Sex, sleaze and righteous anger: the rise and fall of gay magazines and newspapers in Australia

Abstract

For much of the 20th century, homosexuality was illegal in Australia. The country was also subject to draconian censorship; overt homosexual works were banned. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, social change was afoot and publications of the homosexual rights and gay liberation movements began to appear, soon joined by more commercial publications aligned to an increasingly overt gay sub-culture. These publications prospered over the next three decades. Their focus ranged from earnest proselytising to post-modern pornography. Most maintained strong links to their readerships, even though many of them were distributed free of charge and relied on advertising to survive. This paper chronicles the range of these publications and examines how they helped develop and foster a gay, lesbian or queer readership (and hence outside the mainstream); explores how and why the printed forms of these publications gradually merged within the mainstream as same-sex relationships lost their deviance; and notes that these publications have largely been replaced by digital alternatives in the 21st century.