Locating a queer regional imaginary through media framing of male same-sex criminalisation in Newcastle,Australia,post WWII to 1989

Abstract

Media framing of the political, professional, and personal dynamics of criminal law in regional areas can illuminate the reach of arbitrary moral arguments used to criminalise marginalised populations. Drawing on analysis of media articles from post-Second World War up to 1989, this case study contextualises criminalisation processes of male same-sex offences in the regional New South Wales city of Newcastle. The cases and issues documented provide insight into the legal and social symbiosis between the regions and the metropole, and the role of place in defining regional identity. At the same time, they show a diversity of male same-sex sexual and gender expression often considered incongruous in an industrial centre that has signified the ‘raw masculinity’ of the Australian male. The case study emphasises the risks of cross-sectional analyses that can sever processes of criminalisation from stigma that persists beyond decriminalisation, and the integral role of social movements in achieving law reform.

Keywords

Criminalisation homosexuality law reform media framing policing regional history

Introduction

Media framing of the surveillance, prosecution and publicity of male same-sex offences in regional areas can illuminate the wider impact of arbitrary processes of criminalisation and their relationship to expressions of sexual and gender identity. Analysis of this relationship is important as 61 United Nations member states still criminalise consensual same-sex sex acts in private (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, 2024) amid a resurgence of anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ+) hate online and in-real-life (Ellis, 2023). It is unsurprising that globally stigma persists against men who have sex with men and related discrimination against LGBTQ+ people given that decriminalisation of same-sex sex has often been a partial and lengthy process (Ellis, 2023).

In English-speaking common law jurisdictions, decriminalisation of same-sex offences gained pace in the 1960s. Illinois revised its criminal laws in 1961, and repealed its law against sodomy (Criminal Code of 1961(Ill Comp Stat)). In 1967, England and Wales decriminalised consensual same-sex sex between men in private above the age of 21 ( Sexual Offences Act, 1967 ). In 1969, Canada decriminalised consensual same-sex sex between adults in private ( Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968–69 ). However, penalties for public same-sex sex in some jurisdictions increased at the same time ( Sexual Offences Act, 1967 ), or new crimes against same-sex intimacy were enacted (Criminal Code of 1961 (Ill Comp Stat)). Prosecutions for gross indecency in England and Wales in the decade after 1967 trebled, which involved sexual activity between men that fell short of sodomy (Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, 2017). Illinois criminalised ‘lewd fondling or caress of the body of another person of the same sex’ in a public place (Criminal Code of 1961 (Ill Comp Stat)). Police surveillance and prosecution of male same-sex sex intensified in New South Wales (NSW) in the 1950s, and had become normalised by the early 1960s, amid an increase in penalties and a broadening of legislation that criminalised male same-sex sex (Wotherspoon, 1989). Homosexuality was decriminalised in NSW in 1984 (Crimes Amendment Act, 1984 (NSW)), and not until 1997 across all Australian jurisdictions (Toonen v Australia (1994)).

This article contributes to the scant research into queer lives in the regions (Waitt and Gorman-Murray, 2011) and the inter-relationship between sexuality, masculinity, law, space and place in regional areas (Fileborn, 2019). Newcastle-Maitland is the seventh largest area by population in Australia, and is encompassed by the Hunter region, approximately 160 km north of Sydney. Newcastle is the major city of the area, and is home to the world’s largest coal port. In the national imaginary, Newcastle is still a product of its coal mining, steel production and ship building industries in the post-Second World War years up until the 1980s (Croxton, 1981) – a period of industrial decline, and subsequent expansion of the services and tourism sectors in recent decades. Despite the city’s population, analysis of the region’s queer¹ history (Wafer, 2015; Wafer et al., 2000) could go further in articulating the deeper normative notions and images of sexual identity, masculinity, and criminal justice processes that have contributed to the city’s practices of self-definition (Taylor, 2004). In doing so, the article identifies the material, symbolic, and personal dimensions that combined constitute a regional queer identity within its legal and temporal geographies (Lacey, 2013) and connects them to place.

Stereotypical perceptions of queer lives in the regions involve closetedness, normative masculinity, familiarity, and migration to the metropole, relative to the perceived tolerance, anonymity and greater fluidity of the possibilities of sexuality in capital cities (Waitt and Gorman-Murray, 2011). These stereotypes are based on a preponderance of academic research from and about queer experiences in capital cities that has contributed to this dichotomy (Waitt and Gorman-Murray, 2011). Overlooked in this binary framing is the way ordinary people ‘imagine’ their social surroundings in the regions and which is ‘carried in images, stories and legends’ (Taylor, 2004: 23).

This context shows where and in what ways sexual cultures in regional areas have coexisted (Smith, 2015), and their co-use of public spaces for social organising and cohesion (Connell et al., 1993). Context also clarifies the role of national gay and lesbian media and advocacy networks in harnessing regional experiences of police and service discrimination as broader evidence for decriminalisation and equality through anti-discrimination legislation.

