05.27.07
Gay pub can ban heterosexuals
A MELBOURNE pub catering for gay men has won the right to refuse entry to heterosexuals in a landmark ruling at the state planning tribunal.
The owners of Collingwood’s Peel Hotel applied to ban straight men and women to try to prevent “sexually based insults and violence” towards its gay patrons.
The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal last week granted the pub an exemption to the Equal Opportunity Act, effectively prohibiting entry to non-homosexuals.
VCAT deputy president Cate McKenzie said if heterosexual men and women came into the venue in large groups, their number might be enough to swamp the gay male patrons.
“This would undermine or destroy the atmosphere which the company wishes to create,” Ms McKenzie said in her findings.
“Sometimes heterosexual groups and lesbian groups insult and deride and are even physically violent towards the gay male patrons.”
Some women even booked hens’ nights at the venue using the gay patrons as entertainment, Ms McKenzie said.
“To regard the gay male patrons of the venue as providing an entertainment or spectacle to be stared at, as one would at an animal at a zoo, devalues and dehumanises them,” she said.