little role to play in modern public policy and society.
Only public policy which is guided by common decency, human dignity and fairness and is informed by proven observable facts and social and scientific theories will be good public policy. Such policies will arguably also always satisfy the fundamental principles of religious beliefs, without importing the uninformed bigotry and prejudices developed and retained by their institutions over the centuries.
In a modern, liberal secular democracy we simply cannot have laws that entitle citizens and public business to discriminate against a group of their fellow citizens on the basis of so-called ‘deeply held beliefs’. Would we allow a Christian business owner to deny goods and services to Muslim or Jewish customers on the basis of their ‘deeply held beliefs’, or vice-versa? Would we allow LGBTI business owners to ask if a customer has a particular belief that considers homosexuality a sin, and then refuse to serve them on the basis of his or her ‘deeply held belief’ about such views being abhorrent and out-of-bounds in a modern, liberal secular democracy?
We think not. Society could not properly function and peacefully co-exist under such conditions.
We do support the right to an informed debate, the discussion of ideas and concepts and challenging the status quo. However, speech infused with bigotry, hatred and prejudice, such as homophobia, misogyny or racism by their very nature lack the ‘informed’ component. That’s why we don’t give a platform to people who still deny the holocaust or question the intellectual equality of people of colour and women to white men, and we would just laugh at someone who suggested the Earth is flat or the Sun revolves around us. But, sadly, ignorant homophobia is still seen as perfectly acceptable, even by an organisation that ‘prides’ itself on its support for the LGBTI community, in the name of ‘freedom of speech.’
An ‘opinion’ in the absence of evidence and facts to support it is usually just old-fashioned bigotry, hatred and prejudice, and so it is arguable that no one is entitled to an opinion, especially when the opinion in question has no foundation in facts, or has been conclusively and inarguably debunked. In our view, you are only ‘entitled’ to what you can coherently argue and factually support. For bible-based arguments against homosexuality and marriage equality that ship had long sailed. And make no mistake, Marriage Alliance is not an ‘independent alliance.’ It has deep and undeniable connections to the Catholic Church through every single person who has been publicly associated with the organisation.
Foxtel, and Channel 9, are misguided. They are not contributing to a ‘debate’ by showing the commercial. The ‘debate’ has been over for quite a while now. We are now in a war of attrition on the subject of marriage equality and Foxtel, and Channel 9, just awarded a free-kick to the opposition. A bigoted, homophobic and ignorant opposition, driven by extremist religious ideology which at its heart is opposed to the very existence of the LGBTI community.
Consequently, we cannot accept the explanation given by Foxtel for airing the Marriage Alliance commercial. Doing so is inexcusable, and their ‘freedom of speech’ argument in defending their actions rings as hollow, and intellectually and morally bankrupt, as the Marriage Alliance commercial.
The same applies equally to Channel 9. But at least the LGBTI community is not paying for the privilege of watching Channel 9, unlike with Foxtel’s expensive, subscription-based service, only to be verbally assaulted by a bigoted anti-LGBTI message in the safety of their own home, by a service they pay for.

Another Coming Out Story!

Article, Autobiography, biography, Gay Interest, History, , , , ,

“Life’s not worth a damn till you can shout out – I am what I am!”
Gloria Gaynor – I am What I Am

There is nothing worse than being 9 years-old in the 1960s, knowing that you are different to all the other boys around you, and not knowing how or why, or even having a word to describe it. I was just “Different”!

My father had a word for it though..poofter, though I could never quite work out who or what these poofter people were…perhaps from a country I hadn’t heard of…maybe! In the car one day with dad in the passenger seat, and Uncle Peter…a mate of dads…driving. There was a guy walking along the footpath in a pink shirt. My fathers window was quickly opened, and in unison both father and uncle screamed “POOFTER” out the window. On observing the guy through the back seat window…I could see nothing to help me define that word! However, I have a word to describe my father! It came into my vocabulary shortly after that age. Cunt! As you can already see…this was not a family who would facilitate…or appreciate…my coming out as gay!

