Hen night free zone: show me the way!

I read on the BBC website today that a bar in Melbourne (one of my favourite cities in the world) has banned heterosexuals. I can just imagine the Daily Mail’s reaction now.

This may sound bizarre, but I think that it’s a terribly understandable thing to do. It’s not that we gaylords are heterophobic as such, but I’m afraid that straight readers have to accept that we often encounter the least acceptable face of straight-dom. Our social encounters with straight people are often in the format of hen nights, who unaccountably believe their impending heterosexual marriage is best celebrated by monopolising any gay bar they can find. Now that it’s no longer acceptable to go and laugh at lunatics in asylums, we queers will have to do. It’s a well observed fact that the atmosphere of Canal Street in Manchester is now considerably less pleasant than it used to be. This is almost entirely due to the prodigious presence of vulgar, loud and drunken hen nights. I take particular objection to having to wait to get into a bar because it’s full when it’s full with people who have no shortage of other places that they could go to laugh raucously at 3 foot inflatable phalluses and wear L plates. For the benefit of any non-English readers means “learner”; a spurious allusion to sexual naivety prior to a wedding night, although I suggest that it ought to be taken to mean “leper”.

It surprises me not one bit that Australia, country of all things good and much commonsense, has supported this bar’s decision. I fear that in the UK few bars would have the nerve to do so.