There Were 2 Arson Attacks On LGBTQ+ Bars This Week. Where TF Is The Mainstream Media Coverage?

LGBTQIA+ communities have never had the luxury of feeling confident someone else will tell our stories properly, or even at all. We’ve always had to be motivated to create our own avenues to make sure our stories are told — because if we don’t speak the truth of what’s happening to us ourselves, it disappears.

And right now, our spaces are being attacked, our safety is being tested. And sure enough – mainstream media is largely ignoring it. So, fine. We’ll say it ourselves, as usual.

Two arson attacks on LGBTQ+ venues in just one week

In the past week, two LGBTQIA+ venues — major, well-loved, community-defining bars — have been targeted in arson attacks. One in the UK, and one here in Australia.

In the UK, an arson attack on longstanding Milton Keynes LGBTQIA+ venue Pink Punters wasn’t just property damage – a man was arrested on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life. Queer lives, gathered in what should be one of the safest places available to us —spaces we built purposely to keep ourselves safee and together. And even if wasn’t a hate crime with intent to endanger life – a beloved LGBTQIA+ space was destroyed, with all patrons miraculously getting out unscathed – that is very much still major news.

And yet, in a country where the media cycle moves at breakneck speed, where tabloids are notorious for their unscrupulous methods to get coverage — the initial story about the fire only received a tiny handful of headlines from outlets that are more friendly to the queers. Since then, those same outlets have published a few updates, and it’s gaining a little more traction – but that traction is going at snail’s pace compared to, say, the  furious, animalistic coverage of a trans doctor at the centre of an NHS harassment case.

Where the fuck is the outrage?

Back home, it’s somehow even worse. The homophobia-driven attack on Brisbane queer venue Come To Daddy, where vandals burned their bunting featuring various LGBTQIA+ flags, has been covered, yes – but exclusively by queer media outlets.

Mainstream media coverage? Non-existent.

So the question becomes unavoidable: why?

Why are two attacks on LGBTQIA+ venues not front-page news? Why isn’t this being treated with the urgency, the gravity, the fear it deserves? If this were almost any other targeted attack, would we be seeing the same silence?

We’re not imagining the broader context here, either. In New South Wales, a parliamentary inquiry recently confirmed what most of us have known down to our bones for a real long time: right-wing extremism is actively targeting LGBTQIA+ communities.

So when queer spaces are set on fire, burning our flags and symbols of pride, or literally attempting to burn us alive — that is not an isolated incident. That is part of a pattern that should be setting off alarm bells in every newsroom in the country.

Alas, crickets. Actually, quieter than crickets. Crickets are basically ‘hardcore punk gig’ volume compared to this shit.

Lemme call a spade a spade: it’s dangerous, it’s negligent, and it’s bigotry baked into a system that historically has never valued us as human beings.

This is exactly why queer media exists

Let’s be blunt — we didn’t build our own media ecosystem just for fun. It was necessity, built for exactly this reason – because mainstream media couldn’t be trusted to tell our stories safely, accurately, or with any real sense of responsibility to the people inside them. Or, they couldn’t be trusted to tell them at all.

Star Observer has been covering LGBTQIA+ news for 48 years. The year before our first issue came to fruition, the Sydney Morning Herald published the names, addresses and occupations of 53 people arrested at the first Sydney Mardi Gras in 1978. People who were already vulnerable were effectively outed, exposed, and put at risk — by a mainstream outlet that either didn’t understand the consequences, or didn’t care. Many of those 78ers lost jobs, careers, families, children, because the media took away their agency as human beings, in being able to choose when, or if, they should come out publicly.

That’s the legacy we’re working from.

But back to now. Back to two fires, in two countries, in one week.

While mainstream media has a long, well-documented history of either ignoring LGBTQIA+ stories or distorting them beyond recognition, sadly history isn’t actually history – it’s now. Take this analysis of The Australian‘s stories concerning transgender people from 2019 to 2021, for example – in 53 articles, more than 90% of them framed transgender people and issues negatively. NINETY. PER CENT.

That is fucked up beyond all recognition, and the “journalists” writing these purposely misleading stories about our community should be deeply, profoundly ashamed. Sadly, they’re not.

So when something like this happens — when queer people and our spaces are directly targeted — it’s not surprising that mainstream outlets either look away or fail to grasp the seriousness. They’ve already shown us, time and time again, that our lives are either a culture war talking point or barely worth covering, if at all.

Despite all the progress our community has made, it’s still par for the course. We’ve been doing this shit for almost half a century. Because while mainstream media continues to fumble — or flatout ignore — stories that affect our safety, our communities, our right to exist without fear, LGBTQIA+ media is doing the work. It always has.

Two queer venues, set alight in a week. One with alleged intent to harm people inside. In a political climate where extremism is rising and targeting us explicitly.

If that’s not headline news, what the fuck is?