Essendon Football Club- red, black & purple

“I went from being an outsider at AFL games, to an insider at the Essendon Football Club, all because I’m gay,” says Jason Tuazon-McCheyne.

An Essendon member for over 30 years, Tuazon-McCheyne attended a Bombers game in 2012 with his partner Adrian, and their friend David.

Sitting in the grandstand at Docklands’ Etihad Stadium, Tuazon-McCheyne thought to himself, ‘enough is enough’.

The arts and activism

Anthony Wallace cuts a charismatic figure, overlooking the crowd who swarm to his bar, preparing his DJ tables for another Friday night instalment of ‘Fellas in Frocks’.

As work in the performing arts grew increasingly difficult to find, Mr Wallace opened the 86, a cabaret bar in Fitzroy.

“I shook a lot of cocktails in my time, but had very little cabaret bar experience,” he chuckles.

Nearly six years later, the 86 is a roaring success, with handfuls of drag queens rotating through the bar’s popular ‘Fellas in Frocks’ Friday night spectacular.

Darebin Council bans ‘No’ same-sex campaigners

Darebin Council in Melbourne’s north is attempting to take heavy-handed action to silence ‘No’ voters on the issue of marriage equality.

Independent councillor Susan Rennie and her colleagues are set to vote on an emergency motion next week to ban ‘No’ campaigners from using council facilities.

On the 15th of August 2017, in an interview with Neil Mitchell on 3AW, Cr Rennie said: “We won’t allow council spaces to be used by groups campaigning against marriage equality.”