GT‘s December (2007) edition was its two hundred and fiftieth ‘ that’Sean awful lot of pages ‘ and editors. Not to mention sub-editors, art-editors, and heaven knows what else. It’s been on the go for more than twenty years. That is worth (genuinely) celebrating, especially as GT was a very useful addition to the Gay press in the mid-1980s. And there was a Gay press. Journals were being produced in nearly every town of any size on a regular, mostly monthly, basis. They were largely run on co-operative lines, largely non-profit making, being produced because a Gay press ought to have been produced. There was a culture of the rolling up of sleeves to produce punchy and provocative material. The short-lived, London-based Gay Noise was one such. Belfast’s Gay Star, and in particular upstart were based on Gay Noise‘s strictly non-deferential style, (if not on its somewhat ‘PC’ outlook). Gay Noise also attempted to resurrect the spirit of GLF’s1 Come Together publication. Come Together was produced by GLF in different places. Mostly large cities, there were just more people available to do the dull bits as well as the writing. Gay News arose out of the fact that Come Together dissipated through lack of energy or commitment on the part of some groups (GLF waSean anti-organisation, ranging from anarchists to Maoists to Tories. Getting them in the same room, much less working on the same project waSean exercise in diplomacy. GLF couldn’t really last ‘ except in disguise NIGRA2 is GLF in collar’n’tie. GN was London-based, but encouraged other magazines, it was a co-operative and generally supported CHE3. More to the point, it appeared on a regular basis, was well written, and was not London, or ‘scene’ fixated.Some people (increasingly, it seemed) disliked this situation. After ten years existence, during which it became something of an institution, and was involved in the notorious ‘blasphemous libel’ case, things came to a head. There were a number of scandalSeand schisms. The editor, Denis Lemon, sold the publication, (which he did not own) to a chap who did not have the money to buy it. Prior to that a number of the staff had walked out. They argued that there were ‘too many’ lesbians on the writing staff (one: with about half a dozen ‘stringers’). They also insisted that the punters did not like ‘politics’ (this was before ‘PC’ was invented). They flounced off (the only phrase for it) and set up Gay Reporter, which rarely reported anything, and then it was only ‘scene’ events along the London Underground Victoria and Northern lines.GR shrivelled and died in a matter of months. GN was revived as a pale but uninteresting shadow of itself – complete with glossy cover – featuring, as Gay Star‘s ‘trypesetter’ as she described herself, Ann Cleave, put it “male tarts”. It ran into the ground and was sold to the combine that produced a range of glossy male porn magazines. It had taken in the waifSeand strays from GN and GR, and produced GT. It proudly carried Incorporating Gay News on its masthead for a long time. Boasting about having absorbed the ‘legendary’ GN in edition No. 100. It was mentioned again in edition 150. Then masthead was re-designed and references to GN disappeared.Why, one wonders? Is this a triumph for the mindless consumerism exemplified by Gay Reporter? If we had been slightly less ‘consumerist’ in Thatcher’s heyday we might not now be dependent on the People’s Republic of China. For every household item you care to think of. What does Gay Times actually stand for – other than being part of the Stonewall / New Labour nexus?upstart and Gay Times are the same age ‘ we’ve had somewhat different histories.Se n McGouran
1 The Gay Liberation Front – it was very widespread – from London to Derry.2 The Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association – named in emulation of the NI Civil Rights Association – still out there fighting.3 The Committee, then Campaign for Homosexual Equality – it’s still campaigning – see www.gaymonitor.co.uk.
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Gay Rights: From Revolution to Reflection
Two veteran voices of the British and Northern Irish centre-right – Matthew Parris and Jeff Dudgeon – have spoken almost in concert this September, their arguments converging around the same theme: the gay rights movement has travelled far, but it must now tread carefully.
Parris, writing in The Spectator (26 September), recalls the grim days of the Conservative Group for Homosexual Equality – furtive meetings in basement rooms, warm white wine, and whispered solidarity. He remembers the sniggers at the very word “homosexual” and the political tightrope between not lying and not declaring. Yet his story is also one of rapid transformation: a John Major government lowering the age of consent, an electorate largely indifferent by the 1990s, and today’s Parliament with over 9% of its members openly gay. What was once unthinkable is now embedded in public life.
But Parris insists this victory brings responsibility. He rejects the notion that “anything goes”, warning that the respect so painstakingly won could be fragile. Pride’s inflatable phalluses and a culture of loveless gratification, he argues, risk alienating a wider public that has granted tolerance based on privacy and moderation. He is wary of conflating gay and trans causes, not out of hostility but because, as he puts it, “women have rights too” and because pushing too far risks awakening dormant opposition. History, he reminds us, does not travel in straight lines: “We gays ask for respect. We need to show it, too.”
Jeff Dudgeon, writing separately, strikes a similar but sharper note. A veteran Ulster Unionist and himself a pioneer in the decriminalisation struggle in Northern Ireland, he points out that gay issues no longer command political attention. The sheer representation of LGBT MPs in Westminster – three times their proportion in the population – is itself proof that discrimination has collapsed. But the silence around this fact, he suggests, is telling. If gay men and women are already secure in law and in politics, why the continual expansion of the LGBT+ agenda? For Dudgeon, the trans debate has filled the vacuum, releasing a simmering section of the public “who don’t want homosexuality advanced as their best, as the BBC would like.”
Both men, therefore, issue the same warning in different registers. Gains are real and deep, but they are neither permanent nor beyond challenge. Hubris – whether in sexual libertinism, overreach on identity politics, or the insistence that “history is on our side” – risks provoking a backlash.
Parris couches this as conservatism in its truest sense: respectability, restraint, continuity with the wider moral codes of society. Dudgeon voices it as political realism: if gay people are already integrated, then overstating their marginalisation may exhaust public patience.
