INFORMATION

Editor: Denis Lemon
News Editor: Michael Mason
Contributing Editor (Features): Roger Baker
Art Director: Jean-Claude Thevenin
Advertising/Circulation Manager: Peter Mundy
Business Manager: Stuart Patterson
Admin Assistant, Subscriptions, Box Replies, Listings: Anne Elizabeth
Typesetting, Art Assistant: Sandi Rutenberg
Regular Contributors: Sean Aubrey, Barry Conley, Denis Cohn, Brian Dax, Richard Thomson, Iain Finlayson, Jackie Forster, John Gough, Carl Hill, Howard Llewellyn, John Montgomery, Rictor Norton, David Seligman, Pete Wicker and Ian Dunn (Scottish correspondent)

The Sexual Reform Movement organised its first all-Ireland conference on legalising gay relations. Speakers included Don Gill, Al Stewart, Terry Bruton, Fred Broughton and Pat Knight. Male homosexuality was decriminalised in the North in 1982, and in the Republic in 1993. Meanwhile, in Western Australia, the legislature moved towards decriminalisation (achieved in 1990), whilst at Westminster, Michael Clark Hutchinson, Scottish Tory MP for Edinburgh South, pledged to derail any attempt at decriminalisation (achieved 1981).

In other news, Liverpool welcomed CHE’s quarterly National Council meeting – to the point of the Holiday Inn putting a big sign out front and Merseytravel renting out the mv Royal Iris for a big disco.

Reviews include Poland (seemingly more welcoming to LGBT+ people under Communism than it is now as a democracy), Jobriath’s self-titled album, Mrs Shufflewick’s A Drop of the Hard Stuff, and Flowers – A Pantomime for Jean Genet at the Bush Theatre.

‘Gay News receives many letters from would-be subscribers anxiously enquiring whether the paper is sent under plain cover in a sealed envelope. There is a great deal of paranoia still about having copies sent.
`It therefore amused us to receive a letter from a friend in Northern Ireland which began:
‘”Dear GN – First of all, thanks for the two copies of GN that you have sent so far. Actually I am not used to receiving large, bulky, unmarked packages and they tend to cause some paranoia, so I would welcome it if you just wrote Gay News on the back to let me know that it is safe to open…'” – page 3

Issue 38