Now let me see…what qualities singled me out as “Different”; playing with the girls in the school yard for starters. And unlike the boys, they accepted me into their girls clique with no recrimination or name-calling. I was an excellent skip-roper, and picked up the intricacies of French skipping (done with elastic) very quickly. It could have been my playing with dolls, which my mother actually bought for me…secretly of course! Or my penchant for hiding away in quiet corners and reading books…or my total dislike of sports…my keen eye for fashionable ladies wear…my creative science fiction inspired composition (essay) writing… my artistic streak…my perchant for playing “dress up” in my mothers clothes (which perhaps lead to the evolution of my gutter drag persona…Cleo…in the 1980s)…even my over-active imagination all kept me apart from the other boys I knew. At the beach I was attracted to…and stared at…guys in Speedo swimwear. This was the era of nylon Speedo briefs, and the young men hung very nicely out of them, to say the least. Even the nylon briefs with a “modesty panel” across the front did nothing to hide their manly virtues, as the panels tended to ride up, further emphasising their manliness! And I tore adverts for men’s underwear or photos of lifesavers or any other scantily dressed males out of magazines and newspapers. These adverts, for underwear such as Jockey y-fronts, or Bonds horizontal fly s’port briefs showed no real bulges…but I could imagine them, so to me they were erotic (and now my underwear fetish). I imagined a bulge on the lycra-clad comic strips heroes of the time…The Phantom, Superman, and Batman and Robin.

I also had my first orgasm at 9…and that was something I wasn’t prepared for. I can remember it like it was yesterday. I wasn’t even looking at anything that I fancied…just sitting class, gazing out a window. An erection…which I knew nothing about…just happened. Slightly moving backwards and forwards produced this pleasing sensation…and within seconds I blew. Confusion reigned, as it was such an unexpected occasion. I never mentioned it to anyone, though there was a thorough examination of my cock at bath time to make sure everything was okay. It was! I also started growing pubic hair, which I used to pull out as quickly as it appeared as I was embarrassed by its growth. A discreet viewing of the other boys in the change room revealed no hair on them, so this was obviously a freakish thing happening just to me. My parents weren’t great with the birds and the bees stuff! However, it must have clicked with them that something was going on…perhaps a discolouration in my Jockeys…or the fact that I learnt to masturbate by rolling onto my stomach, and rubbing my cock on the sheet until I came, thus unknowingly creating stiff patches on the sheets…may have been a hint that puberty had started. Nothing like a Christian sex pamphlet discreetly left by the bedside to educate you in the dynamics of sex. I was horrified! No wonder I was confused! Thank heaven for my little stash of adverts!

So I guess I just tucked all my “Different” away. After leaving school, and starting work, I hung out with a large group of people, so I came into contact with other gay guys who were included in our group, and as with many other things in my life, I accepted them on face value. However, they were nearly all in the display areas of Grace Brothers (in Roselands shopping centre), and were very effete…something I couldn’t relate to, so I guess it sort of added to the confusion I was already going through. If gay=effete…then I mustn’t be gay. It seemed logical at the time, especially with no other role models to help guide me through the confusion. So I went through the 70s dating girls, though never making sexual advances to them. It wasn’t even something I considered doing. The girls, in turn, loved going out with me because they felt safe, and knew I wouldn’t go in for the quick grope…and I often helped them buy their clothes. Jo was a girl I used to date who was kind of my “beard” (a term used to describe girls who used to act as girlfriends to stop family from asking difficult questions). She was quite a beautiful girl and I think my old man thought she was a potential marriage mate for me. She did try to seduce me one night, but when I fought off her advances…things must have clicked with her.

The next thing I know, she’s taken me out to Oxford Street in Darlinghurst, pointing out all the gay venues to me and taking me to a gay coffee lounge called “Nana’s” in Bourke St (which became a very popular Vietnamese restaurant in the 80s) where I was introduced to the owner, Nana, and his partner Cupcake.