Together, they represent a generational shift in tone. The age of pleading for equality is over. The question now is how to live with it – and how not to lose it.
Links:
A Sight on You (Despues de verte) – Gay Movie Review
‘A Sight on You’
‘A Sight on You’ is a quietly intense indie drama that feels like a whispered secret. With a careful hand and a subtle touch, it delves into the tangled emotions between two estranged brothers—Tim (Lluís Febrer) and Julio (Xavier Batista)—who reunite after a year apart. What starts as tentative reconnecting gradually shifts into something darker and more psychologically charged.
The story is straightforward on the surface: Tim welcomes Julio back into his life after a long silence. But beneath that simplicity lies palpable tension—more communicated through lingering looks and silence than words. Things take a haunting turn after Tim makes a mysterious discovery one night. The film keeps the details under wraps at first, but it casts a long, shadowy pall over everything that follows.
What makes ‘A Sight on You’ stand out is its atmospheric approach. Director [Name] employs muted, natural lighting and long, static shots that build a creeping sense
of unease and intimacy. The house where they stay becomes a quiet battlefield, filled with unspoken truths lingering like dust in the air.
The film’s greatest strength lies in its ambiguity. The true nature of Tim’s discovery unfolds slowly, pushing viewers to question what’s real, what’s remembered, and what’s hidden beneath the surface of family bonds. It’s reminiscent of films like *The Invitation* or *Martha Marcy May Marlene*, where the threat isn’t always external but rooted in the past, in the mind, or the people closest to you.
*A Sight on You* isn’t for everyone—it’s slow, introspective, and sometimes frustratingly opaque. But if you’re willing to lean into its ambiguity and emotional subtlety, it becomes a haunting, memorable experience.
Verdict:
A slow-burning family mystery with psychological depths, *A Sight on You* sticks with you long after the credits roll. Anchored by compelling performances and a chillingly understated twist, it leaves more questions than answers—and that’s what makes it unforgettable.
Links:
Beyond The Law by Charles Upchurch – Gay Book Review
This book was reviewed in the North Philly Notes in November 2021. This review is comprehensive, as is the book, so I am reprinting the review to remind our readers of this history we have lived through, and why it is so important that we monitor government, both local and national, to ensure we do not loose all the gains we have made.
…
This week in North Philly Notes, Charles Upchurch, author of “Beyond the Law,” writes about the first public debate in the Commons over the ethics of punishing sex between men.
The first sustained debate in the British Parliament (and likely in any parliament anywhere) over the ethics of punishing sex between men occurred 180 years ago and no one has remembered it—at least until now. That’s the premise of “Beyond the Law,” which explains how and why this happened. Most historians think this time frame is far too early for anything like this to have occurred, since it is too early for modern sexual identities to have formed, let alone for there to have been a political effort organized around them. But a modern homosexual identity is not needed to have an ethical objection to the execution of individuals for a private consensual act, which is what sodomy was in some cases. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, the law allowed for such executions. While many upper- and middle-class men did publicly rail against sodomy as “the worst of crimes” and supported the executions, others, drawing on enlightenment philosophy or more latitudinarian religious ideas, thought such executions were more immoral, perhaps far more immoral, than the acts themselves. These men included Lord John Russell, leader of the Whig majority in the House of Commons, who eventually argued against executions for sodomy in 1841, even as he kept the government at a distance from the private member’s bill that was the focus of the reform effort.
Russell, like almost every other politician of his era, did not want to publicly speak about sex between men, but broader events were forcing him and the government to do so. That was because the death penalty was being eliminated for hundreds of crimes. Up to the start of the nineteenth century, it was the terror of the gallows that was to scare individuals away from committing crime. Theft of even small amounts might be punished with death, since there had previously been only minimal systems for policing or imprisonment. But that policing and incarceration infrastructure was created in the early nineteenth century, and the number of capital crimes tumbled, so that by the end of the 1830s there were only slightly more than a dozen. Those capital crimes included murder, attempted murder, treason, piracy, rape, a few minor crimes that were missed by previous reform legislation, and sodomy, which could be a private consensual act. With the death penalty now gone for almost everything else, the anomaly of retaining it for sodomy was glaring for many. But almost no man wanted to be the person who stood up on the floor of the House of Commons to argue for the lessening of the penalties for sex between men, knowing that some of the most evangelical members of that body would likely denounce them for defending immorality (as did eventually happen).
The reform effort did happen, though, and two exceptional men stepped forward to shepherd the bill through the Commons in a process that played out over the better part of a year. They had the prestige of Jeremy Bentham behind them since, contrary to what has been written by other scholars, Bentham published some of his arguments against the punishment of sex between men in his lifetime. He did so in a way that would likely only be understood by legal experts, but those were exactly the people who were drafting the recommendations to parliament on which laws to amend, and which ones to retain without alterations. Bentham’s ideas of legal reform were shaping the entire process of eliminating the death penalty within the English criminal law, and his arguments against punishing sex between men in general, let alone executing men for a private consensual act, were known to the men shaping the reform.