Concurrently, this research can highlight the inter-relationship between regional and metropolitan criminal justice actors that make it difficult to isolate a ‘regional’ approach to police discretion and accountability. In such contexts, political economy, geography, and familiarity are often used as definers of regional uniqueness based on modes of masculinity (Metcalfe, 1993), and their relationship with expressions of homosexuality (Connell et al., 1993; Dowsett, 1996; NJP, 1981).

Drawing on analyses of a systematic review of print and television media, oral histories, and ephemera – the article provides insight into processes of post-Second World War criminalisation of male same-sex offences in Newcastle up until 1989. The article is one of several based on archival research that maps the political, professional and personal contours of the Newcastle LGBTQ+ criminal justice experience. The sample for this article ends in 1989 for largely pragmatic reasons to do with data availability (see the ‘Method’ section). Integrating queer Newcastle stories with literature on these decades, the article provides fine-grained perspectives from defendants, police, magistrates, medical practitioners, activists and community organisations on the regional surveillance, prosecution and publicity of male same-sex offences.

The article draws on Duggan’s concept of homonormativity to articulate the broadening and subsequent narrowing of criminalisation of same-sex sex based on certain kinds of sexual orientation and gender identity and their positioning within mainstream culture through domesticity and consumption (Duggan, 2002). The enforcement of criminal law and its co-option of space through police surveillance shows the ways in which ostensible middle class professional heterosexual desire and expectations criminalised acts of same-sex attraction in the 1950s and 1960s, and how police discretion continued to disproportionately target male same-sex sex into the 1970s, despite shifts in public opinion. It then shows the subsequent publicisation of same-sex intimacy in the 1970s and 1980s as a way to normalise same-sex relationships through companionship and economic security. The effectiveness of this legitimising strategy is evident in the enactment of same-sex marriage legislation in over 34 countries, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the USA (Pew Research Center, 2023).

First, we provide background on the broadening of criminalisation of male same-sex sex in the post-Second World War decades with a focus on NSW. Next, we consider the legal, social and environmental factors that have defined the queer Newcastle imaginary. We then detail the parameters of the sample and our approach to the thematic analysis, after which we home in on the data on Newcastle and discuss the implications from the findings.

Background

By the end of the Second World War, most major population centres in Australia had an established and thriving, though often small, homosexual subculture based around long-time friendship networks (French, 1993). In the immediate post-Second World War decades across the Western world, homosexuality was demonised in new and more public ways (Willett, 2008). Policing intensified, the range of laws was expanded, and lesbians and gay men were subject to vilification and discrimination more than ever before (Willett, 2008; see also Featherstone and Kaladelfos, 2016). In Australia, there was a push to establish pre-Second World War ‘order’ (Wotherspoon, 1989), with homosexuals deemed as threats to children and the community, and as agents of communism (Willett, 2008). The intensification, and the disambiguation of the category of vice that sharpened focus on male same-sex attraction as deviant, was amplified through open collaboration between the mainstream media and police (Willett, 2008).

In NSW, one step in this intensification was through a 1951 amendment to section 80 of the NSW Crimes Act ( Crimes Act 1900 (NSW)) making even consensual attempts at so-called acts against the order of nature or ‘abominable’ offences, such as buggery, liable to a period of penal servitude of 5 years (in line with section 81 for indecent assault; Wotherspoon, 1989). In November 1952, NSW police commissioner Delaney committed to overhauling every NSW police branch to address ‘weaknesses’ in policing including the ‘strong need for homosexual offences to receive urgent attention’ (Sydney Morning Herald 1952). The self-fulfilling prophecy of increased police surveillance and prosecution, and its publicity through the media, was aided by the formal broadening of criminalisation through new offences, and increases in penalties for indecency to ‘combat homosexuality’ (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1954b). Justification for this necessity included uncritical ‘press reports’ that ‘. . . highlighted the alarming increase in this serious crime both here and in England’ (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1954b).

For example, the new offence of s81B involved ‘soliciting’ or ‘inciting’ or ‘attempting to solicit or incite’ another male to commit or be party to any of the crimes outlined in sections 79 (buggery or bestiality), 81 (indecent assault with or without consent), and 81A (act of indecency with another male person or procuring same – also a new offence). In another new section, s379A of the NSW Crimes Act, a count could ‘be added for an offence under s81A’ for an indictment of an offence under sections 79, 80, or 81. Moreover, new section 379B set out that ‘[i]n an indictment for an unnatural crime, or an attempt to commit the same, counts may be added under both section 379 and 379A’. So it was therefore possible to add extra charges for any one offence (Wotherspoon, 1989).

Penalties were doubled under section 81B, from 6 months gaol to 12 months, with the imposition of higher penalties resulting in many of the offences becoming indictable (Wotherspoon, 1989). Section 81B was deemed necessary because of a 1953 supreme court decision that had rejected the use by police of S.4(2)(o)(ii) of the Vagrancy Act (1902) , which police had been using to arrest males who they considered were soliciting for a homosexual act (Wotherspoon 1989). The changes to the NSW Crimes Act also contained provisions for the suppression of details of the cases coming before the courts under the auspices of protecting adolescent children from obscenity, providing cover for police who were engaging in entrapment through soliciting men to obtain arrests (Wotherspoon, 1989). According to Delaney, by 1958, the homosexual vice had become Australia’s ‘greatest menace and fastest growing crime’ (French, 1993).