Author in thev1970s on a solo vacation to Magnetic Island.

Yet there was one occasion when something almost happened. I would have been about 17, and worked for a menswear company at Roselands called E.L. Downes. There was a Clark Rubber store on the lower ground floor, and the manager there, named Barry, who was quite a handsome older man, served me on several occasions. I used to wave as I passed the store, and he used to sit next to me on the bus after work, as we both lived in Kogarah, though on opposite sides of the railway line. As I passed the store one lunchtime, he grabbed me and asked if I would like to go out with him. Without even a blink, I said yes! Told my workmates, and they just encouraged me…and it just didn’t dawn on me that obviously THEY knew I was gay! Talk about naive! Anyway, that weekend I met him at the station…at this time I was living with just my father (my mother left home in 1965), and there was no way I was telling him I was going out with a guy…and we cabbed it into The Cross to this VERY ritzy restaurant called “Mrs Beeton’s Tent”. I’d never been to such a sophisticated…and expensive… place, so was a bit dazzled by it all. Anyway, we got a cab to go home, and he was holding my hand in the back seat. All I could think was…what’s going to happen from here…what am I expected to do! If he asks me home, I’ll go…just to see what happens! The cab got back to Kogarah, and dropped us off at a small park in the main street. He grabbed me by the arm, and started pulling me towards the toilet block, telling me he couldn’t take me home, as he lived with his mother! A toilet block for my first sexual experience with a guy was NOT the romantic experience I was expecting, so broke his grip, said “my father’s expecting me home!” and fled up the street. Missed opportunities! Oh well, such is the life of the shy and naive! Not surprisingly, Barry never spoke to me again, and caught a later bus home from that time on.. When I think about it now, I just shake my head. Considering how outrageous I was to become…I can’t believe my actions that night!

Just after this I started renting with friends in Granville. It was around this time that I started buying bits and pieces of gay porn, and buying “Campaign” newspaper (it became a magazine at a later date). One old closeted gay guy I worked with at Pellegrini & Co knew I was gay, and he evidently wasn’t the only one. My flatmates took me to a party at the home of two gay guys they knew…John & Ray. They had me sussed out in the blink of an eye, but I ignored their innuendo and sly comments and continued to deny it. My flatmates found out by mistake when I went to Campbelltown in the latter half of the 70s to help my step-brothers (he also later turned out to be gay) wife who had had a stroke. I asked my housemates to bring up some clothes for me as I was staying a while, and…much to my horror, and despite a phone plea to ignore the magazines in the drawer (like that was going to happen!)…they unearthed my stash of gay porn mags, and actually kept hush about it until after I came out. In the interim, I had sex with one girl…Veronica…a friend of my female housemate, and who had a young daughter who actually idolised me…just to make sure I wasn’t straight!After having to fantasize about a man to get to orgasm with her, I think the dye was pretty well set…though Barry may have seen Kharma at work, as I shouted her a very expensive meal at the Millionaires Club in Darlinghurst on our first date, and she said no to sex as she wasn’t on the pill…that came after our second date. Yet I still didn’t come out, despite knowing for sure.

Me just before leaving for Melbourne at the Capitan Torres restaurant in Sydney circa 1978

However, circumstances were about to present me with the window of opportunityI needed, and the wherewithal to come crashing out of my closet!

In late 1978 my father committed suicide in bushland near his home in Vincentia, on the NSW south coast.. I am not going to go into details of life with my father, but suffice it to say it was tense. I cried a few crocodile tears, then clicked my heels and rejoiced. My sense of freedom at last was overwhelming! I don’t know what I would have done if this situation hadn’t presented itself. I could never have openly come out to him, as the repercussions could have been dire. As it was, I was moving further and further away…in a relationship sense…from all my family (I am not going into the complexities here, but…oh boy!) so it is possible that to live my own life, and be who I had to be, I would have cut them all off earlier than I did…or maybe Melbourne would have happened anyway, irrespective of anything, and I would just have cut them out of my life. I guess the simple fact was that I was an outcast…the black sheep of my family. One way or another…I really didn’t give a fuck!

