Gay Guide to Auckland
New Zealand decriminalised sex between men with the Homosexual Law Reform Act of 1986, after a long and fiercely contested campaign. On 17 April 2013 Parliament legalised marriage equality by 77 votes to 44, making New Zealand the first country in the Asia-Pacific to do so, and the public gallery greeted the result by singing the Māori love song Pōkarekare Ana.
Auckland's big public celebrations go back to the Hero Parade, which ran from 1992 to 2001 and moved to Ponsonby Road in 1996; its final year drew as many as 200,000 spectators. Ponsonby, just west of the city centre, is still home to the Women's Bookshop.
Nightlife today lives on Karangahape Road, known to everyone as K' Road, the strip along the ridge above Queen Street. Family Bar opened in 2005 and is now the country's longest-running gay bar, with two dance floors and drag every Friday and Saturday. G.A.Y. runs drag-led club nights a few doors along, the Eagle across the road is a low-key bar where you pick the music on the jukebox, and Phoenix Cabaret serves dinner with a drag show upstairs at number 258.
Further west at number 461, Caluzzi Cabaret has been serving three-course dinners with a rotating cast of drag queens for three decades, making it the longest-running drag cabaret in Australasia. Centurian Sauna sits just off K' Road in Beresford Square, and Rainbow Youth is around the corner on Edinburgh Street.
Auckland Pride fills February with a month of arts, parties and community events. The free Big Gay Out, New Zealand's largest LGBTQIA+ outdoor festival, takes over Coyle Park in Point Chevalier on a Sunday in mid-February.