on this day
On this day: The Tasty Raid – Hands against the wall
At 2am on the morning of Sunday, August 7, 1994, forty armed police raided a regular party event at Melbourne’s members-only Commerce Club. During the Tasty raid, the cops conducted strip and cavity searches on 463 people. Victorian police initially defended the raid as ‘normal’ despite finding insufficient evidence to secure a single conviction. “There …
On this day: Gay Pilgrims – John Allexander & Thomas Roberts
On August 6, 1637, a Plymouth court pronounced its cruel judgement on John Allexander & Thomas Roberts for what seems to have been mutual jerk-off sessions. The Puritan (Pilgrim) founders of Plymouth provide another example — as if we need more — of the cruelty, injustice and utter stupidity inherent in laws based on religion …
On this day: Happy Birthday, Ian Roberts
Happy Birthday to Ian Roberts, born in London, England on July 31, 1965. The rugby league player came out as gay in the October 9, 1995 issue of New Weekly. The cover blurb: ‘League Legend: meet the man I love’. The toughest man in rugby league Rumours about the sexuality of the sporting hero known …
On this day: After Martina outed, AVON stops calling
On July 30, 1981, New York’s Daily News outed tennis star, Martina Navratilova. Days earlier, she asked the paper not to go public about her lesbian relationship because she feared Avon would stop sponsoring women’s tennis. A few months later, the cosmetics company did exactly that. 18-year-old Czechoslovakian-born Martina Navratilova applied for asylum in the …
On this day: The twirling Earl of Yarmouth in Mackay
On July 17, 1895, George Seymour, Earl of Yarmouth, contemplated starting afresh as a colonial planter in Mackay, North Queensland. The young hellraiser’s family exiled him from Britain hoping to avoid disgrace over his scandalous behaviour. The 23-year-old Earl arrived in Australia late the previous year and immediately set about providing content for excitable newspaper …
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 …
On this day: Night of Long Knives presaged gay holocaust
The murderous Nazi rampage known as the Night of the Long Knives lasted three days from June 30 until July 2, 1933. Adolf Hitler orchestrated the murders of his oldest friend, chief Nazi thug Ernst Röhm, along with numerous other rivals and perceived enemies. Röhm was homosexual. With him out of the way, the Nazis …
On this day: Homosexuality in America, LIFE, 1964
In its June 26, 1964 issue, the popular American magazine, LIFE, ran a 14-page feature on the hitherto little-discussed subject of Homosexuality in America. The article opened with an explanation of the above photo (taken at San Francisco’s Tool Box Leather Bar). “These brawny, young men in their leather caps, shirts, jackets, and pants are …
On this day: Thomas Eakins’ homoerotic The Swimming Hole
Thomas Eakins’ homoerotic The Swimming Hole, painted in 1884-85, continues to attract the accolades now that the artist never received during his lifetime. Thomas Eakins painted the masterpiece from 1884-85 and died on June 25, 1916. Art critic Tom Lubbock called The Swimming Hole a classic of American painting. “It shows a scene of healthy, …
On this day: mass murder, the Utrecht sodomy trials
On June 24, 1730, four ‘sodomites’ underwent gruesome public executions in Amsterdam. Just a handful of the numerous men and boys killed during the year-long purge known as the Utrecht sodomy trials. In Homosexuality & Civilization, Louis Crompton described the liquidation as ‘the deadliest persecution of homosexuals known’ prior to the 20th-century Nazi slaughter of …