DARWIN AT ITS BEST

Contents:

• DARW'S GAY SCENE: TAKE A TOUR THROUGH NT'S QUEER HISTORY WH ACTIVIST AND AMIC DR DO HODGE
• GAY DARW GUI | AN LGBTQIA+ GUI TO DARW
• DARW GAY NIGHTCLUBS | AN LGBTQIA+ GUI TO DARW NIGHTLIFE
• A GAY DAY …DARW
• GAY DARW
• GAY AND GAY-IENDLY HOTELS DARW
• THROB: DARW'S CHANGE-MAKG GAY NIGHTCLUB OF AGE
• LGBTQ+ AFFIRMG COUNSELLORS DARW CY, NT
• DARW, GAY, AND THE UTILY OF CHILE
• JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS' KEV MAXEN IS FIRST AMERIN MALE PRO SPORTS ACH TO E OUT AS GAY

DARW'S GAY SCENE: TAKE A TOUR THROUGH NT'S QUEER HISTORY WH ACTIVIST AND AMIC DR DO HODGE

Atralian gay history amic and activist Dr Do Hodge arrived Darw 1983, jt before the closure of two now-legendary mp venu, Dix and Hodge has sce moved to Alai, but returns to Darw to host walkg tours that foc on the Northern Terrory's lser known amic's last walkg tour for Darw Pri Ftival 2015 began at Lameroo Beach — known by the Larrakia people as Damoe-Ra — on Darw's Esplana.

Colonisatn begs DarwAfter the first succsful European attempt to reach the Top End 1845, what is now known as Darw beme predomately lonised by men, which helped created a "homosocial environment" 1923 public baths were built at Lameroo Beach, which soon went onto bee a meetg place for gay men — albe well-vered circumstanc. It was discreet, " Dr Hodge is unclear how much sexual activy occurred at the baths but Dr Hodge has found legal rerds between 1942 and 1962 ditg homosexual activy was takg place " every European centre across the Terrory", cludg sports ovals and World War II, Darw's populatn doubled mostly due to an flux of servicemen, and the baths flourished.

"I wasn't an absolute whore, only a part-time one, " relled an Atralian Air Force serviceman, who equented the baths, oral history accsed by Dr 's gay bar scene emergAs social attus to homosexualy began to soften the late 1950s, Dr Do Hodge found evince of the first Aborigal man publicly g out as gay.

GAY DARW GUI | AN LGBTQIA+ GUI TO DARW

(Supplied: Dr Do Hodge)She was a teacher ted down south who drove around wh her partner a vibrant green Dr Hodge said the queer nightlife scene which started to emerge Darw at this time maly tered to homosexual 1969, celebrated entreprenr John Spellman donned women's clothg and opened the Pianola Palace, the first gay-iendly Darw club beme known for a topls drag queen barmaid and a miature nu statue of David before beg cimated by Cyclone Tracy Spellman kept the Pianola Palace nng wh the help of tarpl tents and, as the town revered, other gay-iendly bars such as Dix, Fanni, Close Enunters, Squir and the Mississippi Queen emerged the Hodge believed lbians equented the venu but were generally "more discreet", and the prence of lbians was "assumed rather than apparent" Terrory's equal rights eraDr Hodge said the Terrory's lbian muny was bolstered by the Pe Gap women's peace mp, tablished 1983 near Alice Sprgs to ph for women's equal tablishment of women's legal service and refug the 1980s ntued this femist momentum, but there was evince of homophobia a tradnally mascule "wboy" town.

DARW GAY NIGHTCLUBS | AN LGBTQIA+ GUI TO DARW NIGHTLIFE

"There are a lot of racist gay wh around, " relled an Aborigal man 1980s oral history accsed by Dr muny was also challenged by the AIDS crisis and associated "fear and moral panic" the late 80s, Dr Hodge the Terrory, the queer muny rpond to the global crisis wh a lol AIDS uncil — a ty office tablished 1985 and n on a shotrg Darw's CBD.

A GAY DAY …DARW

Pianola Palace, a bar opened 1969 by a flamboyant bsman who ocsnally drsed drag, was subsequently known for beg gay iendly but was stroyed by Cyclone Tracy venu drew queer crowds, but many did so discreetly. "The attus were still not favourable the public doma, even though privately many people adopted a live-and-let-live attu, " Dr Hodge the turn of the lennium, public opn towards homosexualy had softened nsirably but homophobic cints still were ocsnally asslted; some venu embraced what Dr Hodge termed the pk dollar, but generally only on quiet weeknights and at the discretn of owners who uld leave and turn prevly stck als on their head. "We opened the doors for, I thk might've st $9, 000 and a lick of pat, " Mr Palmer expensive helipter light is spng the middle of the dancefloor, Mr Palmer's many muny nnectns have turned out and the sound system is was also historic: the first signated gay space Darw that weled everyone.

GAY DARW

Tun on the sound…ThrobDarw's premier gay- and lbian-iendly nightclub and cktail bar, Throb attracts partygoers of all genrs and persuasns for s hot DJs and ol…Deck BarAt the nonpartyg, parliamentary end of Mchell St, the Deck Bar still manag to get lively wh happy hours, pub trivia and regular live mic…Beachont HotelClose to the borr wh Nightcliff, this rollickg pub oppose the forhore attracts a lol crowd and often has bands. Usg geic mollg on thoands of intil and non-intil tws, I’ve shown the above is due to geic factors wh multiple effects: the predispose to homosexualy and sex-atypily and, heterosexuals, to havg more sexual partners.