This complex period of penal intensification was concurrent with major inquiries that recommended decriminalisation in the United Kingdom (the 1957 Wolfenden Report) and in the United States (see Model Penal Code, 1962). Absence of media reporting in Newcastle on male same-sex offences into the 1960s reflected the normalisation of the police surveillance and prosecution of these offences as an ongoing police priority. Medical responses to male same-sex conduct were gaining more visibility, and by the late 1960s, pursuit of legal recognition for sexual minorities through the anti-discrimination norms of identity politics (Mason, 2014) had harnessed the formative homophile political organising of the 1950s in the United States into a social movement (Willett, 2008). The development of the Australian gay and lesbian press in the 1970s and the homosexual liberation movement (Robinson, 2010) provided support for emancipatory and divergent expressions of masculinity (Altman 2012 [1971]; Tucker et al., 2007). By the late 1970s and into the 1980s, anti-discrimination legislation was used to address inequity in employment and services as the push for decriminalisation grew. Homosexuality was decriminalised in NSW in 1984, but at the same time, the demonising media framing of the HIV/AIDS crisis re-stigmatised same-sex attracted men.²

Locating the queer Newcastle imaginary

Processes of criminalisation of same-sex attraction in a regional city such as Newcastle involve layers of metropole policing and legal authority that make Sydney very much a part of Newcastle’s criminal law mechanisms. Sydney detectives managed criminal investigations in Newcastle, and cases might be heard in Sydney courts, and vice versa. Much of the political reporting in Newcastle is from publications and journalists based in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne or Perth. Therefore, and as might be expected, Newcastle’s policing and judicial functions are enmeshed within the broader NSW criminal justice system, national and global debates on social issues covered by and syndicated in Newcastle media, and by the national gay and lesbian media in the 1970s, and the same-sex social networks between Newcastle and Sydney surveilled by police.

At the same time, the categorisation of Newcastle is itself ambiguous, as the city is often grouped with Australia’s capital cities on major policy issues such as migration, and aspects of tertiary education (Ellis and Mulholland, 2022). Metcalfe has argued that the rational transcendence over nature central to the generation myth about Newcastle is also manifested in ‘the power of bourgeois or at least respectable men over working-class men’ (Metcalfe, 1993: 7), and which is arguably manifested in magistrates presiding over male same-sex offence cases of men more heavily surveilled by police, and therefore, more likely to be working class (Connell et al., 1993). Moreover, those who suffered employment discrimination or ‘aversion’ therapy were encountering not necessarily the homophobia of the working class, but of employers and doctors (Connell et al., 1993), who through framing same-sex attraction as a matter of personal discipline, trivialised the material inequality of criminalisation (Duggan, 2002).

Connell et al. (1993) and Smith (2015) have noted that in conjunction with ‘[r]eligious bigotries and hypermasculinities, working-class traditions include a broad current of sexual explicitness . . . and sexual tolerance’ (Connell et al., 1993: 119). Contradictory interpretations of masculinity in relation to offenders, their employment and their ‘toughness’, particularly former military personnel and tradesmen, illuminate some of the stereotypical, heteronormative framing of post-Second World War masculinity and its relationship to the spatial and economic context of Newcastle. Perceptions of the ‘cultureless physicality of men and the raw masculinity of Newcastle’ underscored by ‘dirtiness, roughness and brutality’ (Metcalfe, 1993: 6) sit comfortably with Smith’s findings about diverse male sexuality in the north of England (Smith, 2015), through floor shows and mock marriages held at queer house parties in Newcastle, the guests at which were a confluence of Sydney and Newcastle residents. As such, the cases drawn upon in this article show that the pursuit of a coherent, uniform sexual identity of the past will disappoint (Smith, 2015).

The use of public sites such as beaches and parks as meeting places where men would have sex with men illustrates the centrality of nature to the framing of Newcastle and same-sex culture (Connell et al., 1993; Dowsett, 1996; Wafer, 2015). But which could also be said for a range of coastal cities across Australia. What they might have in common with other regional areas is the stronger social networks of provincial life; the sense of intimacy and personal knowledge in the moderate numbers involved, and social connections with relatives, and old friends (Connell et al., 1993). Licensed premises feature in the Newcastle queer narrative, and are as notable for their transience in Newcastle as in other cities (Lin, 2021). The ‘thin’ homosexual milieu in many of them blurred with drag performance, and perceptions of delinquency including under-age drinking, illegal drugs, and other socially unaccepted behaviour (Rea, 1979; Tucker et al., 2007).

