The Secret History of Atralia's Gay Diggers

* gay history australia *

They were om the Gay Ex-Servic Associatn, and they rried a wreath dited to ‘all brothers and sisters who died durg the wars’—but they would never get to lay at the shre. “I don’t know where all the gays and poofters have e om, ” he was later famoly quoted as sayg, “I don’t remember a sgle one om World War Two. “There were thoands of ex-servicemen who were mp, I thk I went through 300 of them myself, ” he told the magaze, a py of which is prerved by the Atralian Lbian and Gay Archiv.

In the terts of general happs we re-arranged some room occupants and eventually got all the homos one block, " he said. “A quarter of homosexual s Queensland crimal urts across the war volved airmen, seamen, pilots or others the ary, ” he says. While Atralia’s official ban on gay and lbian service was repealed 1992, LGBT+ soldiers served long before then.

“The irony, of urse, was that they end up an all-male environment wh limed opportuny for female pany – the potential for homo-sex had never been greater, ” Smaal says. “It was amazg the number of gay people the POW mp, ” the Atralian serviceman told Outrage, “well not so much gay as bisexual – bee they uldn’t get a woman they’d have a man. Ined, the forc of World War One and World War Two may have been a surprisgly liberatg place for gay men and women.

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There are multiple s of veterans beg arrted for homosexualy offenc after the war, tellg thori they were pursug sir disvered the armed forc.

“I do not believe I have ever loved a woman more eply than my mate, ” said one Atralian WWII veteran, who went on to assert the relatnship wasn't homosexual. Ackerley, an openly gay Brish war hero om World War One, wrote an acclaimed play tled The Prisoners of War upon his return to England.

While Ackerley's work has not passed through to mastream textbooks, the works of a fellow gay ntemporary have. The gay Jewish doctor – who was later exiled by the Nazis – wrote of how German soldiers would risk severe reprimand to sneak off to the lols’ ho occupied France to have sex.

Learng om the liv of gay and lbian Atralians

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