Reasoned arguments were not enough to motivate a man to sponsor such a bill, to risk his reputation, and to speak publicly against such an injustice. It can be proven that both Jeremy Bentham and Lord John Russell agreed with this reform, but neither man would publicly champion it. A judge at the time privately told Russell that he was “convinced that the only reason why the punishment of death has been retained in this case is the difficulty of finding any one hardy enough to undertake what might be represented as the defense of such a crime.” And that brings us to the most remarkable discovery in ‘Beyond the Law’, because the two men who were brave enough to do this were inspired to act not primarily through reasoned arguments, but through the emotional and affective bonds of family. Fitzroy Kelly, a newly elected Tory MP, grew up in economic hardship, only saved from poverty through the work of his mother, the novelist Isabella Kelly. The Kelly family was helped repeatedly by the gothic novelist Matthew Gregory Lewis, whose sexual interest in men was remarked on at the time. Moreover, William Kelly, Isabella’s son and Fitzroy’s brother, has been identified by scholars at least since the 1930s as Matthew’s strongest emotional attachment. Matthew’s sister was also married to the brother of the other co-sponsor of the 1840 and 1841 legislation, the lawyer and abolitionist Steven Lushington. It was Lushington, also, more than a decade before, who had worked with Lady Byron during her separation from Lord Byron, and it was Lushington who had raised the threat of accusing Byron of committing sodomy within his marriage as leverage in the separation proceedings. This web of family connections, cemented by love more than sex, is dense, convoluted, and still in significant parts obscure and unrecoverable. Nevertheless, ‘Beyond the Law’ recounts much of it, and tells a story wholly different from anything previously recovered for the early nineteenth century. It pieces together many public and private aspects of the first debates in the nineteenth century over the ethics of punishing sex between men.
Links:
An Openly Gay Man
Derek Byrne
Academic & Journalist
Irish Times.
Thu, Apr 14, 2022.
As an openly gay man, I am, of course, appalled at the idea that someone like me can be violently attacked on the street as an expression of vicious homophobia.
The recent horrific attack on a young gay man leaving the George bar in Dublin during the early hours of last Sunday morning left me wondering if it is indicative of a growing sense of resentment among some heterosexual men in Irish society towards their homosexual counterparts.
While there is admittedly a dearth of empirical evidence to support my thesis, even Tánaiste Leo Varadkar recently pointed to a growing sense of worry among the gay community in relation to a perceived increase in homophobic verbal abuse and physical assaults on our streets.
Research carried out by the Rainbow Project in Belfast between 2017 and 2019 highlighted a significant rise in homophobic attacks in Northern Ireland during this period from 163 to 281. However, it is understood that most homophobic attacks are not reported to the PSNI and, as a result, these figures are lower than actual incidents.
The research also showed that 150 of the attacks during 2019 were violent in nature. While it would not be wise to compare the attitudes towards the LGBT community in Northern Ireland, which had marriage equality thrust upon it by the Westminster government rather than by popular consent, it would be wise to acknowledge that homophobia remains a significant public health concern on this island.
An article published in the Journal of Homosexuality in January 2010, which explored heterosexual men’s anger towards male homosexuality, suggests that sexual prejudice most likely facilitates anti-gay aggression in men who are exposed to intimate or sexual interactions between two men. The article suggests that this supposition is consistent with the view that sexual prejudice and anti-gay aggression function to enforce gender and societal norms.
This would support the view that some heterosexual men in Irish society are feeling resentful at the increased visibility of openly gay men on the streets, in the media, online and occupying traditionally heterosexual normative roles; the office of the taoiseach and now Tánaiste by Leo Varadkar being a case in point.
It is clear that what we need is a greater understanding of how heterosexual men are responding to the liberation in recent years of homosexual lifestyles in Ireland. It is foolish to think that legislation alone changes attitudes, it doesn’t, it merely sets a standard for the kind of society we aspire to be. Changing attitudes can take much longer – generations in fact – and I would argue that what we are witnessing at the moment is evidence of the conflict that emerges as a result in the gap between legislation and the adjustment of attitudes regarding LGBT issues.
While advances in sexual tolerance have been hard won in Ireland, it could be argued that many of those who were not in favour of marriage equality, for example, may be feeling marginalised in a diverse modern Ireland. Far from ignoring and condemning these people, we would do well to understand them and to listen to their concerns so that we can respond to them with authority and, yes, compassion. This, I would argue, is equality in action.
Tolerance is a funny thing in that it has its limits. When we ask people to grant us equality it can come with a price tag. This price is an understanding that we will ultimately assimilate, not stand out in the crowd, not rock the boat too hard and not challenge gender and societal norms too much.
If the LGBT community are guilty of one thing, it is complacency and a false sense of security that the war has been won.
It is clear from the recent spate of horrific violence towards gay men that while we have come so far in Irish society, we are a long way from Kansas yet.Violence in all its forms must be vilified at every turn. Homophobic violence in particular assaults the very nature of our society in Ireland which in recent years has striven to be a beacon of inclusivity and diversity.
However, espousing these principles can also mean that we must constantly evaluate our values and, at times, hear those who may not agree with us and listen to those who may even wish us harm.
A truly equal society will address violence not only through condemnation but with an understanding that we may all be equal but we are definitely not the same.
Derek Byrne’s article was triggered by two recent unrelated events in Dublin and Sligo on both of which the (Irish) & (London) Times report today…
Internal Link
A CENTURY AND MORE OF BELFAST GAY LIFE
A CENTURY AND MORE OF BELFAST GAY LIFE – Northern Ireland’s gay geography, history and people: 1903-2021
According to Roger Casement’s diaries, of 1903 and 1910-11, the gay cruising areas in Belfast were at the Albert Clock probably around the Customs House toilet, Botanic Gardens, Ormeau Park, and the Giants Ring. Cottaging went on in Victoria Square in an elegant wrought iron edifice (which was still operating in the 1960s and is now in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum) and at the Gasworks. Only the Giants Ring remains popular, although policed.
From then until after the 2nd World War, the GNR station in Great Victoria Street and Dubarry’s bar at the docks were recognised haunts, the latter, as in other cities, being shared with prostitutes. According to one old-timer, a teenager in 1941, the cottages were particularly busy the morning after the big German air raid in Belfast city centre, only yards from the smouldering rubble of High Street and Bridge Street.