Method

Rigorous accounts of criminalisation need to address the pre-enactment circumstances that produce the criminal laws that emerge from legislatures or of their intensification (McNamara et al., 2018, 2019). Yet, legal geography and the temporal insights developed by historiographers and anthropologists (Valverde, 2015) have under-interrogated processes of criminalisation within political and economic settings and their relationship to sexual orientation as an identifier in regional areas. At the same time, the static, functional theorising of cross-sectional analysis (Connell et al., 1993) can sever processes of criminalisation and emancipation from broader trends in criminal justice through periodisation (Russell, 2020). This article seeks to address these methodological shortcomings through analysis of the ‘conflicted intimacy’ (Ellis, 2021) between police and the communities they surveil; scrutiny of recreation sites such as beats and bars, but driven by an increased likelihood of achieving a conviction within such communities. In doing so, the article responds to the following questions: What insights can be derived from analysis of same-sex criminalisation in regional areas? What spaces and places have defined same-sex attraction in Newcastle? To what extent does the analysis of male same-sex criminalisation in Newcastle converge and diverge from existing studies?

Sample

Search terms

The sample is based on a keyword search to identify (1) interactions between the queer community and the police or legal system; (2) discussion of political, legal, social, cultural or legislative events affecting those communities; and (3) discussion of public attitudes towards those communities. Most sources directly relate to Newcastle. However, sources connected to other locations were included if the source offered an insight into events or circumstances which might have influenced the Newcastle context. The core search terms were (Homosexual OR Queer OR Gay OR Lesbian) AND (Police OR Law OR Offence OR Crime) which were further refined by location (Newcastle, NSW). These combinations of search terms produced limited initial results, but identified key events affecting Newcastle’s queer community in the post-Second World War period. The search terms were then revised to reflect these key events as well as the stigmatisation and surveillance of the queer community in both legal and public domains. The search terminology reflected the language and events of the period and included ‘perverts’ OR ‘perversion’, ‘indecency’, ‘Alan Edge’ OR ‘Alan Edge murder’, ‘Star Hotel’ OR ‘Star’, ‘legalise’ OR ‘law’, ‘HIV’ OR ‘AIDS’. The Newcastle Herald Index provided categorised lists of all articles published for each year between 1942 and 1984, and the articles under ‘crime’, ‘churches’, ‘police’, ‘discrimination’ and ‘Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)’ were most relevant.

Sample and analysis

The data were collated between July 2021 and April 2022, with 205 results returned (N = 205). Media reports make up the bulk of the sample (n = 158), and were mainly sourced from microfilms from leading Newcastle masthead the Newcastle Herald by first identifying relevant article titles, the publication dates and page numbers from the Newcastle Herald Index (1942–1984). ‘Morning’ was cut from the masthead in 1980. The index only covers articles up to 1984, so Newcastle Herald microfilms dated after this year were unable to be sourced. However, the Newcastle Herald sources were triangulated with Newcastle related sources from the Gale Archives of Sexuality and Gender (GALE; n = 24), and Trove (n = 15), the National Library of Australia online library database, revealing additional sources dated up to 1989. Visual and audio data were sourced from NBN News Television footage reels (n = 6), a regional television station set up in 1962, and which is the only local commercial TV broadcaster in Newcastle, providing an essential service to the Hunter Region, and to northern NSW. Two relevant oral histories from the Hunter Rainbow History Group (n = 2) were identified in the Newcastle Living Histories web portal. Data were imported into EndNote to record references and organise sources by publication date from January 1948 to February 1989. The distribution of articles across decades is as follows: 1950–1959 (n = 25), 1960–1969 (n = 6), 1970–1979 (n = 56), 1980–1989 (n = 118).

Sources were thematically coded in NVivo software to identify frequent phrases in the text, rather than descriptive codes which may be based on pre-constituted meanings (Charmaz, 2006). Thematic saturation was reached as new information or ideas ceased to appear. Given the syndication of news between capital cities and regional presses, many of the print media articles are from Sydney or Canberra, and have been drawn upon to show the reach of the debate on homosexuality across Australian jurisdictions and internationally. Conversely, we home in on material that provides in-depth insight into the time and place of criminalisation of same-sex sex in Newcastle and the wider Hunter region and its relationship to identity, a more detailed analysis to which we now turn.

‘Hand sex perverts to police’: Broadening of criminalisation

The media reports from Newcastle from the 1950s reflect the broadening of criminalisation and penal intensification and its impacts across NSW, Australia, and globally through increased police surveillance and prosecution of same-sex male conduct from the late 1940s and into the early 1950s (Willett, 2008). The Newcastle Morning Herald’s call to action from local police to the community to ‘Hand Sex Perverts to Police’ (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1948) illuminates the role of media in establishing deviant framing of targeted groups, and foregrounds its use to justify subsequent broadening of criminalisation (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1954b). This penal intensification and policing of public space emphasised the denial of privacy protections ‘against state interference in domestic and sexual life to all but the procreative, intra-racially married’ (Duggan, 2022: 180).

