Imagine the sense of relief it might have brought, that attraction between two people of the same sex at your age was normal, and not something that needed to be suppressed.

Holding the Man counteracted this culture by offering an intimate and unashamed portrait of same-sex love and the pains wrought by the epidemic, demonstrating the ability of love to transcend and persist beyond death.

With its freewheeling, colourful weirdness, bouts of horror, psychodrama and surrealism, and frank rejection of the assumed strictures of children’s television, Adventure Time is consistently and unconditionally one of the best shows around.

Kids’ shows have often been accused of promoting an ‘agenda’, from the Teletubbies to Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie.

The importance of queer content in children’s television is to create awareness of diversity, and to teach kids that to be different isn’t to be abnormal.

Frustrated by Australia’s stance on marriage equality and inspired by John and Yoko’s ‘Bed-In’ protest, I decided to have a marriage equality Bed-In. I called it ‘In bed with the Unwed – Bed-In’, or simply ‘The In Bed Project’. In the context of the bed, I photograph those who support marriage equality, including singles, couples and families. The …

From pornography to incest, from prison rape to anonymous sex, the stories collected in Christos Tsiolkas’s new collection Merciless Gods are characteristically unflinching. Drawn from throughout his career, they explore and engage with transgressive aspects of human desire, and with sexual encounters which are categorised as taboo or rarely acknowledged. The presence of sex is …

As my girlfriend sat down on my lap and we lost ourselves in the moment for art, I embraced the ‘personal is political’ mantra and pashed with all my activist passion, to dispel the myth that people with disabilities don’t have sexual desire: I had it.

“Bet she’s a lesbian.” It’s not particularly hushed, this comment made in the year 12 common  room. Yet it’s not uncommon. Growing up in country Victoria, with short hair and no particular interest in giving blowjobs to the boys I’d known since age eight, I wasn’t the height of popularity in my class. No-one questioned …

Yesterday, the Courier-Mail put the gruesome murder of Indonesian transwoman Mayang Prasetyo, killed by her partner Marcus Volker, on its front page. The article is breathtaking in its prurience and voyeurism. Even though Prasetyo was murdered and dismembered, The Courier-Mail deemed it appropriate to include a succession of photos of a seductively-posed Prasetyo in a …

I’m nervous. I always get nervous. It’s dark and the music thumps. People chatter but I can’t see the crowd through the spotlights. He puts his hands on my hips and the world falls quiet. He stands behind me, kisses my neck and pulls me into him, hands behind my back. He catches my wrists …

I stirred the slush in my Slurpee. ‘Have you slept with a lot of girls?’ I asked. Josh shrugged and scratched his nose. ‘A lot of guys too. Sex is sex.’ I clenched my teeth and took a long sip of my drink. I’d never heard someone be so blasé about something like that before. …

Airing on the ABC last month, Carlotta takes us on the journey of Carol Lee, an Australian icon.

New theatre company TBC Theatre is making its production debut in Melbourne this week. Loveplay, written by Moira Buffini, is an exploration of love and sex through the ages, opening on July 2nd. We asked director Stu Duffield for some insight into starting a theatre company, and how sex scenes affect a live audience. Q: …

“I REALLY DIDN’T see it as abuse, because domestic violence had always been sold to me as a heterosexual man hitting a heterosexual women.” Diversity is a powerful thing. Generally speaking, it is a positive force in the LGBTI community, but experiences diverge when it comes to domestic or family violence (DFV), occasionally making abuse …

Last week, following a call from our distributor, it came to my attention that a handful of newsagents have refused to stock Archer in their stores. A friend went looking for Archer’s second issue in a Melbourne suburban newsagent, and found it had been hidden in a drawer, restricted from view due to its content. …

OVER THE LAST month, the familiar nexus between sport and homophobia has found its way into the news twice: Miranda Devine wrote an article for The Daily Telegraph, and Michael Sam was drafted to the NFL. In an article headlined ‘NRL bosses are totally gay,’ Devine argued that Mitchell Moses’ two-week suspension for calling a …

Music in itself is pretty gay. It’s often melodramatic, sometimes camp and always likely to incite singing, dancing or jazz-hands – stereotypically gay behaviour by pop culture’s own yardstick. It’s therefore ironic that the medium has been sparse on gay content. Until now. A shift is underway and it reached a crescendo with Macklemore. His …

THAT SEXY SHOW is one of the more sex-focused events at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Teams of comedians, including Triple M’s Geraldine Hickey, battle it out for points in a game show with a sex-positive slant. The show is the brain-child of 24-year-old Honor Eastly, a performer and comedian with a penchant for …

Indeed, real sex often breaks the natural flow of fiction, disrupting our enjoyment of two otherwise pleasurable – or so one hopes – activities: having sex and watching a movie.

THE 24TH MELBOURNE Queer Film Festival (MQFF) kicks off tonight. For the next 11 days cinemas throughout Melbourne will light up with some of the best LGBTI films from Australia and abroad. There are over 150 films to choose from, so the team at Archer has come to your service and picked the top 5 …

Marry Me depicts the everyday experiences of an average Aussie gay man: arguments with family; flawed, drunken sexual encounters; the use of sex-based phone apps and the coveted afternoon beach visit when it all gets a bit much.