He also recalled, after the raids, special difficulty in the fields in East Belfast, where he used to go regularly with a soldier friend. They were filled instead with people who were sleeping out of doors to avoid the bombing. The blackout from 1939, and the arrival from 1943-4 of 100,000 American troops in Northern Ireland had a huge impact and a special place in gay memories.
The Royal Avenue (RA) Bar in Rosemary Street (the hotel’s public bar, opposite the Red Barn pub) as portrayed in Maurice Leitch’s fine 1965 novel The Liberty Lad, probably the earliest description of a gay bar in Irish literature, was the first in the city. It operated from some time in the 1950s being shared at times with deaf and dumb customers who often occupied the front of the bar.
The two (straight) staff in the RA ran a tight but tolerant ship. Two lesbians, Greta and Anne, were the only females in the 1960s who were regular customers. At that time and until the end of the 1970s, pubs closed sharply at 10 p.m. The café burger café in High Street then served as an after hours venue and later a café in Victoria Square run by the distinguished Indian hotelier and mogul, now Lord Rana of Malone.
When the Royal Avenue Hotel was on its last legs due to the troubles, Ernie Thompson and Jim Kempson (both now deceased), from 1974, ran, in its elegant ballroom, Belfast’s first ever and highly memorable discos, also the first in Ireland.
After the Royal Avenue closed, the Casanova Club (prop. Louis Wise) in Upper Arthur Street (presently part of the British Home Stores site) flowered briefly until bombed by the IRA in c. 1976 for reputedly serving police officers!
Meanwhile the Gay Liberation Society (GLS) was meeting at Queen’s University Students Union from 1972 with significant town as well as gown membership. Initiated by Andy Hinds and Martin McQuigg it was taken forward by Dick Sinclair, Maeve Malley, Joseph Leckey and Brian Gilmore.
Later from about 1975 until the early 1980s it ran highly successful Saturday night discos in the McMordie Hall, attended by up to 300 gays (and indeed many apparent straights). This was a time when there was no other night life in the city. Key helpers included Kevin Merrett, Billy Forsythe, John McConkey, and Michael McAlinden. The early and mid-70s were the most brutal years of the troubles, when there was next to no night life in the city and only gays ventured out for fear of murder.
Cara-Friend started its befriending and information operation as a letter service in 1974. After a brief telephone service at the QUB Students Union which ended in the switchboard collapsing, it moved on to a permanent telephone service in about 1976, operating first from Doug Sobey’s flat in Ulsterville Avenue (Doug from Prince Edward Island in Canada is still a Cara-Friend officer after 30 years). Lesbian Line and Foyle Friend developed later. Cara-Friend was grant aided by the Department of Health and Social Services, at Stormont, from as early as 1975 with £700 p.a.
NIGRA (a groups’ group originally) started in the summer of 1975 when USFI became corrupted. Early NIGRA Presidents have included Dr Graham Carter (who sadly died young), former life-President Richard Kennedy, and Tim Clarke, ably supported by Sappho sisters Geraldine Sergeant and Maureen Miskimmin.
A significant number of NIGRA officers married and had children which was baffling for some. The Strasbourg case taken by Jeff Dudgeon to the European Court of Human Rights, which in 1982 ultimately resulted in the ending of life imprisonment for gay men and was the first European recognition of gay rights, was started by NIGRA in 1975. P.A. MagLochlainn, NIGRA President, filled the post longer than any of his predecessors.
From about 1975 until the early 1980s, Gay Lib or the QUB Gay Liberation Society (GLS) met in No. 4 University Street, a large 3-storey Georgian terrace house loaned by the university, where Cara-Friend had a room with a telephone cubicle. It was in constant use for regular Thursday meetings and parties. From there was organised the successful case at Strasbourg against the British Government funded by the Queen’s discos and the later-married pop singer Tom Robinson (Glad to be Gay and Motorway).
1976 was also the year of the totally unexpected gay raids when all the NIGRA and Cara-Friend committee were arrested and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) decided to charge Jeff Dudgeon and Doug Sobey, and Richard Kennedy and another (for sex acts inter se). All of us were over 21 and thus could not be charged in England. Only a political intervention from London forced the DPP to drop the cases in 1977, just as the instruction to police to charge us was issued and literally retrieved from the post room at the last minute.
The Strasbourg case took seven years to go through the court and was won in 1981 when the UK was found guilty of a human rights violation of the European Convention. This was because it criminalised all gay male sexual activity with a possible sentence of life imprisonment for buggery, and two years jail for any other sexual act (“gross indecency”) thereby interfering with the right to a private life. A year later a reluctant British government pushed an Order in Council through Westminster legalising certain gay sexual activity with an age of consent of 21.
The Chariot Rooms in Lower North Street was the first gay-run bar in Belfast. It and its own disco were operated successfully, and with flair, by Ernie and Jim in the darkest years of the troubles. It was in the central gated area where no other night life existed for several years. We had to be processed by the civilian searchers to enter the central area leading to many camp and ribald remarks. The reasons for the Chariot Rooms closing are obscure although it was well frequented and much loved even by soldiers who duck patrolled through the dance floor, lingering in the warmth and safety. (Ernie and Jim were both processed through the courts in October 1967 and jailed or committed to a mental hospital along with a dozen others in the last big round-up of gays in Bangor.)
Off and on in the 1970s and 80s, the Europa’s Whip and Saddle bar in Great Victoria Street was the city’s only gay venue. Despite, at times being the only customers in such a bombed hotel, we were never entirely welcome and were ultimately driven out. At one point in the 1970s NIGRA mounted a picket because of a member being barred for a serious indiscretion – a kiss.