Police visits to the homes and workplaces of those questioned had personal consequences where gay men were ‘outed’ to their family, friends and employers, and in some cases by parents themselves (Wafer, 2000, 2015). In a forthright claim against the criminalisation of consensual same-sex sex and the impacts of stigmatisation from such labelling, one defendant blamed his conviction for theft from a house in the Newcastle suburb of Waratah and a general life of crime on criticism during his youth of his homosexuality, and ‘the attitude of other people’ (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1953b). Judicial comment on how to address the ‘pernicious practice’ ranged from medical treatment, imprisonment and more punitive sentences (Newcastle Sun, 1952c). In terms of the judiciary’s active role in amplifying the menace found in Newcastle to a national emergency, Judge Brereton from Newcastle Quarter Sessions noted with alarm that ‘evidence of perversion’ in the cases before him ‘. . . should serve to awaken the whole country’ (The Sun, 1952).

The broadening of criminalisation is reflected in the framing of 10 males for a range of same-sex ‘unnatural acts’ ( Crimes Act 1900 (NSW)) in mid-1952 as ‘gang’ activity, some of whom recruited ‘reinforcements’ from Sydney (Newcastle Sun, 1952c), and ‘lured’ minors into the vice of homosexuality. Most of the men pleaded guilty to ‘abominable’ offences, and several to indecent assault charges, and were said to be ‘helpful’ and ‘cooperative’ with police (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1952b). Similar to other research, not only from the regions, guilty pleas and a lack of witnesses suggest uncritical judicial alignment with police briefs (Smith, 2015). Many of the men were simultaneously constructed as active participants in the crimes, but also victims who were manipulated by more experienced homosexuals (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1952b). If the men were not caught, it was argued, they would be liable to ‘infect’ others, and could progress to ‘chronic’ offending (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1952a; Sydney Morning Herald, 1953).

Eight of the men were sentenced. The penalties were a good behaviour bond for one man, suspended sentences for five men, and 3 years gaol for two men (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1952a, 1952b, 1952c, Wafer et al., 2000). Keith Robinson, a Newcastle mercer, was one of the supposed leaders of the men, who had his case transferred to Sydney, as Robinson argued that he would not receive a fair trial in Newcastle (Wafer, 2000). Robinson was acquitted of all charges (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1953a). The collation of those incidents into what was subsequently framed as the ‘yellow socks’ affair, was based on the fallacious claim that the men, and homosexuals in Newcastle, wore yellow garments, including yellow socks, to signal their identification as same-sex attracted (Dickson and Connell, 2023).

The media reports on cases of same-sex offences are insightful in illuminating the mobility of same-sex attracted men between Newcastle and Sydney for employment and socialising. Two of the men were employed at the Holsworthy military camp in Sydney; a conversation on a Manly ferry trip (a Sydney ferry route) included an invitation to attend a function in Newcastle; a Redfern resident (an inner-city suburb of Sydney) is invited to perform a floorshow in Newcastle. House parties in the Newcastle suburbs of Hamilton and Belmont, the said floor show, and the attendance at a mock wedding, further evoke the vibrancy of this social scene, in addition to public places as locations of same-sex desire or affiliation.

‘Perversion “more flagrant,” psychiatrist declares’

The opinions of medical professionals published in newspapers showed a concurrent medical discourse on homosexuality, notable in judicial comments about ‘re-education’ in the ‘yellow socks’ affair (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1952b). The cases of Albert William Jones and Barry James Goodwin illuminate the focus on gender as an explanation for same-sex attraction, as Jones had ‘actually been brought up as a girl’ and Goodwin ‘had a 60-40 percentage of masculinity and femininity in his makeup’ (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1952b, 1952c). In a nod to less medicalised forms of so called ‘conversion therapy’, Dr Idris Morgan said that Jones should be taken from his home and educated in manly activities, such as joining a police boy’s club (Newcastle Sun, 1952c); indicative of the heteronormativity of the public facing professional middle-classes, and the acceptance of a spectrum of sexual orientation and gender identification in private.

In his address to a Newcastle Legacy Luncheon in July 1952, Dr N. Kirkwood, the medical superintendent at Watt Street hospital in Newcastle, stated that homosexuality was more ‘inborn than acquired’, and referred to the works of prominent figures in psychology, including psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis (Newcastle Sun, 1952a). Dominant police and legal discourses generated the notion that homosexuality was widespread and on the rise in Newcastle (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1954a). However, one psychiatrist attributed the increase in public awareness of homosexuality to ‘improved’ police methods of detection and an increase in homosexual ‘flagrancy’ (Newcastle Sun, 1953). As such, ‘. . . there seemed to have been no increase in the number of perverts in proportion to population’ (Newcastle Sun, 1953).