In the middle of 1980, the retail company I worked for – Pellegrini & Co Pty Ltd – asked me if I would be interested in going to Melbourne and troubleshooting two stores they had down there. I jumped at the chance. So I flew to Melbourne, set up house in Cumming St, West Brunswick, and started to set in motion the cogs that would change my life, starting a whole new phase that would take me in directions I could never have imagined.

Now, this was no easy matter. Cogs can be complicated mechanisms. The two stores – one in the Myer Centre and one in Hardware Street were in a mess, and by the time Christmas 1980 rolled around, I had not even started having any social life, let alone coming out and banging my way through Melbourne! That was to come! After spending that Christmas and Boxing Day on my own with a bottle of whisky, I decided I needed to do something about it! But what? I went through the classifieds and social group listings in the gay press, mentally started ticking or crossing them out, then going through a process of elimination with the ticked ones, according to where I thought I might or might not fit in. One group seemed to stand out – Acceptance Gay Catholics. I knew not only all the ins and outs of the Catholic Church…but I managed businesses for a Catholic retailer. Seemed like a match made in heaven, so to speak! So I made a phone call, found out whose home the next First Friday Mass was held at, and the next First Friday found me heading out to suburbia to Max’s house for my first gay outing. I told no one I was not yet out, and not being from Melbourne they wouldn’t know if I was or not. Right up to the day I left Melbourne no one I knew was any the wiser.

So the guys all started piling in…and not exactly a pack of spunks, though a couple of lookers amongst them. Turns out the Servite Fathers conducted the masses for them. Not being under the jurisdiction of the local bishop, they were free to do what they liked.

A clone is born…Cumming St West Brunswick 1981.

After the mass there was a meal, then we hit Melbourne for a night out. My first gay club…The University Club in Swanston St. It was gay there every Friday and Saturday night. Started dancing with the guys from the group, and decided to play it safe by dancing with, then going home with, one of the older, plainer guys. At the grand age of 25 I was about to have my first gay sexual experience. It wasn’t the bells, whistles and fireworks I was expecting! In fact…it was a total dud!

Frank, naturally thrilled to bits to have a quite handsome bit of fluff come on to him (actually he made the first move – on the dancefloor! I wasn’t experienced enough to know that if you weren’t really interested, you said a polite “no thanks” and moved onto the next). I didn’t want to seem rude, so said yes when he invited me home, despite fancying a couple of the younger guys more. A steep learning curve here! So, Frank had a car and offered me a night at his place. I can’t remember where he lived now, but it was quite a drive out of the Melbourne CBD. No sooner was I in the car than he had my cock out, and out it remained all the way to his place, despite several near misses due to his…distraction! I often wonder what other drivers thought as Frank’s head disappeared from sight at every red light! Once we got indoors, I decided the ball was in his court and I would leave it up to him to drive proceedings. He assumed I was a young slut and would know how all the mechanisms of gay sex unfolded. Frank was also a bit old and stale, and not the most sexually adventurous person to go home with. From my perspective, I wouldn’t even be leaving the starters blocks with this one. Not an auspicious beginning to my gay sex life, having held myself back for so long. The next morning, it was breakfast, then finding out that I would be getting myself back into the city…on a train. Well, fuck you too, Frank!

At an Acceptance function just prior to returning to Sydney. Fred Diamond (left), Max (Centre) and me.

