Moments after a Sydney activist was bashed in what he believed to be an obvious gay hate crime in 1970, his attacker uttered a phrase he pondered for years: "No hard feelings, mate".
"It meant it was sport or something to them," Garry Wotherspoon said of the brutality at a special NSW commission of inquiry this week.
It was the first time the academic and historian experienced homophobic violence, as he and a companion left a gay dance at a Petersham hall and were set upon by a group of well-dressed men.
