The owner of a pub whose clientele comprises mainly homosexual men has won the right to bar heterosexuals and lesbians from his premises.

After Tom McFeely complained about rowdy hen parties, a tribunal in Melbourne ruled that heterosexual women ogled his customers and treated them like zoo animals.

Mr McFeely, of the Peel Hotel in Collingwood in Melbourne, became the first publican in Australia able to ban heterosexuals and lesbians after he convinced a liquor licensing tribunal that they posed a threat to his gay patrons. He feared attacks by lesbians, he said. In an historic ruling that exempted the hotel from nondiscrimination laws, the Victoria tribunal accepted that there were plenty of other bars where lesbians and heterosexuals could gather to express “affection or physical intimacy”.

The ruling said of hen nights: “To regard the gay male patrons of the venue as providing an entertainment or spectacle to be stared at as one would an animal at a zoo, devalues and dehumanises them.”

The tribunal heard that the Peel Hotel, which operates from 9pm to dawn, has long had a predominantly gay male clientele but that it had been increasingly “swamped” by aggressive lesbians and heterosexuals.

Its written decision said: “Sometimes heterosexual groups and lesbian groups insult and deride and are even physically violent towards the gay male patrons. In doing these things, they use sexually-based insults. Sometimes, groups seek to use the venue for parties and it is clear from Mr McFeely’s affidavit that these groups wish to look at the behaviour of the gay male patrons as a kind of spectacle or entertainment for the group’s enjoyment.”

The tribunal added that it accepted Mr McFeely’s evidence that he wished to preserve a venue in Melbourne “in which gay males can feel comfortable to express affection, physical intimacy or sexuality in a way that will not make them targets of derision”.

Mr McFeely said yesterday that his move was necessary to provide gay men with a nonthreatening atmosphere in which they could freely express their sexuality.

He said: “We’re one of about 2,000 venues in Melbourne. These heterosexuals have other places to go to, my homosexuals do not.”

The tribunal’s decision to allow the hotel to ban nongay males builds on a decision two years ago that overrode antidiscrimination laws by allowing an Australian gymnasium chain to admit women only.

The ruling came as another Outback pub, made famous by the Australian drag-queen movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, closed its doors.

Mario’s Palace Hotel, in Broken Hill, New South Wales, was well-known by Outback travellers for its copy of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus painted on the foyer ceiling. The pub was the location for many of the indoor scenes of the 1994 film, which featured two drag queens and a transsexual crossing the Outback in an old bus.

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