Due to the efforts of the late Kieran Hayes (d. 2011), a gay staffer’s, the Crow’s Nest in Skipper Street became a gay bar with a small disco from c. 1986. After several makeovers, it changed its name to the Customs House in 2002 and was re-invigorated as a gay bar hosting Men of the North events on alternate Fridays. It returned to the Crow’s Nest (or Raven’s Rectum) title later, after another makeover. (The Nest was demolished in 2008.)
The Carpenter Club in Long Lane (proprietors Richard Hodgson, Jeff Dudgeon, and NIGRA in a limited partnership) was an extensive, unlicensed disco and coffee bar on two floors operating from the early to the mid 1980s. Cara-Friend had offices upstairs. It was ultimately compulsorily purchased by the DOE to make way for the currently renamed Writers’ (formerly Skinhead) Square.
The Carpenter Club though gradually successful was vulnerable to any premises like a hotel on the skids (like the Midland Hotel) which had a drinks licence. Such licences were prohibitively expensive. Cara-Friend moved to new premises at Cathedral Buildings in Lower Donegall Street where Lesbian Line also had rooms and GLYNI and NIGRA met. Both C-F and Queer Space have run busy Saturday drop-ins at Cathedral Buildings, the latter having had previous rooms in Botanic Avenue and Eglantine Avenue.
After buying out his partners, Richard Hodgson, an accountant turned builder, was dubiously jailed for fraud after receiving compensation on the building’s compulsory purchase by the Department of the Environment. He developed other premises in Hill Street which never opened.
The Orpheus Bar/Disco in York Street had a successful three-year existence under the proprietorship of Ian Rosbotham in the mid-1980s, despite the rampant damp. It had a short afterlife once renovated.
The Dunbar Arms in Dunbar Link was firebombed by the INLA, with drag queen Aunty Mae (West aka Harry) the last out of the building being nearly singed to death, possibly due to a protection refusal. After rebuilding, it became the Parliament Bar, run by two straight guys, Martin Ramsay and Brendan, continuing as a gay venue with an upstairs disco from the 1990s until 2003 when it abandoned the gay market. It later returned to its roots as Mynt. Darren Bradshaw an off-duty gay policeman was murdered there by the INLA in 1997, having been picked out and shot down in front of dozens of customers.
Cruising areas too have been marred by murder – Anthony McCleave in Oxford Street, Belfast in the 1970s and Ian Flanagan in Barnett’s Park in 2002. There have been others.
One nighters have been operated since the mid-1980s in the Midland Hotel (Saturdays), Delaney’s, the Limelight (very successfully on Mondays for several years run by Patrick James), the Venue, White’s Tavern and Milk.
The Kremlin, an extensive, gay-owned bar and disco(s) in Upper Donegall Street, after opening in March 1999, became the dominant gay venue in the city, regularly enhancing its facilities. The owners were a New Zealander André Graham and Seamus Sweeney. A later development in the creation of a gay village in Belfast was the opening of their up-market Union Street pub with its many bars and dance rooms. The property they bought in nearby Union Street housed the Men’s Health Rainbow Project (formerly in Church Lane) and Belfast’s first ever gay sauna, the Garage. Another sauna opened across the street in time.
Sex in saunas, that is sex with more than two males present, was legalised in 2003 thanks to NIGRA’s successful campaign to have Northern Ireland included in the Sexual Offences Bill with its total abolition of the crimes of gross indecency and buggery and the equalising of penalties between gay and straight for sexual crimes.
Later rival venues were another Dubarry’s bar and disco which opened in Gresham Street and attracted the older clientele, being a bit less noisy (and having fewer straights). Despite success, it eventually reverted to a straight clientele. The advent of Maverick also in Union Street in the former McIlhattons Bar enabled both sides of the street to become LGBT dominated and in time pedestrian only.
The gay organisations – Rainbow, Cara-Friend and Here NI migrated for a decade to the former War Memorial Building in Waring Street taking over several floors. It was eventually sold for the purposes of a gay hotel venture which has yet to materialise, and new group premises were taken further down the street.
The only cloud on the commercial scene’s horizon has been cyber-sex through the likes of Grindr which have become ever more popular, night and day. Cruising and outdoor sex seem largely to be a thing of the past.
At the same time there has been an explosion in the growth of gay history studies at Queen’s University and through Gay History Month. PRONI and the Linen Hall Library now have considerable LGBT documentary collections. Cultural events, many organised by Outburst, have featured strongly in the new millennium as of course have the increasingly popular Belfast Pride parades which started in 1991, being first organised by Sean McGouran and P.A. MagLochlainn. They have now spread to other cities and localities.
Jeff Dudgeon
(Author of ‘Roger Casement: The Black Diaries – With a Study of his Background, Sexuality, and Irish Political Life’ (3rd edition 2019); and ‘H. Montgomery Hyde: Ulster Unionist MP, Gay Law Reform Campaigner and Prodigious Author’ (Belfast Press, 2018) – website https://jeffdudgeon.com/ )
Links:
- Wikipedia – Jeff Dudgeon MBE
- Wikipedia – Sailor Town, Belfast
- The Portsmouth Defence by Jeff Dudgeon
- Pushing the Boundaries; Decriminalising Homosexuality 1974-1982: The Role of the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association by Jeffrey Dudgeon & Richard Kennedy
Gay Magazines
In 2000 I was in contact with the gay-libn group part of the USC, and a request came up about ‘what was the first gay magazine or gay magazines’? Obviously, the US had the first [?] and it was called ‘One’ published in 1952. This was not an auspicious time for a gay magazine anywhere, but in the USA Dwight Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450, and it said:
…gays and lesbians were perverts, criminals, mentally ill, and must be blocked from any kind of federal employment…JSTOR Daily
This soon led to the FBI monitoring all the magazines posted through the USA postal system, and for employers being ‘advised’ to no longer employ these deviants.
