history
Shrine of Remembrance to light up in rainbow for LGBTQ+ event
Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance will light up in rainbow colours this weekend for a special service and a new exhibition sharing the history LGBTQ+ service members. New exhibition Defending with Pride: Stories of LGBTQ+ Service opens on August 1 at the Shrine in Melbourne. The immersive exhibition reveals the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender …
Applications open: State Library of Qld Rainbow Fellowship
Applications opened today for the State Library of Queensland’s inaugural Rainbow Research Fellowship. Among other benefits, the Rainbow Fellowship includes a $15,000 stipend. The State Library of Queensland holds a wealth of material of interest to LGBTIQA+ researchers. Here at QNews we particularly appreciate the microfiche copies of old Queensland newspapers. But we also access …
On this day: Are you a friend of Dorothy?
L. Frank Baum’s The Road to Oz, the book thought to have inspired the phrase ‘Friend of Dorothy’, was published July 10, 1909. The expression became popular as coded self-identification. Queer people would use it to ascertain if new acquantainces were ‘family’. So ubiquitous was the phrase by the 1970s, it inspired an extensive search …
NSFW!!! Vintage photographs of Aussie male swimmers
Soon after the invention of cameras, photographers began to focus their lenses on nude and scantily dressed men. Museums and archives around Australia hold among their collections, numerous vintage photographs of Aussie male swimmers. (Some images NSFW.) Despite Australia’s celebrated beach culture, white settlers did not initially embrace the Australian shoreline with the same enthusiasm …
State Library of Queensland Rainbow Research Fellowship
The State Library of Queensland has announced the inaugural Rainbow Research Fellowship. Among other benefits, the Fellowship will include a $15,000 stipend. A first for Queensland, and potentially for Australia The Rainbow Research Fellowship will support research, exploration, and creation of new knowledge about Queensland’s LGBTIQA+ histories and communities. This groundbreaking Fellowship will assist in …
Victoria’s AIDS Memorial Quilt gets official heritage listing
The Melbourne AIDS Memorial Quilt, which commemorates hundreds of Victorians who died during the AIDS crisis, has received official heritage listing in the state in an Australian first. In total, the Melbourne AIDS Memorial Quilt consists of 27 quilts (one is pictured above). The local project followed the AIDS Memorial Quilt movement in the United …
On this day: Pulse, the Orlando nightclub shooting
On June 12, 2016, a 29-year-old lone gunman ended the lives of 49 mainly Latino people at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Omar Mateen also wounded 59 other people during the Orlando nightclub shooting. Police shot the killer dead following a three-hour stand-off. The Orlando nightclub shooting extracted a terrible toll — the …
Dark history of proposed site for new LGBTIQ pride museum
Sydney will get its first LGBTIQ+ pride museum, tracing the “queer storyline from First Nations people to today,” in time for WorldPride next year. The proposed museum is called Qtopia, and is backed by funding from City of Sydney, Lord Mayor Clover Moore announced on International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) this …
On this day May 6: Nazi book burnings
On May 6, 1933, members of the German Student Union violently attacked Magnus Hirschfeld’s Berlin Institute of Sex Research. And thus began the Nazi book burnings. The students hurled about 20,000 of Magnus Hirschfeld’s books into the street and then burned the priceless collection. Among the books, unique works on intersexuality, homosexuality, and transgender topics. …
25 years ago, Tasmania finally decriminalised homosexuality
It has only been 25 years since homosexuality was decriminalised in every state and territory in Australia. Tasmania was the last state to do so on May 1, 1997. Before then, the state’s laws punished consensual sex between men with up to 25 years in prison. LGBTIQ+ advocate Rodney Croome AM was central to the …