The ascendancy of psychiatry is reflected in its relationship to the prison as a site of experimentation on male same-sex attraction into the 1950s. The governor of Maitland gaol stated that ‘[r]ecidivist homosexuals are beginning to present a problem which must receive consideration in the future’ (Newcastle Sun, 1954). The increase in homosexual prisoners had made them ‘harder to civilise’, and that as such ‘they must be separated from other prisoners’, despite no cases of a homosexual breaking a regulation in 1953 (Newcastle Sun, 1954). In the same article is a subheading ‘migrant crime’, and mention of reconstruction of Cooma gaol to accommodate the rise in these two prison populations (Newcastle Sun, 1954). The arbitrariness not only of morally driven criminalisation, but of police discretion, is reflected in the framing of male same-sex attraction as a criminal offence by legislators despite a low likelihood of ‘rehabilitation’, and counter to views, even in 1952, that argued that legal responses to ‘safeguarding’ the community from same-sex attraction belonged in the ‘dark ages’ (Newcastle Sun, 1952c).

Normalisation and the push for decriminalisation through identity politics

The relative absence of media focus on the policing of male same-sex offences into the 1960s in the Newcastle media or from syndicated news from Sydney, Canberra and other capital cities, can in part be explained by the normalisation of the surveillance of male same-sex conduct as a key feature of policing homosexual offences across NSW, with ‘a slight increase in the number of arrests for offences of this nature’ in 1962 compared to 1961 (Parliament of New South Wales, 1963). At the same time, articles published in Sydney newspapers and syndicated in Newcastle show an increased attention to civil liberties, which included recognition of overzealous policing of male same-sex sex both internationally and in Australia (Hawkins, 1965).

Into the 1970s, identity politics grows as a legitimate frame through which to address inadequate criminal justice responses to claims of discrimination against gay and lesbian people (n = 18/55 articles). A 1973 opinion poll revealed that close to half the NSW population supported decriminalisation (48% yes, 6% no opinion), as homophobic attitudes continued to be broadcast in the media (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1973). More generally, there was recognition through public fora such as the ‘Tribunal on homosexuals and discrimination’ in NSW that consensual same-sex conduct should be decriminalised (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1976). At the same time, employment and relationship rights were used as levers to justify equality for the same-sex attracted based on the inherent human needs of intimacy, economic security, and certainty.

By the late 1970s, a commodified gay and lesbian culture and media (Connell et al., 1993) was manifested in the community response to the NSW police investigation into the murder of Newcastle Herald night messenger Alan Edge in 1977 (Franklyn, 1977, 1978). Edge was last seen at South Newcastle Beach around midnight on 8 October 1977, and found strangled and robbed in his flat the next day (Marr, 1978). Edge’s murder, and the ensuing ‘witch-hunt’ of the gay community, was widely reported in queer magazines such as Campaign Australia, which published advice on how to interact with police (Franklyn, 1977). Homophobic, derogatory and aggressive attitudes held by police in this investigation deepened mistrust of the police among gay men in Newcastle (Franklyn, 1977), and which was compounded by invasive and coercive questioning of same-sex attracted men who feared being outed by police (Franklyn, 1977).

Campaign Australia brought the issue to the attention of NSW Premier Neville Wran, who appealed to the Newcastle queer community to report complaints of police harassment to leading gay and lesbian political organisation ‘Campaign Against Moral Persecution’ (C.A.M.P; Carson, 1978). The questioning of hundreds of gay men, estimated to be between 450 and 600, was later justified by the head of Newcastle Criminal Investigation Branch, Max Lamond in comments to the National Times – ‘these people can get very jealous . . . You have to keep an eye out for spats or hatreds’ (Marr, 1978).

Further comments from Lamond were indicative of his arrogance about the shift in sentiment towards, and increased visibility of, homosexuality:

Homosexuals are brazen. Previously you didn’t see them. They’ve blossomed out in the last two to three years . . . They bring added problems, there’s no doubt about that . . . But it’s nothing we can’t handle. (Marr, 1978)

Mainstream media reports of the investigation and subsequent trial omitted details of police methods (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1977a, 1977b). The murder of a 13-year-old boy in Kurri, a small town in the Hunter region in the Cessnock local government area, ‘. . . because he was a poofter’, further shows the boldness of bigotry at this time (Campaign Australia, 1978), and in subsequent decades (Callaghan et al., 2018).

Anti-discrimination as a legitimating tactic against criminalisation

In January 1979, homophobic advertisements created by Star Hotel licensee Don Graham appeared in the Newcastle Morning Herald and received national media attention (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1979b). The Star Hotel was not an exclusively gay and lesbian venue and was also frequented by bikers, sailors and music fans, who congregated in three separate sections of the bar, and which blurred over time (Tucker et al., 2007).

Graham stated that drag queens would no longer be accepted into the bar, but ‘normal-looking homosexuals’ were ‘quite welcome as long as they don’t create problems’ (Lowe, 1979), indicative of the expansion of homonormativity for some, but not for others. The gay and lesbian press framed the advertisements as Graham’s ‘pub with no queers’ campaign (Campaign Australia, 1979; Newcastle Morning Herald, 1979c). Newcastle Morning Herald staff claimed they were unaware of the intended meaning of the advertisement and the connotations associated with the words ‘puff’ (sic), ‘camping’ and ‘straight’ (Campaign Australia, 1979).

