The Western Australian Museum has been around for 120 years and is home to some of the area’s most important scientific and cultural artifacts. But its latest acquisition is causing quite a stir among patrons.
The artifact is a wooden door with a glory hole hollowed out in the center. It came from the men’s restroom in an old train station and was donated to the museum’s Perth location, which is currently undergoing renovations, by Neil Buckley.
“It’s really an important part of social history and this is how we used to have sex at a time when it (homosexuality) was illegal,” Buckley, who saved the door when the train station was set for demolition in 1998, says.
He adds, “Because it was illegal, we had to go to a beat that was off the main drag, and that was the only place many men could meet other gay men because it was still illegal in clubs.”
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Alec Coles, chief executive of WAM, believes it’s an appropriate piece for the museum to display once it reopens because it represents a part of history that rarely gets talked about.
“We often talk about museums as safe places for unsafe ideas,” he says. “Clearly the LGBTQI community is a very important part of Perth’s society.”
According to Perth Now, private gay sex acts between consenting adults were illegal in Western Australian all the up until 1990, and it wasn’t until this year that a law allowing people to have historic homosexual convictions expunged from their records was finally passed.
But not everyone’s on board with the glory hole being on public display.
Tony Krsticevic, a member of of the Western Australian Parliament, says he doesn’t think it’s a “suitable exhibit” for young people.
“While it is appropriate for the WA Museum to chronicle the rich and proud LGBTI community as a significant element in the State’s history,” he says, “such an object is too tacky for display at what will be such a great new venue.”
He adds, “I’m not sure it is a suitable exhibit to be seen by school-children who will flock to the new WA Museum when it is completed.”
But Coles isn’t too concerned. He says the museum is a place where people “can explore topics that are maybe controversial, sometimes contentious, sometimes even confrontational, but the kind of places they can be explored in a responsible and measured way and hopefully without rancor.”
Meanwhile, Buckley understands Krsticevic’s concerns and recommends there be a content warning for sensitive museum patrons.
“It would depend on how it is presented,” he says. “I would like to think we would always be sensitive.”
“We are representing diverse views of many people and diverse views of people who may be offended … and we take that into account as well.”
Related: Residents rally to preserve city’s historic glory holes
HereIAm
This display is totally inappropriate because it gives the impression of condoning the unseemly behaviors those people from the past have engaged in. What kind of message are they trying to pass on to their children? “It’s OK to that kind of thing through a hole on the door.? What a joke!
Juanjo
Poor HereIAmMarkingAnotherBitchyPost is at it again.
stuffedpuppy
@HereIAm Yes, unfortunately “ThereYouAre”… Unfortunately museums are not meant to be curated by Disney’s magic kingdom. There are war museums (including holocaust memorials) where children are exposed to unspeakable violence. This being said, should they catch a glimpse of the g-hole tell them it’s a woodpecker’s doing…you know 😉
Clay83
Do you reallyhave nothing better to do than troll this site, why not go and spend your time on your knees praying to your potato in the sky
Lacuevaman
glory be! ….i just hope the museum places it where it can be appreciated “appropriately”..
Seem’s awfully small tho …more like a peep hole.
Itsonlythetruth
Here you are again with your negativity and hate. Like I pointed out in a previous reply, I pity you.
PinkoOfTheGange
Yes yes we know that anything having to do with human dangly bits causes the vapors in some.
barkomatic
Ha! This is quite funny but despite that I do see Buckley’s point and I think it’s a worthy and interesting museum piece. Perhaps it could be isolated a little so that small children won’t be asking their parents questions that have complicated answers.
Lacuevaman
place it in the museum’s bathroom
Robothedestroyer
Hmmm, sex is only dirty if you’re doin it right ;). Anyway I feel like this is as important to history as any other cultural artifact. I agree with barkomatic tho: I would not be opposed to having it tucked away a bit to help keep curiouse youngins from asking too many difficult questions lol. I wonder if its labled as a “Glory Hole” or if they have a more academic name for it.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
That unfortunately was the way guys hooked up then. Another fav spot was department store bathrooms aka “tea rooms” to evade security one guy would sit on the toilet, the other stand with feet in shopping bag…
Unfortunately there are none empowered by this administration who seek to erase the gains we have made and force us back to those demeaning times…
Lacuevaman
damn… i never thought of the shopping bag trick… good idea!
crowebobby
There are many museums of medieval torture.
stuffedpuppy
Bingo!
Aires the Ram
I think it is most definitely appropriate as a museum piece. As others have said, perhaps put it off to the side or something, with a parental warning, but it needs to be displayed. There are many parts of the US that still have glory holes, they’re not going away anytime soon, probably never. The less accepting/tolerating of gay men that a local population (anywhere) is, the more glory holes, rest stop cruising, etc., there will be.
MarathonBoy
I support the museum displaying the “glory hole” provided that it is framed as an example of human error and folly, and that the horrific consequences of anonymous sex, over the long term and on a large-scale, are presented. Museums display ancient torture devices, slave shackles, and bottles of 19th century quack medicinal elixirs, among other things. The “glory hole” deserves its place among them.
Aires the Ram
Marathon Boy, because you call yourself “Boy”, I’m going to assume that you’re fairly young. That being said, your post indicates that you’re disgusted with the behavior, and not with the terrible intolerance and hatred and danger gay men faced, and continue to face, in this country and others. Gay men, over the ages, in every society, every culture, every country, have adapted to their circumstances, be they good or bad. Your post seems to ignore all of that, or, you are just not informed of our history. It hasn’t been that many years since those bad conditions existed in all of gay mens lives. Go to a search of gay archives of male homosexuality, or male homosexual behavior, in the late 1800’s and the 1900’s through roughly 1990, and you will learn something important, that every young gay person today should know.
HereIAm
Regardless the ugly past history for gays, there is no justification for this totally anonymous and disgusting sex act like that. Get rid of your victim mentality, Aires, and come to live a more decent life in 21st century.
MarathonBoy
@Aires – If you are talking about 1950 in Idaho, I have sympathy for your argument. If society totally shuts down all healthy expressions of love and sexuality, then gay people are forced into unhealthy expressions.
But we all know that these practices continued long after the repression had waned. There surely were “glory holes” in San Francisco and Los Angeles and New York City in 1978 and 1988 and 1998 and 2008, and there are probably still some around in 2018. The men who went to them in the 70s-present, did so because they wanted to, not because they had no other choice. As external repression goes down, responsibility shifts to the gay individuals for their choices.
ocahan
HereIAm, whatever can be done with the penis through a glory hole can be done minus the hole. If you don’t like it; don’t do it, but again, stop projecting. In addition, the justification is sexual desire, in other words, the evolutionary need to mate, and BTW, glory holes still exist.