The Beat Brisbane Queensland LGBT history, naughty Gay Brisbane in the 80’s

Historical perspective of an insane time

At the time in the 80’s, the general media would glorify women as objects of desire, including full page color spreads of bikini girls in major papers.  ‘Meter Maids’ wearing only only bikinis would be hired to walk the streets and put coins in peoples parking meters to avoid tickets.  Pubs had separate rooms and entrances for women.  Society was seemingly, weirdly, segregated — the “blokes” who did the hard yakka (work) and their “sheilas” who would service their blokes.  It was all a little like parts of the middle east today.

Australian culture evolved quickly out of this, but Queensland (& Tasmania) were behind the rest of the country.

Queensland derived its criminal law from the UK including the prohibition of “buggery” and “gross indecency” between males. While other states in Australia fixed their anti-gay laws in the 1970’s/1980’s, Queensland was ruled by the conservative ‘National Party’ led by Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. His government actively used homophobia for electoral advantage, linking all gay men to pedophilia & asserting all gay men are morally deviant.

Anti-gay laws were intensely enforced by Queensland police throughout the 1980s, (lesbian activity was always legal). At this time, government policy was very hostile – at the height of The Beat‘s success, in 1985, the government passed an amendment to the Liquor Act making it an offense to serve alcohol or to allow to remain on licensed premises any “deviants, sexual perverts or child molesters” (with interpretation of this definition to be up to the individual police officer).

Indeed, some police would come to The Beat for “poofta hunts” [‘poofta’ being Aussie derogatory slang for gay] and turned a blind eye to “poofta bashings” – a common problem in Brisbane at the time – particularly in our back alley. Some police detectives, out of uniform, would return to The Beat later in the night to drink, snort cocaine, drop acid, pick up a ‘cuddle bunny’ for the night and have fun. It was a weird experience.

The Bjelke-Petersen Government intended that the new licensing law be used to refuse service to gay men — and centered it on the 2 major gay venues in Brisbane — the Terminus and The Beat.

Police raids intensified. Our payoffs with cash envelopes, cases of liquor and slabs of beer to local police, including the vice squad, softened the blow, but occasionally we had to be ‘seen to lose’ — so we would negotiate a Monday or Tuesday evening for a future raid, and ensure the club was had a smattering of lesbians and straight looking people that night.

It became a game of “us” vs “them” — the “them” being the police, the politicians, the poofta bashers and often, our own families.

When police raids were impending, typically our doorman would see a bevvy of unmarked police cars pulling up on the main street, sometimes with a paddy wagon in convoy (a utility vehicle with a human cage in the back to contain people getting a free ride to the local jail), our doorman would flash the overhead lights from switches installed at the door, signaling to all customers that a raid was about to occur.

This stupid game helped however, helped solidify a gay Brisbane community united in just wanting acceptance. The more the government and police pushed us, the more brazen we would become.

The Queensland National Party alerted voters to a looming homosexual invasion. As the dying government flailed in search of a lifeline, they latched onto homosexuality as a lifebuoy. Queensland National Party politicians such as Geoff Muntz and Ian Sinclair made their anti-gay views very vocal, with Sinclair claiming that the Labor Party’s failure to condemn homosexuality was helping to spread HIV. Then Welfare Services Minister Geoff Muntz said, “homosexuals indulge in a deviant lifestyle” and did not think gay people should be allowed in public swimming pools. “You’ll never hear of a gay mardi gras or gay swimming carnival in Queensland.” Muntz said at the time.

Fear of HIV and AIDS were at their height in the 1980s, the Bjelke-Petersen Government used this fear to increase homophobic sentiment and demonize gay people further. Rumors spread you could catch the homosexual only HIV/AIDS by drinking from same glassware or even being near a poofta.

It was a rather ridiculous to-and-fro war played out on the streets of the Fortitude Valley, with larger and larger payoffs to corrupt greedier and greedier police officials and politicians.