The NSW Advertising Standards Council approached The Newcastle Herald and Graham for an explanation. The NSW anti-discrimination board wrote a letter to Graham about the complaints it received (Lowe, 1979), and which illustrated the growing incongruence of criminal law and anti-discrimination law in NSW. In its investigation of the advertisements, the board acknowledged the offensiveness of the advertisements, but ruled that they were ‘not actionable under the Anti-Discrimination Act’ (Campaign Australia, 1979). The hotel was picketed on 3 February 1979 by members of the Newcastle and Sydney queer community, including former employees (Lowe, 1979; Newcastle Morning Herald, 1979b). The protest was attended by approximately 30 people, and while police and security guards were present nearby, the protest ended peacefully (Lowe, 1979). In an inverse take on the meaning of ‘conversion’, Graham stated that Newcastle had the highest rate of homosexuals of any Australian city, and that it was known Australia-wide as a ‘conversion centre’:

This [The Star] is a hotbed of homos and it’s time we stopped closing our eyes to the fact. A lot of the gay entertainers and models in Sydney and Melbourne have had their start here.

I don’t want my teenage son and daughter turned into homosexuals. Neither do most mums and dads in Newcastle.

That’s why I’m taking my stand against the drag queens and lesbians who have been haunting my hotel since I took it over five years ago. (Lowe, 1979)

In the same year, the Newcastle Diocese of the Anglican Church discussed an English General Synod report on homosexual relationships that recommended homosexual men not be refused ordination, and that the age of consent for homosexual acts be reduced from 21 to 18 years (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1979a). Reverend Noel Spohr of Islington stated that the report represented ‘the beginning of diocesan acceptance of homosexuals and eventually of homosexual clergy’, which ‘comes next to ordaining women as priests’ (Newcastle Morning Herald, 1979a).

Employment benefit disputes for gay and lesbian couples foregrounded the legitimacy of same-sex relationships, and which contributed to law reform debate on the decriminalisation of same-sex male sex (Newcastle Herald, 1984c, 1984g). Human interest stories on the difficulties faced by same-sex attracted men and women in their romantic and social relationships humanised the gay and lesbian community in the lead up to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in NSW in 1984 (Newcastle Herald, 1984k; Potter, 1984), and exemplifies the leverage of domesticity as a point of access to homonormativity. However, the Newcastle Herald’s editorial position on the NSW anti-discrimination board’s decision to support concessional travel entitlements for same-sex couples was that the board had ‘gone off the rails’ (Newcastle Herald, 1984f). The expansion of this entitlement speaks to the downwards distribution of social movements and the tension that this represents in a growing context of neoliberalism from the late 1970s onwards (Duggan, 2004).

Re-stigmatisation: HIV/AIDS

This context formed the backdrop for the re-stigmatisation of the queer community through the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s (Sarre and Tomsen, 1997), amid concerted gay and lesbian community organising in response to homophobia legitimated by a ‘sensationalising’ media (Callaghan et al., 2018). The first case of AIDS in Australia appeared in the media in 1982. Early media coverage on AIDS focused on the identities and sexual practices of ‘at risk’ individuals (Newcastle Herald, 1984a), eventually shifting towards concern over how they conducted themselves in the public sphere (Newcastle Herald, 1984h). Public concern that HIV could be spread into the heterosexual community through contaminated blood donations was a key focal point in the Newcastle Herald (1984b, 1984e, 1984i, 1984j). Media reports on the criminal liability of HIV+ people who deliberately donated blood stigmatised the lifestyles of gay and bisexual men who were framed as irresponsible, untrustworthy or living ‘in the fast lane’ (Newcastle Herald, 1984d). The significant media coverage of this issue amplified the perceived risk of receiving donated HIV+ contaminated blood in the community.

By the end of the 1980s, an estimated 2500 people in the Hunter Region were said to be HIV positive (Wardhaugh, n.d.). Several organisations were created throughout the decade to support those who were diagnosed, including the AIDS Council of NSW (ACON) – which opened a Hunter branch in 1988, and Community Support Network Hunter (Wardhaugh, n.d.). The Newcastle branch of the NSW Police Association called for increased protection for injured police officers from receiving HIV contaminated blood, suggesting that ‘a person who commits a homosexual act and then knowingly gives blood . . . is like going down the street with a gun and shooting someone’ (Barrass, 1984). Meanwhile, queer magazines were urging readers not to donate blood and publishing information on the latest research developments and safe sex practices (Campaign Australia, 1984, 1986).

