Spartacus International Gay Guide

The Spartacus International Gay Guide is an international gay travel guidebook published annually since 1970, originally by John D. Stamford in the United Kingdom and later the Netherlands, and currently by Bruno Gmünder Verlag in Berlin, Germany.

=Content= The guide is arranged alphabetically by country and offers short texts in English, German, French, Spanish and Italian. Cities that are major gay travel destinations are described in greater depth. Each country section includes a summary of the current laws about homosexuality that are applicable to that country. The majority of the book's contents are listings for businesses that either specifically cater to gay tourists or that may be of interest to gay travellers, such as bars, hotels, gay saunas, beaches, support groups and AIDS hotlines. Listings are arranged by city within each country. Recent editions of the guide have counted more than 1200 pages with information for approximately 22,000 businesses in 160 countries.

The criteria that determine which businesses are included in the listings differ from country to country. In countries or cities with a large number of businesses catering to gay customers, only businesses that are specifically gay – and possibly even only the most noteworthy amongst these – are included; in countries where such businesses are uncommon, those that cater to a general clientele but are "gay friendly" are also included.

In January 2012, Bruno Gmünder Media released the Spartacus International Gay Guide App for iPhone. This allows access to the entirety of the Spartacus International Gay Guide while on the road. Bars, clubs, hotels, saunas, beaches and cruising spots are indicated on the city map via GPS without expensive roaming fees since almost all of these functions are available offline. Photos, additional information and links to addresses assist in the choice of the nearest meeting places. In addition, there are tips on current activities, events and specials (such as happy hours in the bar around the corner, for example). The app will list suitable locations, regardless of whether one is seeking a drinking establishment, accommodation, a dance floor or some other fun. The regularly-updated app is now available both in German and English. There are three versions available on the Apple App Store (iOS): "Europe", "The World excluding Europe" and "Worldwide". A free trial version is available as well.

=History=

John Stamford publishes first edition, 1970
In March 1970, John D. Stamford published the first edition of Spartacus in Sussex, near the town of Brighton which was quite gay at the time. It contained 109 pages and listed a total of 3,000 homophilic meeting places. Of these, 60 were in London and more than 200 locations were in the United Kingdom. Stamford set himself the goal of shaping a “better world for gays,” to fight against hidden loneliness, facilitate contacts and help build an international network of cooperating organizations. Stamford was also involved in the UK's law reform of the 1960s. He appeared to have come from districts that pursued justice for the sake of their own homosexual interests and those of others.

Flight to Amsterdam, 1972
In 1972, Stamford moved to Amsterdam, allegedly because he and his publications in the UK got into trouble. There was an open discussion of British laws and homosexuality. According to The Sunday Times, Stamford fled England because the British were "too stubborn" and could not "understand the quality of sexual partnership between men and boys." Actually, the probable reason for his flight was much more serious, as one can read about in gay publications. A 1986 edition of a gay journal said that he moved in 1972 to the Netherlands after he was convicted under London child pornography laws. Stamford boasted that he produced the first gay porn magazines in the UK.

In December 1973, the 3rd Edition of Spartacus was published, for the first time in Amsterdam under the liberal climate of the Netherlands. During that time, many gay publications in print contained numerous illustrations of boys within its pages. Until this issue was published, Stamford's name did not appear in the guide, only the address - Euro Spartacus, Post Office Box 3496, NL 1001 AG Amsterdam.

In 1977, Stamford already complained about piracy. The 10th Edition of the Guide was published in 1980 and was a hefty volume of 608 pages with information from over 250 countries. The cover was designed by the famous porn producer Jean Daniel Cadinot. The editors received 12,000 letters a year offering more information.

In 1981, Spartacus was in severe turmoil. The August 1986 copy of the ‘Gay Journal’ on page 20 said, “He was responsible for the exploitation of children in Thailand, Sri Lanka and the Philippines."

Article in EVENT magazine, 1982
In 1982, Stamford was featured in an article in the 29 April issue of London’s EVENT magazine, a non-gay city guide. It painted an interesting and comprehensive picture of the man:

"Good Man Guide. David Roper on the Spartacus Gay Guide.

He started his adult life as a Catholic priest in Brighton. Now he’s head of what must be the largest gay business empire in the world. He is the only man who knows the exact circulation figures for the world’s most comprehensive homosexual information guide, which this year alone may sell as many a quarter of a million copies at £7.50 for 750 densely printed pages. Such is its reputation that it is now sold by ‘Foyles and Collets’, though thousands more copies are consulted and furtively memorised in bars and clubs from Bangor to Bankok.

What began as a gay listing guide in Brighton is now in position whose power enables the owner to offer advertising space by invitation only to those establishments of ‘quality’ that have been awarded at least two stars in the guide. And there are enough advertisers who are willing to pay £600 for a full page without knowing the print run - safe with the assurance that each year’s guide sells out entirely by September.

There can’t be many people who can afford to replace their ‘Spartacus’ annually, though the listings do change constantly thanks to reports sent in by readers and constant updatings by their own assessors. And with a seven workstation computer digesting those facts and well-established international contacts, it’s unlikely that anyone will be able to suspersede their information easily. And in any case, John D. Stamford is not a man who would tolerate any meddling with the heavily protected set-up he runs from a box number in Amsterdam (in the early, less permissive days they anticipated police problems if they remained in Britain).

Since the first ‘Spartacus’ appeared in 1970, the company has diversified and grown to include a holiday club offering discount at various establishments, specific reports on areas such as the Far East or California, and a contact service of around 200 couriers to help members find their way round foreign parts. Every two month they publish a rather tawdry travel guide that consits of John Stamford’s diaries and visits about the globe: happier doing field research than supervising his empire, Stamford spends most of the year on the road in an impressive mobile home (number plate BOY1) - well in keeping his flamboyant lifestyle of meeting with government officials and club owners.

