A STRAIGHT NO; Exclusive Scots barman wins right to ban heterosexuals.

Byline: By Ben Spencer

A SCOT has won a landmark legal ruling allowing him to ban straight people from his gay bar.

Glaswegian Tom McFeely took action after his male customers started coming under attack.

Now the Peel bar, in Melbourne, Australia, has been given a special exemption to the Equal Opportunity Act - effectively stopping entry to non-gays. Tom said yesterday: "We've had instances in the past where a buck's night or a hen's night has come up to the Peel and our whole atmosphere changes immensely.

"Those heterosexuals have other places to go to, my homosexuals do not.

"The only place they can feel comfortable and safe is the Peel and that's the reason I took this action."

The 44-year-old appealed to a state tribunal last week for permission to keep heterosexuals out.

They ruled in his favour after finding the men were insulted, laughed at and attacked by visitors.

Tribunal deputy president Cate McKenzie said: "To regard the gay male patrons of the venue as providing a spectacle to be stared at, as one would at an animal at a zoo, devalues and dehumanises them."

A spokeswoman for the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Lobby Group said it was "sad" the ruling was needed in the first place.

But she added: "This exemption was not sought to exclude members of the community but to try to maintain a safe space for men to meet."

Tom, who emigrated to Australia in 1990 after running gay nightclub Club X in Glasgow, was granted a landmark civil union with his longterm partner last year - days after Australia banned gay weddings.

He wed lover Darren Kelly in July last year in Melbourne's British Consulate, which is officially British soil.

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ACTION: Tom