I started attending not just the First Friday Masses, but Sunday Evening masses as well, held in the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in North Fitzroy, and any of the other Acceptance social occasions that cropped up on the calendar. Thankfully, Frank attended pretty well none of these with any regularity, so it was quite a long time before I ran into him again. In the interim, I found out from Fred – we’ll get to Fred shortly – that he and the other young guys at the University Club that night were quite surprised to see me go home with him. Learn to say no is the first rule of survival on the gay scene!. So over the next few months I met the other members of Acceptance through the masses, or parties in their homes, and get-togethers in a few local eateries, and gay venues such as The Laird Hotel in Collingwood, Smarties Nightclub in North Melbourne, and Pokies, a Sunday night drag venue in St Kilda. My evil plan was working…I was starting to lead a gay life!

In the meantime, I wanted the world to know I was gay. I wrote to my ex-Granville flatmates and ‘fessed up…only to find out that they had known since the night they packed my luggage for Campbelltown. They had met my mother, who I had only just been reunited with prior to coming to Melbourne. On a visit to see her, they notified me by mail, they had accidentally outed me, thinking that I had notified her at the same time as them! They also informed me that she already suspected that I was gay, though she never brought the subject up with me. Years later, back in Sydney, I made no effort to hide my sexuality from her, though on a mother/son lunch in the city one day, she informed me that she blamed herself for it. It became a moot point between us, and she has never really reconciled herself to it. Tough shit! I wasn’t taking a step back for anyone!

After my rather unsettling encounter with Frank, where nothing more exciting than some oral happened, things went from bad to worse. I fell in love with Fred, who edited the Acceptance newsletter, and did a gossip column under the pseudonym of Jodi A Frean. Fred and I had a difficult sex life for the 6 months we were together, and being the innocent I was, I never picked up on the signals about his sexuality. Firstly, he was into light S&M…at least I knew that was, thanks to reading “The Joy Of Gay Sex” before venturing into the Gay void…and secondly…he was a beat quean! He, Danny (who was the second man to fuck me, and went to it like a rabbit on heat) and Jim (who gave me a handjob in the shower, after a swim at a beach house we went to for an overnight stay) were the only three Acceptance members I got off with. Another, Tony, who I should have been more attuned to, as he was more my type, had a crush on me, which I suspected, but unfortunately never followed up on.

At a Mass at my flat in West Brunswich, a very handsome man…Barry (I know…the same names seem to keep cropping up in my life)…caught my eye. He stayed after everyone else left. We chatted, he helped clean up, we drank some more wine, and ended up in the bedroom, where he had the great distinction of being the first man to fuck me. The sheer eroticism and intensity of getting fucked blew my mind! I took to it like a duck to water, and never looked back!

So, that was the start of my sex life. The next thing to do was to expand my horizons. A lot of thought went into it…I wasn’t a risk-taker so the beats held no appeal, no did the shadowy world of the sauna. I had been…unnecessarily… steeling and prodding myself to go to a nightclub in St Kilda called “Mandate”. It was to be another life-changing experience! I was terrified when I ventured there for the first time. It was unlike any nightclub I had been to before in that it didn’t have an entry where you just walked in. The door was closed, so I went and stood on the oppisite side of the street to see what was going on. It didn’t take long for it to dawn on me that, after watching several patrons arrive, that one knocked to gain entry. A security measure, obviously. So, over I go, knock on the door to find that a tiny window in the door opened, and I was being scrutinised by a drag queen. In my clone gear I obviously passed muster, as the door opened, I paid my entry, and up the stairs I went (NOTE: it was a good deal later that I found out that there were also under-stairs activities…though not my scene).

With Glenn W, the Sydney guy, at an Acceptance function. I foolishly allowed him to talk me into returning to Sydney…a mistake for both of us!

