Organiser of cancelled queer venue says she’s received death threats

Kat Dopper, the organiser of the cancelled LGBTQ Sydney nightclub housed in a 158-year-old deconsecrated church, says she has received “constant” death threats and homophobic messages following the opening of her experimental venue two weeks ago.

“One of them, for example, was, ‘You know that cliff right near Bondi that the gays fell off? You all need to get over there and go for a swim’,” the founder of queer events company Heaps Gay says. “It’s been full on … I have been in a state of extreme stress.”

Only 10 weeks earlier, she was handed the keys to the 420 Kent Street structure in the CBD – and says she could hardly have predicted it would become the site of the city’s latest culture war with members of the Christian community.

“I started Heaps Gay, my other business, back in 2013 when we were fighting for marriage equality. And we’re at a place now where we’re getting death threats because we have created a performance art space that happens to be inside a church,” Dopper says.

Christian groups have protested outside the Divine Playhouse – renamed from the Unholy Playhouse – and claim it is mocking their religion.

Dopper announced the landlord had terminated the lease on Monday and revealed the groups had been building pressure on the landlord before it even opened.

“The name change came from a conversation with our landlords, 12 hours before we opened doors,” Dopper said.

“The landlord mentioned that they had some Christian groups reaching out about it. I just wanted to keep the space open, so I offered to remove the things that they felt were offensive, even though I believe they were not offensive.”

The church is owned by developer Revelop, co-founded by billionaire cousins Anthony El-Hazouri and Charbel Hazzouri.

The lease’s contract was made out to Heaps Gay events – which often hosts fringe-style queer events – but it is not clear whether the landlord or co-founders were aware of the intended use of the space.

A lease agreement, seen by this masthead, says the venue was permitted to be used for “entertainment”.

Revelop’s lawyers provided Dopper one week to vacate the property after citing a 1842 NSW tenant law of “offensive trade”, which is used to regulate foul smells and industrial waste.

Heaps Gay’s lawyers say it has never before been extended to cover so-called questions of “moral” offensiveness.

“We got the keys, we produced and created the most incredible new site and small venue for Sydney audiences, and then within a day of being open, we’ve just basically had legal letters back and forth to be evicted, which we deeply believe is illegal,” Dopper said.

El-Hazouri said while he does not condone the threats received by Dopper and the Heaps Gay team, he was unaware of how the space was going to be used.

“The issue here is one where the nature of the events being so offensive and targeted towards a religious group, to Christian’s,” El-Hazouri said.

El-Hazouri said his team does not believe the “offensive” basis used to terminate the lease is constrained to noise and odour, and is instead about trade based on general definitions of the word.

“There’s nothing in our view that limits the definition of offensive to noise and odour,” he said. “The events … they were targeting Christian beliefs … and for us it’s the height of offence to say it’s about arts and culture when you’re derogating an entire groups belief.”

El-Hazouri also said he believes the Catholic-themed events at the nightclub amounted to hate speech.

“Love, community and art, that’s what the event organiser said … I do not believe those words are synonymous with the events that took place and were proposed to take place,” he said.

“This is the equivalent to hate speech in my opinion because it was targeted at people’s religious views.”

Catholic protester Liam Aquilina said the community’s issue was not with the LGBTQ community but with the “mockery” of faith.

Despite the backlash, Dopper said the NSW government has been “wholeheartedly supportive” of the venue and its program.

“The support that has come from the various government bodies, the industry, the wider sector, and the community all across Sydney. We’ve had over 17,000 signatures on the petition in a few days, and the GoFundMe … [it’s] been beyond.”

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