Consistent wh this, I’ve also shown that heterosexuals who have a homosexual -tw (and who therefore may rry “gay gen”) tend to have a higher than average number of sexual partners – that is, they are more succsful at acquirg mat. Knowg sexual orientatn is fluenced by gen and n be explaed evolutnary terms may even, for those who hold such views, make homosexualy seem ls a perverse or immoral choice and more jt a se of beg “born gay”. In the words of historian Jennifer Terry, ‘homosexual men were imaged as embodyg the worst of both savag and women; while they were satiable their sexual pursus and ivololy emotnal, they lacked the mosty of bourgeois women and the primal strength of savage men’.

GAY AND GAY-IENDLY HOTELS DARW

I argue that when evolutnary blogists the twentieth century ed sexual selectn as a tool for theorizg the evolutn of homosexual behavur – which happened only rarely – the effect of their theori was to ntuoly rescribe normative heterosexualy. Footnote 10 Sedgwick add that although ias of homosexualy and heterosexualy are ontologilly separable, they have never been unrstood as -equal – heterosexualy as a tegory was fed by the excln of homosexualy.

THROB: DARW'S CHANGE-MAKG GAY NIGHTCLUB OF AGE

A closer look at evolutnary theori of sexualy reveals how even the blogists who found homosexualy to be a good tool to thk wh (like altism) often assumed that homosexual preferenc should eventually go extct (Figure 1).

Then, the fal s of the twentieth century, blogists sought to unrstand homosexualy as an inty associated wh only a mory of the populatn, bakg nservative notns of genr to explanatns of homosexualy as blogilly based, cludg a sexual divisn of labour, mental tras and sir. Not until evolutnary blogists began to regnize same-sex sexual behavurs animals as natural – that is to say, as occurrg wild populatns and not jt potentially nfoundg laboratory settgs – did they nsir homosexual behavur a blogil tra whose evolutn begged explanatn. Rather than dichotomizg humans to distct tegori of homo- and heterosexual dividuals, Ksey and his lleagu rated the range of sexual experienc om exclively heterosexual (0 on a slidg sle) to exclively homosexual (6), wh gradatns between.

LGBTQ+ AFFIRMG COUNSELLORS DARW CY, NT

One of Ksey's -thors and a New York-based sex therapist, Warll Pomeroy eagerly argued the pag of Playboy that polygamy, masturbatn, homosexualy, mouth–genal stimulatn and face-to-face terurse topped his list of behavurs exhibed by non-human animals.

A few years earlier, primatologist Solly Zuckerman had wrten that he had observed homosexual teractns young and adult primat at a zoologil garn, where both male–male and female–female mountg behavur appeared to functn as regular signals of social domance. Footnote 28 Beach wrote, ‘People who say that homosexual activi are blogilly abnormal and unnatural are wrong’, but also updated Gi's ntentns about animal behavur light of recent rearch, cludg Zuckerman's.

DARW, GAY, AND THE UTILY OF CHILE

Aga followg Ksey, Beach argued that if one were to simplify the range of possible behavurs to three tegori of inty – strictly heterosexual, strictly homosexual and bisexual – then the zoologil evince ‘might predict that bisexual human begs would outnumber the other two groups bed’. Footnote 38 Self-nscly followg Ksey, Morris sought to make his behavural termology parable to Ksey's discsg human behavur – homosexual enunters, then, necsarily volved two dividuals of the same sex, only one of whom behaved a sex-verted fashn.

Many other human behavurs, of urse, fell to the same tegory and a few pag later he poted out that ‘[s]uch groups as monks, nuns, long-term spsters and bachelors and permanent homosexuals are all, a reproductive sense, aberrant. Footnote 40 He implied, through associatn wh the other cultural inti, that exclive homosexualy was, if not a liftyle choice, then the rult of social circumstanc rather than blogy, even though ocsnal sexual enunters between two mal uld be expected as a part of any dividual's lifetime sexual repertoire – he was silent on sex between femal.

Footnote 45 In the midst of this sexual revolutn and buildg on a of media attentn to qutns of homosexualy raised part by the ntroversy over the Ksey reports, the unrground circulatn of gay and lbian magaz, guis and gossip sheets helped fe an creasgly visible gay muny. A more radil gay liberatn movement followed – buildg on the succs of the homophile movements of earlier s – which activists succsfully fought for the crimalizatn of homosexual acts and an end to police harassment and other visible signs of cultural opprsn. Footnote 50 Over the urse of the twentieth century, Amerin psychiatrists had ncentrated more tensely on ‘abnormal’ behavur rather than ‘normal’, as homosexualy self had been creasgly normalized cultural and scientific perceptns.

JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS' KEV MAXEN IS FIRST AMERIN MALE PRO SPORTS ACH TO E OUT AS GAY

The disaggregatn of ‘homosexualy’ om ‘transsexualy’ and genr variance took place both wh psychiatry and also among homophile and later gay rights activists, avouchg genr and sexualy as distct tegori of human experience. Morris, The Naked Ape, stead referred to sgle-sex non-sexual groups as ‘unisexual’, to help distguish them om ‘homosexual’, and noted that ‘the important role they play the liv of adult mal reveals the persistence of the basic, anctral urg’. Footnote 55 When the termologil dt settled, ‘homosexual’ implied an dividual's preference for sexual enunters wh members of the same sex, while ‘homosocial’ referred to sgle-sex social environments whout any necsary reference to sexual activy, like an all-male boardg school.