Here, I entered a world of men, and music, that set my heart blazing. There was a bar area to the left of the stairs, to the right was a communal area with a barred cruising area surrounding it, and to the rear was a copper dance floor that was to be pretty well my sole obsession over many, nany visits there. I loved Mandate. I loved its masculinity,  its testosterone-charged atmosphere, the pure maleness of it. If I had to imagine Nirvana in these early coming out days, Mandate was it and in the not too-distant future, the Midnight Shift in Sydney when I returned to my roots. I had my first pick-ups there, had my first public blow-job on the edge of the dance floor, met some wonderful men including a man called Brian Pryke who I had the most esoteric sexual experience with (and communicated with for a while after returning to Sin City), and some of my worst sexual experiences including a Dutch pilot who had the most disgusting dose of smegma I have ever encountered, and left me with the gift of anal warts. We live and learn! At Mandate I was introduced to dance floor filling icons such as Lime, Phyllis Nelson, Carol Jiani, 202 Machine, Shirley Lites, Tantra, KC and the Sunshine Band, Patrick Cowley, Sylvester, Divine, Paul Parker, Seventh Avenue, Peter Griffin, Hall & Oates, and many other artists who started my ongoing love for dance music. The wonderful nights I had in Mandate will live in my memory forever.

I continued my work and socialising with Acceptance (including some cross-denominational “spiritual shenanjgans” with a member of Angays (the Anglican version of Acceptance) until I returned to Sydney. They gave me a wonderful set of friends that kept me ocvupied constantly, and a rather frantic social life. I think that what disturbed me the most about being an out gay man in a Catholic social group was the “subtle” stigmatisation that we just seemed to accept. Though the Servite Fathers, who celebrated our home masses, were unequivocal in their support for the gay community, the particularly internalised discrimination and alienation that was integral within the Catholic church itself,  seemed to be tolerated more so than finding ways to support us. I always felt that much of the support came more from obligation than caring and understanding.

And while talking of the Servite Fathers, I must relate a home mass story here. First Friday Masses were shared amongst the various homes of Acceotance members. When I volunteered my flat in West Brunswick for one, I found I faced a dilemma. Confessions before mass were usually held in a private room, and the only one in my flat was the bedroom. The entire back of my bedroom door was covered in pictures of men in various poses and states of undress…mainly naked…and erect! In my wisdom, I decided that this was not an appropriate thing to have on display in a room where gay men were confessing their sins. Rather than remove all the pictures, I decided to tape a large sheet of brown paper over them.  Evidently during one of the confessions, the tape gave way, causing the paper to fall to the floor. Evidently there was a brief pause in the confession as the priest eyed off the door full of naked males, then continued on as if nothing had happened. The exposition was the cause of much hilarity for the rest of the night, with the priest commenting on my “good taste in art” as he departed.

The only other churches that catered to us were St Francis in Lonsdale St, and Holy Trinity Church in North Fitzroy. And even then we could only attend masses at certain times on Sundays. It felt very alienating, and was one of the reasons for me joining the Gay Rights Lobby when I returned to Sydney. For me personally, well….I was an Athiest disguised as a Catholic…just to secure myself a social life, though going through the actions of being a Catholic, and arguing stronly against the banality of much of Catholic belief and doctrine at every opportunity, which caused me no qualms. Only once was I dressed down regarding my staunchly held opinions, and I was stronly supported by the group I was with, as they did not believe in blind faith. There is hope yet in the world.

I went on to become Secretary on the Acceptance committee, and also a member of their social activities sub-committee. But I was about to make a really fucked-up decision that was about to yet again change my life’s direction.

It was at an Acceptance barbecue that I was to meet Glenn W, who was visiting Melbourne, and lived in Waverton in Sydney. It was a period where the Pellegrini head office in Sydney were quietly hassling for my return. Glenn quite swept me off my feet, and after several months of correspondence and with a position as assistant to the General Manager offered to me back in Sydney I rather foolishly decided to return.

So ended my wonderful, unforgettable life in Melbourne. Plans were afoot for a massed goodbye for me at Tullamarine, but to avoid what would have been a very tearful occasion, I quietly flew out the night before.

Glenn W turned out to be a psychopath! Another disastrous love encounter! Would I never learn! But that is a Sydney story! As is the early days of HIV, already being hinted at in the Melbourne gay press. Hard times ahead…and just as I was starting to enjoy the life that “coming out” was presenting to me. The Sydney story was about to begin!

Tim Alderman

(C) 2015