But, in 1954 a new magazine hit the UK newsstands, Film & Filming magazine! Not an inspiring title or magazine at first glance, but as Dr Bengry, senior lecturer in queer history at Goldsmiths University of London, said:
…If you go through it, for many of us, it will tweak our gaydar looking at those 1950s issues – because there seems to be more bare-chested men than you’d expect…and also the personal ads of young bachelors looking to meet other young bachelors…
It was in 1885, that “gross indecency” between two men was made illegal, and believe it or not, in 1921 a similar law was discussed for women as well.
Last week we saw the demise of Gay Times as a print magazine, it is still available on the internet, but like its predecessors Gay News (which ran from 1962 to 1970, and Capital Gay which ran from Jun 1981 to June 1995, it is no longer something tangible you can get hold off from the newsstand, supermarket or other outlets. This is a large blow, because we fought to have gay magazines removed from the top shelf and available for everyone to get hold of, and it was no small fight. By moving the magazine from the top shelf (and even in some cases out of the plastic bag) we provided visibility to all of the reading population, and also enabled those who were in the closet or to frighten or to stretch for it, to be able to get a copy and purchase it along with their ordinary magazines and newspapers.
When you look back at these old newspapers and magazines you realise that the standard of news capture was of extremely high quality, and these outlets covered the news across all of the UK, and even indeed other parts of the globe.
The question is how in today’s world of almost instantaneous news through ‘social media’ and supposed 24-hour news coverage can we be sure that the news we are getting is accurate and relevant to the area we live in. It is up to all of us to report the news to a responsible outlet or journalist – remember that the print newspaper and magazines will want to sell papers and magazines – so what is news to you may not be news to the, or indeed they may even flip the story and give it a totally different slant.
There are gay journalists, I am one and I operate through my blog ‘ACOMSDave’, I write reviews of books and movies, and also articles relevant to us in Northern Ireland – so write and let me have your stories.
Links:
- Wikipedia – Gay News
- Wikipedia – Capital Gay
- BBC News – Pride Month: The LGBT history you probably didn’t learn in school
- Gayletter
- Happy 250th Gay Times!
- Linenhall Library – the Linenhall Library holds a set of the Gay News for research
Men in Frocks by Kris Kirk and Ed Heath – a gay book review by Stella Mahon
The title says it all, really, Men in Frocks. A frock, as any woman will tell you, is quite different from a dress. Drags of any kind wear frocks, the women of the western world, for the most part, wear dresses if they wear dresses at all.
The authors of this book are aware of this distinction. When talking of two male-to-female transexuals they freely admit that Roz and Tish ‘do not sit comfortably in a book with (this) title’. But they are included in a brief chapter on TV/TS, where I read something which was the exact opposite to my own feelings.
…’TSs also are often accused of perpetuating fantasy female stereotypes and some people see them as Fifth Columnists who seek to undermine the struggle of women to right the imbalance of power between sexes.’ …
I had to check it – did the authors write TSs or TVs at the beginning of that sentence? For they were actually saying something I had always felt about transvestites (AND most drag artists). There were the men who projecting the image of women as sexual objects, who wanted to pass for women, be whistled at. Who negated in a way that your ordinary straightforward hetman did not, the whole challenge that women have been flinging in society’s face for years. In a way that challenge which I offer to a society which would put me in a particular niche (comfortable for it), and which I offer with my mind and lifestyle, a transexual is offering with his or her body also.
But the debate about TV/TS forms only part of this book. Much of it, indeed most of it, is a history of the drag scene, whether on stage or off, complete with photos of this one and that one doing his drag thing. As such it occasionally bored me a little bit. but as it moved away from the post-war years and the big drag shows, through individuals and into more modern times my interest picked up. The chapter on ‘The Red Drag Queen’ is a case in point. Back in 1970, when their story began as it were, I knew nothing of any gay scene, was still married and only vaguely aware of my own sexual make-up, slightly more aware of me as a woman. So the history of that period – albeit from a ‘drag ‘ angle – caught my attention more than any other with the notion that many men – gay men, for the most part, if not the whole part – used drag as a political statement. With their dress, used on particular occasions, not simply as a fun activity, they were ‘showing solidarity with women by ridiculing the idea of beauty objects. It e3xpanded to a political statement on their own behalf, within GLF in London when they as well as the women members felt intimidated by the men who did most of the talking – gay men, who, ‘although prepared to pay lip-service to anti-sexism, were as dominating and aggressive as the archetypal heterosexual men’. They became the Radical Feminists – Rad Fems for short – of GLF, would you believe. Some had come to realise that ‘women were right about drag. They never put down drag per se, but they put down the men who got into low cut dresses (Frocks, surely?) false books, the fantasy Hollywood stereotype’. But we began to realise that there were ways of using drag … it’s a way of giving up the male power role … Oh yes, Kirk and Heath are correct in assuming as they do in this chapter, that such activity would today be criticized for ridiculing women, You want to reject male power, give up that role? So what’s the best way of doing that? Live it in your life? Preach it? Oh no, as the outward sign of self-denial, you, as a man, take on the trappings of the one group of people who are universally at the receiving end of male power. Instead of standing up and hitting out in your own right you tacitly acknowledge, by using a female image, the position of women, using the image of the so-called ‘weaker sex’ to say ‘up yours’ to the ones who parade the power. If that is not perpetuating the rolebase of our lives, I don’t know what is. Still, Kirk and Heath do say that ‘the Rad Fems’, like many others from GLF have come out of the experience older and wiser.