In his editorial in the latest ‘Spartacus’ guide, Stamford hits out at those governments that try to be ‘virtue vendors’ - preferring local exploitation to cash-flush tourists from the West - and begins to refer to them as Nazi repressives. What he objects to is the practice of those third world countries that have chosen to discourage the gay (and often pederast) tourist lavishes boys with money in exchange for sexual favours: is this any more reprehensible than making the boys work in shops and small factories for little or no wages ... and then screwing them away?

‘Spartacus’ appears to be in two minds over this one, and Peter Glencross, the company’s business manager, is ready to admit that their promotion of parts of the third world was mistake which is now being rectified. Stamford himself is against loud, flashy faggots, and Sri Lanka has been dropped from the listings at the demand of the country’s government; any places that the guide might have included would have suffered local police trouble. Until two or three yaers ago, Sri Lanka was being offered as the paedophile’s paradise - an honour that has now developed on the Philippines.

A number of countries that have previously been omitted due to a lack of accurate information are included this year. Burma has come in (‘the Burmese is a true friend’) and Swaziland (no laws, no one in prison) is on the way. China and Russia are always a problem since so few people of ‘that persuasion’ bother to holiday there, but even more surprising are the listings for Albania, Rwanda, St Barthelemy and Micronsia (eight out of ten guys available in exchange for a case of beer!).

Unanimously voted Europe’s gay Mekka once again, West Berlin is awarded plenty of four star entries, though it’s only London that gets a of five star accolades (Heaven, Subway, Napoleon, Bolts, the Tent); John D. Stamford, sole proprietor, has final word on all these tributes, but for UK listings, at least, the guide depends on report and recommandations offered by Gay Switchboard.

Perhaps the most unusual entries in each section are headed ‘Facilities’, which may be dropped for the next issue. The reason? ‘Spartacus’ thinks most correspondents find these details unimportant, though, for all they know, there could be a silent ‘majority’ which finds them indispensable; needless to say, inspectors do not check the local shithouses, and apart from the legal complications of inciting lawlessness, it is the one area of the information spectrum that threatens to lower the whole tone of Stamford’s Good Man Guide.

He comes across as strangely moral for someone who can claim to have produced male porn mags before anyone else, and the former guest-house owner’s most recent targets are the users of poppers (amyl nitrate), anyone who smokes in bars, un-airconditioned clubs and uncircumcised men (they should wash several times a day).

If any premises fall below his standards ‘Spartacus’ takes up the complaint with the owner, whose unwillingness to make improvements leads to a quick snip in the next edition. At the same time as he offers grants for research into VD and other health hazards, Stamford now publishes and distributes the ‘Pan’ magazine which ‘deals honestly with boy-love’ by printing interviews with international youth an ‘recent research by psychologists on the realities of untraumatised man/boy relations’. For the first time, they have just launched ‘Panthology I’, a collection of rather tame stories about nephews visiting during their public-school hols or willing slaves in ancient Rome.

What we do not know is just how much money this 43 year old Geminian from Lancashire has made from his enterprises, none of which have that cleanly acceptable air of self-help that characterises the ‘San Francisco Pink Pages’ (a Yellow Pages for anyone looking for gay plumbers, poodle-trimmers or typists), which may be soon to be seen in England.

Those who have met John Stamford do not find him easy to get on with, and his liability to bear a grudge for decades has led some unkind foes to spread rumour that his next project is likely to be a walk on water. The belief that his arrival in a foreign country amounts to: ‘I am John Stamford, send me up a guy in exchange for a T-shirt and an English cigarette’ does not prevent anyone from recognising that this year’s guide is far more accurate than any previously published. The rest of his literary output has a distastefully pornographic flavour, typically disguised as ‘scientific’ or serious articles. Mr. Super Morality has this to say in his defence: ‘One is justified in suspecting some sort of international conspiracy against us by many of those grey men who execute the laws of the world. And in this dark crusade a new breed of virtue-vendors are appearing in the press with more regularity - men and women who are making themselves nicely rich and powerful out of ‘cleaning up’ (that is, desexualising) the world. It is not difficult to draw a parallel between the Britain of 1981, for example, and Germany on the eve of the Nazi take-over. What can we do about it? First, we should not let the Nazi types and virtue-vendors hang a guilt trip on us. We must confront them and expose their distortions and reveal their real purposes in mounting these attacks: to wipe out homosexuals and homosexuality and to grab publicity and all the power and the money that goes with it.’ Now, really, what does he mean?"

AIDS information, 1983
In 1983, Spartacus first informed about AIDS. Previously there was only a small chapter about STDs. That year, an injunction was issued against Spartacus. In its 1983 issue, Stamford, writing in the ‘Munich’ section, criticised two local nightclubs which railed him. Homosexuals were regarded with disdain, but the clubs took as much money as possible from them, with nothing being reinvested in the homosexual scene. Neither of the two establishments carried Stamford's Spartacus. Observers regarded these legal warning shots against John Stamford as ‘long overdue’. The Spartacus publishers distributed according to their preferences and experienced autocratic gay establishments ‘around the world’.

=See also=
 * Bruno Gmünder Verlag
 * Gay tourism
 * International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association

=References=
 * "Spartacus", theneedleblog by Gojam, 14 January 2013:.
 * The entire history of the Spartacus International Gay Guide from its founder John D. Stamford on Brunoleaks:.
 * 42., nd Edition The German National Library, February 2013
 * Spartacus International Gay Guide EDGE New York, April 2012
 * Die MÄRZ-AUSGABE ist da! MANNER Magazine, February 2012
 * Spartacus International Gay Guide bald auch als iPhone-App gayboy.at, March 2011