Australian gays married back in 1932… but this paper was VERY angry about it
A recently unearthed Australian newspaper shows that gay couples were getting married in Australia back in the 1930s.
But it also shows disgusting intolerance which you may be shocked to read.
The article for the Arrow, a tabloid, is titled ‘Wide Open Immorality’, and its author describes how the “pervert population” of Brisbane had been marrying.
It calls for police to intervene to stop the “queer, semi-feminine men” from making the “beautiful capital of Queensland… their headquarters.”
The article reads: “They have evolved into a cult, with two main sects, one on the north and the other on the south side of the town, with the river dividing them. And occasionally they meet at queer, indecent, degrading ceremonies when perverted lusts come into full play and shocking rituals are celebrated.”
It goes on to say that there were two “weddings” in two weeks (using quote marks to indicate that they obviously weren’t real wedding ceremonies).
“They conduct these luridly immoral gatherings absolutely free from police interference… Professional people have been invited as guests to witness the weddings — astounding revelation that perversion of this rotten type is so openly accepted in Brisbane. Nowhere else in the world — not even in Berlin, with its open homosexual clubs — is there the open boast that there are these ceremonies or the widespread extension of this sordid cult of male perversion.
“It is all conducted in these gatherings as if there were no ban on this horrifying indecency… This in Brisbane, in the year 1932! It is almost unbelievable,” it goes on.
Daniel Brandl-Beck, a PhD History student at the University of Queensland in Brisbane uncovered the article after all this time.
It goes on to say: “The city is full of them, and more come from the other States regularly to swell the numbers.
“The nests of them should be cleaned out, and the whole of the horrid business scattered to the four winds. At present it is a scandal of evil almost unprecedented.
“Weddings between men, with city lights looking on and enjoying the ‘ceremonies’, can only prove one thing — that Brisbane by tolerating them is earning for itself the name of the most wicked city in the Commonwealth… Police action, speedily, please!” it goes on.
Click here to see the news article in all its horrible glory.
If this wasn’t enough for you – check out this newspaper article from 1962 which offers advice to “spot a homo.”