Discussion

Media framing of the political, professional and personal dynamics of the criminalisation of male same-sex sex in regional areas reflects the reach of penal intensification of that conduct in the post-Second World War years across Australia and many other western liberal democracies. The perspectives herein from defendants, police, magistrates, medical practitioners, activists and community organisations show how ill-defined moral arguments backed by judicial, policing, medical and media forces can arbitrarily criminalise marginalised populations with devastating consequences. Despite the formal broadening of criminalisation of male same-sex sex offences in the 1950s in NSW, the article reveals a breadth of disclosure and resistance in the cases documented from Newcastle that contest the perceived sensibilities of the time, and extends the implications of criminalisation beyond cross-sectional analyses of the 1950s that have periodised these issues by decade (Willett, 2008). In doing so, they reflect a sexual diversity that challenges the stereotype of regional places as closeted, sexually uniform and jumping off points for migration to capital cities. The vindication of Keith Robinson, and disclosure from defendants of their same-sex attraction amid growing medical arguments of its innateness, illuminate this diversity. They also show uneven outcomes for same-sex attracted men and their families ensnared in the conservatism of the post-Second World War years and in many cases by their class, and that the ‘raw masculinity’ of Newcastle was but one expression of same-sex male sexuality and gender.

The mobilisation of the criminal law and its relationship to conventional interpretations of masculinity are reflected in the judicial indignation and reinforcement of ‘masculinity’ as a remedy for male same-sex offences, and which exposes the contradictions therein; one defendant was required to ‘toughen up’ through sports, while three of the other defendants are noted as either servicemen, or ex-servicemen, acknowledging that the very masculine identity of the armed forces accommodated a range of gender expression and male same-sex attraction. Analysis of these issues and the personal perspectives provided through media articles from or focusing on Newcastle has provided a more nuanced, less simplistic, and less sentimentalised picture of male same-sex attraction in the regions.

The complex of space and place that has defined the criminalisation of same-sex attraction in Newcastle, and community resistance, is reflected in a continuum of homoerotic experience across a number of social settings (Connell et al., 1993); courts, licenced premises, beats for sex and affiliation, the street as a protest site against discrimination at The Star Hotel, amid broader arguments about homonormativity; ‘normal looking’ homosexuals in, drag queens out. Homes provided cover for private intimacy away from the public gaze of police surveillance, but which the police could still access. At the same time, we can see in Newcastle, the role that criminalisation played in defining a homosexual ‘type’ through criminal and medical categorisation (Smith, 2015).

The investigation of the murder of Alan Edge, and the service discrimination from the Star Hotel, embody the growing tension between criminal and anti-discrimination law in NSW in the years leading up to decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1984. Gay and lesbian community organising was integral to combatting that stigma through networked community advocacy, including media relations and law reform. That organising reflected the broader inter-relationship between regional cities proximate to the metropole and how they mutually constitute each other’s legal and social cultures. These examples of the mobilisation of the identity politics movement in response to the failures of criminal justice institutions to take the claims of LGBTQ+ victims seriously (Mason, 2014) led to the creation in Newcastle of the co-use of public entertainment spaces such as bars as part of the broader commercialisation of gay identity (Connell et al., 1993). At the same time, these ‘histories’ of conflicted intimacy are very much connected to the present through the special commission of inquiry into LGBTIQ+ hate crimes in NSW between 1970 and 2010, which has investigated several Newcastle cases for gay-hate bias (one of which has been recommended for a fresh inquest) (Sackar, 2023), continued employment and service discrimination, and debate over ‘conversion’ practices.

Newcastle is an increasingly diverse city, and one that is very much grounded in its mining and steel making history, and at the same time invested in LGBTQ+ equality. This is reflected in the Australian same-sex marriage postal survey, in which the federal electorate of Newcastle recorded the highest ‘yes’ vote in NSW outside of Sydney, with 74.8% of Newcastle voters supporting same-sex marriage (Beaumont, 2017). One senses that despite the broadening of criminalisation of male same-sex sex in the 1950s in NSW, and its normalisation into the 1960s, that Newcastle might well have been more liberal than it has been given credit for. The next stage of this research, into the 1990s and up to the present, reflects this perspective even more so.

Conclusion

Regional queer histories bring their own context to arbitrary processes of criminalisation of male same-sex attraction and resistance to police surveillance, yet they are under-interrogated. The insights in this article on the Newcastle queer community from defendants, police, magistrates, medical practitioners, activists and community organisations in the post-Second World War years up until 1989 contribute to filling that gap. They emphasise shifts in criminalisation over time and the ways in which a sexual identity shaped by criminalisation and pathologisation created a resistance that would be used to push back on arbitrary moral, legal and medical arguments over male same-sex attraction as deviant, and through the commodification of that resistance. The Newcastle experience is very much grounded in local political economy, geography, and familiarity, but at the same time, connected to the criminal law machinery of NSW, and national and global debates over sexual identity. Any future research into a regional queer imaginary needs to reflect this complexity.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author(s) received funding from the Copley Bequest to undertake the archival research for this article.

ORCID iD

Justin R Ellis

Notes

Author biographies

Justin R Ellis’ programme of research into perceptions of safety and fear of crime focuses on identifying the situational and cultural factors that drive violence against sexual and gender diversity. His broader research programme of ‘digiqueer’ criminology examines the relationship between digital media and LGBTQ+ representation and resistance.

Grace Barham’s research examines policy responses to criminal justice issues in Australia and opportunities to achieve social justice for criminalised and vulnerable populations. Her current focus considers the influence of state-driven policy on regional housing interventions for women leaving domestic and family violence.

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