It has begun to change, hasn’t it? I have no doubt that drag in all its old-fashioned (in more ways than one) sense continues. Danny La Rue is still inexplicably, popular and that mostly with women. but, as the book points ut Boy George is doing in the eighties what David Bowie did in the seventies – clothing himself how he pleases, and that becomes his dress. Not male, not female, ut indivual. It is also what women have been doing for quite a time, women of feminist persuasion. We don’t, as some of the press hacks would have it (and haven’t they had a field day with the garb of the women at Greenham) insist on ‘wearing the trousers’, for it is only to them that trousers whether of cord, denim, or worsted, are a sexual symbol of power.
The book is OK. You’ll enjoy reading it. but keep your political eyes open while you do so.
Reviewer -Stella Mahone
Original review held in Gay Start No 16 lodged in the Linenhall Library
Product details
- Publisher : GMP Publishers Ltd; First Edition (31 Oct. 1984)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 160 pages
Links:
- Amazon – Men in Frocks
- The Glass Boat
- Gays in the 80s – Men in Frocks
- Yvonne Sinclair – the story of TV/TS Group – Men in Frocks
The Tearoom: the gay cruising
The game is a foot, but that is probably in some peoples dream. The Tearoom being referred to here is that of the men’s toilet, where before the law was changed, and indeed even afterwards, men who wanted ‘gay sex’ use to frequent and attempt to have sex or do a pick up without the police catching them.
Often the police use to have sting operations using ‘molly boys’ or ‘honey traps’ where they used young men (sometimes underage or new policemen) to frequent these areas, lead the man on, and then arrest him.
This practice is still being used today by ISIS, as can be seen the article ‘Islamic State’s secret flirting squads expose gay men for trial and execution’ published by the Daily Star Sunday, In may 2015
To add to this, Sean McGouran brought to my attention that there was a ballet / dance about such things Joseph Mercier’s Cruising, Clubbing Fucking: An Elegy – he mentioned that he had performed in Belfast a number of times (at the OutBurst festival).
He and dancer Sebastian Langueneur ended up in their birthday suits…
TRAILER Cruising, Clubbing, Fucking: an elegy from PanicLab on Vimeo.
Further reading:
- Homosexuality in the Eighteenth Century – Molly
- Wikipedia – Honey Trapping
- Wikipedia – Gay Bathhouse
- Tearoom Trade And The Study Of Sex In Public Places
Robert Yang has created a ‘dick pic simulator’ and a game about consent and BDSM. Now he’s tackling the risks surrounding gay sex in the 60s
Source: The Tearoom: the gay cruising game challenging industry norms | Technology | The Guardian
Britain’s concentration camps for gay men
Yes, you have read correctly, Britain’s concentration camps for gay men did exist.
Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Historian and author Simon Webb writes about the gay men who were kept in concentration camps in the UK.
We are most of us aware that gay men were routinely sent to the concentration camps of the Third Reich for no other reason than that their sexuality was unacceptable to the Nazis. A special section of the Gestapo, the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion was set up by Heinrich Himmler in 1936, with the avowed intention of rooting out homosexuality wherever it was to be found in Germany.
In Britain during the 1930s and 1940s, gay men were certainly imprisoned for what was then classified as criminal behaviour, but few people know that there were also concentration camps operating in this country between 1940 and 1946, to which one special category of gay men was sent.
In 1940, following the fall of France, an estimated 30,000 Polish soldiers arrived in Britain; men who had fought alongside the French army to stave off the invading Germans.
They were led by a former Prime Minister of Poland, General Wladyslaw Sikorski. Fearing that this country was itself about to be invaded, these troops were rushed to Scotland to defend the east coast against possible landings of German troops launched from Norway. Britain was thus indebted to the new Polish government-in-exile, which was led by Sikorski. Without the Polish troops, Scotland would have been all but undefended against the German attack.
General Sikorski was not universally popular with his fellow countrymen and opposition groups emerged which threatened his position as leader of the Polish government and commanding officer of the tens of thousands of Polish soldiers. The solution, at least as far as Sikorski was concerned, was simple. These enemies would have to be neutralised.
General Sikorski – the man responsible for the concentration camps in Scotland
On 18 July 1940, General Sikorski told the Polish National Council in London: “There is no Polish judiciary. Those who conspire will be sent to a concentration camp.”
Since he and the others were likely to be in Britain for the foreseeable future, it was plain that the concentration camp of which he talked, would be set up in this country.
General Marian Kukiel, appointed Commander of Camps and Army Units in Scotland by Sikorski, received a secret order relating to what was described as, ‘an unallocated grouping of officers’, who were to be held in a special camp.
Life inside the concentration camps of Scotland – The Jewish Post
Not only did Sikorski wish to see senior officers and political rivals who might challenge his authority tucked out of the way, but he also wished to purge the Polish army of what he termed, ‘Person of improper moral level’ (homosexuals, Jews etc).
General Sikorski was an austere and autocratic leader and had very strong ideas on what constituted acceptable behaviour.
He loathed drunks, gamblers, the sexually promiscuous and especially homosexuals.
So it was that along with all the men he feared might interfere with his leadership of the Polish government-in-exile, generals and senior politicians from pre-war Poland, Sikorski decided to lock up many other men of whose conduct he happened to disapprove. The site chosen for this, the first concentration camp to be established in Britain, was the Isle of Bute.
The inmates of the new camp were at first housed in tents. Not all were military men. Among the first to be imprisoned, there were men such as Michael GrazynskI, President of the Polish Scouting Association. Another important prisoner was Marian Zyndram-Kosciakowlski; who was Prime Minister of Poland from 1935-1939. The atmosphere in the camp on the Isle of Bute was toxic.
The senior officers, no fewer than twenty generals were held captive there at various times, refused to have anything to do with what was known as the ‘pathological cases’; I.e. the drunks and homosexuals.
