Tony Katavich (l) and his life partner John Kiddie, who died mid-2012 The death of Tony Katavich pretty much marks the end of an era, in more ways than younger readers might imagine.Tony died a few days ago, aged 78, and was buried yesterday with hardly anyone knowing it. That hardly a person from the gay communities turned up was an incredible disservice to the debt we all owe him. Dying the day after Boxing Day when hardly anyone is reading the death notices and having another man with exactly the same name and similar age die within four days both clouded the picture. And word travels slowly when everyone's at the beach full of ham and trifle or providing just a skeleton service for a few days. To those who didn't know Tony, or only knew of him, here is a quick take on why we gay and bi men should all be forever grateful to this determined, irascible, influential, polarising, sometimes beguiling, sometimes unpleasant man. Tony Katavich was Balkan to the deepest marrow of his very bones. A non-conformist, passionate, terrier-like, a holder of grudges and tightly-focused to the point of obsession. He was so libertarian he was practically an anarchist. He wanted government out of everyone's life. And it's easy to forget how much the government had its fingers deeply in everyone's lives in the 1950s through to the late 1980s. It set financial exchange rates by fiat, licensed and controlled practically all imports and exports, owned the biggest media outlet in the country, restricted private transport operators in favour of the government-owned railways, told the national airline how to run itself, and a host of other measures we now look back on with increasing astonishment. While he railed against the government running our lives there was one aspect of government control Tony Katavich despised more than most, the laws that said sex between consenting adult men was a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment and electro-torture. The laws that decreed that erotic material was generally objectionable and that homosexual erotic material was always so. Novels, beefcake calendars, erotic short stories, treatises on the joy of being gay, sex-toys, images of penises - whether erect or not - and saucy arses - clothed or not - all were intercepted by the heavy-footed denizens of HM Customs and the Indecent Publications Tribunals. The importers, commercial or private, would be slammed with the full force of the government's mighty legal and justice apparatus and the outcome when things went through the courts ruined many a gay man's life. Overseas, in more liberal jurisdictions with more guarantees of personal expression, gay-themed material was readily available. Not here. Tony Katavich and his life-partner John Kiddie, plus the outgoing Brett Sheppard (Sheppard is long gone and Kiddie died mid-last year) teamed up to create an interconnected grouping of businesses which did their damnedest to give gay men in New Zealand what they wanted... a reflection of themselves and their sexuality and their lives, the knowledge that there were other men just like themselves and places to mix it up together. Their bookshops were regularly raided, as were their gay saunas. Their imports of all kinds were meticulously inspected by the grey-minded functionaries at the borders. Their Out! magazine, the only real, if slightly idiosyncratic, delineator of what it was to be gay for most NZ homos, was too often seized at the printers. They were served countless legal actions in the seventies and eighties and they fought back. The driver for this was primarily Tony... his principles, his personal life and his businesses - which none the less prospered for many years - were all at stake. He fought back doggedly and, never one to take advice but rather to issue instructions, he burned out several lawyers and legal firms along the way. Slowly the social, moral and legal tides started to turn in his, and therefore our, favour. When what was to be the final, and ultimately successful, campaign for decriminalisation of male homosexuality gained momentum in the late 1970s and early '80s, the resources of Katavich, Sheppard and Kiddie's Auckland-based business empire were put at the campaigners' disposal more than is widely known or acknowledged. Meetings were held there, phone bills paid, photocopiers ran hot, pages and pages of Out! magazine were devoted to the cause, travel costs were covered, posters printed. There were of course others who worked hard, laid their jobs and lives on the line, who opened their cheque books and did what they could to support the movement. But, fueled by Katavich's determination and Sheppard's bluff optimism, their Out! empire did as much as some and more than most. At the height of their influence, around the mid-1980s as the Homosexual Law Reform Bill was passed into law, if you read a NZ gay magazine it was one of theirs. If you went to a gay sauna anywhere in the country for a bonk it was almost always one of theirs. If you travelled overseas to a gay event or community you probably used their travel agency. If you sent away for a homo magazine, video or dildo it was their business that discretely posted it to you. If you danced or met the man of your dreams in a gay nightclub that was open to all, not just private members, it was nearly always one of their venues. They defined gay life in New Zealand, warts and all, to gays and to straights. They did have what might charitably be called blind spots. They didn't suffer competition lightly and had a tendency to fight back in legal and not so legal ways to maintain their supremacy. They hardly acknowledged the existence of lesbians, or trans folk unless they were entertainers at their venues. They didn't adapt well to the changing times they themselves helped generate. They became trapped in a kind of '70s time-warp and Tony could never relax, never stop railing against something, kept fighting foes - real or imagined. Slowly he came to be seen as a fossilised, bitter old man, a kind of malevolent semi-poisonous spider lurking at the centre of a rather dusty web. The changing times left him out of touch and increasingly irrelevant in our day to day glbti lives. The slow death of their businesses must have been painful to Tony. But when the end came, when the doors closed for the final time and as his health progressively failed, something quite unexpected happened. Tony Katavich relaxed. He started to smile. He, believe it or not, mellowed. He buried the hatchets. He even spoke warmly and graciously with me at the funeral of dancer Harold Robinson. Me who had had the audacity to pull a shelved international franchise off his company, who started a cruise club in competition with his saunas and who co-created the first real gay news outlet to seriously threaten his beloved Out! magazine. Despite my efforts to act simply as a professional businessman and editor Tony had loathed me. Strangely, he frequently did this by proxy, taking up against people I was associated with. When the free market he fought for meant others could provide alternative services to his own he took it really badly. Too many of his fellow gays similarly became the new targets of his angst and venom. But, on balance, Tony Katavich, for all his faults and quirks, helped make life incalculably better for every gay man in New Zealand. He helped take our fight for freedom deep into the heart of the enemy and without him our lives would not be what they are today. Our dreams would not be possible. Our reality as openly or closeted gay and bi men would be immeasurably poorer. So, thanks Tony, you grand, wonderful, complicated and ultimately human old bastard! - Jay Bennie Jay Bennie - 1st January 2014