This led to the development of a sub-culture of gay prisoners, who tended to stick together; a situation which represented something of a scandal to those running the camp and it was decided that the ‘pathological’ types should be separated from the political prisoners.
A new and harsher camp was set up on the Scottish mainland at Tighnabruich and the gay prisoners transferred there. This village voted in 2002 ‘the prettiest village in Argyll, Lomand and Stirlingshire’, is on the coast, facing the Isle of Bute. The commandant of the new camp was Colonel Wladyslaw Spalek. How was it possible that the Polish government-in-exile was allowed to operate concentration camps in this way, without any objections from the British government? After the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, the British needed all the help they could get to defend their country against a German invasion. The Allied Forces Act was accordingly passed that same year. This gave the governments-in-exile of Poland, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium and Czechoslovakia the legal right to raise their own independent forces from among citizens of their countries resident in Britain. Their army camps and military bases were to be regarded as the sovereign territory of the various countries concerned and, as such, immune from interference by the British police or any other authorities.
How this worked in practice was that if General Sikorski took a dislike to any Polish person living in this country, he was able to draft that person into his army and then have him arrested by the military police and taken off into captivity as either a deserter or mutineer. This neat little trick meant that any Polish man whose behaviour, sexual or otherwise, did not meet with Sikorski’s approval was apt to find himself being shipped off to Scotland and held behind barbed wire. In another grim echo of the situation in Nazi Germany, not only were gay men marked down for imprisonment in the camps; communists and Jews were also likely to fall foul of the Polish government in London.
One of the most famous prisoners on the Isle of Bute was the writer, journalist and biographer of Stalin; Isaac Deutscher. Although born in Poland, Deutscher, a Jew, had emigrated to Britain where he made a life for himself before the outbreak of war in 1939. In 1940, following Dunkirk and the Fall of France, he travelled to Scotland to volunteer for the Polish army which was now based there. No sooner had he joined up, than Deutscher found himself arrested and sent to the camp at Rothesay. Being both a Jew and also a communist, he was regarded as a dangerous subversive by senior figures in General Sikorski’s administration. Rumours began to circulate among MPs in London that something unsavoury was going on in Scotland.
Names began to emerge of Polish citizens being held for no apparent reason in secret installations. In all cases, the men being detained seemed to be Jews.
On February 19 1941, for example, Samuel Silverman, MP for Nelson and Colne, raised the question in the House of Commons of two Jewish brothers called Benjamin and Jack Ajzenberg. These men had been picked up by Polish soldiers in London and taken to a camp in Scotland. The following year, Adam McKinley, MP for Dumbartonshire in Scotland, asked in the House what was happening on the Isle of Bute. The government, which had no wish to upset a valuable ally, refused to provide any information.
Under the terms of the Allied Forces Act, the British had, in any case, no legal right to interfere in what was happening at camps and army bases being operated by the Polish Government in Exile.
Having found that they were apparently able to operate concentration camps on British soil with complete impunity, the Polish leadership opened new facilities for holding political prisoners and others at Kingledoors, Auchetarder and Inverkeithing. The last-named of these was located just eight miles from Edinburgh.
These were dreadful places that looked like the traditional idea of a concentration camp; barbed wire fences, primitive accommodation and watchtowers containing armed guards. Those living nearby heard rumours of maltreatment, starvation, beatings and even the death of inmates. In several cases, the reports of deaths by shooting turned out to be quite true. On 29 October 1940, for instance, a Jewish prisoner called Edward Jakubowsky was shot dead in the camp in Kingledoors, for allegedly insulting a guard.
The Polish camps were to operate for another six years. Increasing unease on the part of British MPs and others led to questions being asked in the House about what precisely was going on in Scotland. Matters came to a head, on the 14th June 1945. Robert McIntyre, the Member for the Scottish constituency of Motherwell, stood up in the House and asked the following question:
“Will the government make provision for the inspection, at any time, by representatives of the various districts of Scotland of any penal settlements, concentration camps, detention barracks, prisons, etc. within their area, whether these institutions are under the control of the British, American, French or Polish governments or any other authority; and for the issuing of a public report by those representatives?”
This caused something of a sensation; the suggestion that there were concentration camps in Scotland.
That same day, Moscow Radion made the same accusation, citing the detention of a Jewish academic called Dr Jan Jagodzinski in a camp at Inverkeithing.
This provoked widespread interest and the world’s press began to ask what was happening in these Polish camps.
In an attempt to defuse the anger being felt, the Polish government-in-exile agreed to allow journalists to visit the camp at Inverkeithing. This action did little to reassure anybody. The first prisoner to whom reporters spoke turned out to be yet another Jew, by the name of Josef Dobosiewicz. He alleged that a prisoner had recently been shot dead in the camp. The commandant conceded that this was true, but claimed that the dead man had been trying to escape.
Once again, the local police had been powerless to act, under the terms of the Allied Forces Act.
A year after the Second World war had come to an end, the camps were still in existence and still seemingly holding Jews.
On 16 April 1946, the MP for Fife West, William Gallacher, asked the Secretary of State for War to look into the case of two more Jews being held in a camp in Scotland; David Glicenstein and Shimon Getreudhendler.
It is impossible at this late stage to know precisely what was happening in these camps. That they were in fact concentration camps is undeniable; that after all is what general Sikorski had announced that he would be setting up. We have no idea at all how many gay men were sent to the camps, nor how long they were held there. The same is true for the statistics relating to communists and Jews.
What is beyond dispute is that from 1940 onwards, men in this country were being arrested and taken to concentration camps for no other reason than that they were gay.
Simon Webb is the author of ‘British Concentration Camps: A Brief History from 1900 – 1975′.
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