GAY-BASHING etymology

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

Others have pointed out the early Australian usage "ear-bashing" (not in the 
sense of physical abuse, however) and the early Brit. "Paki-bashing." Two 
comments on -bashing in the 1950s suggest a plausible etymology:

1. Robert A. Hall in AMERICAN SPEECH (31.2 [1956]: 83-88):

p84 [the '4' indicates a footnote]: 
EAR-BASH.4 Anon.: ' . . . occasional bemedalled drinkers . , . who have 
wanted . . . to
air-bash somebody or orher.' Australian Magazine, Jan. 4, 1955, p. 17.

4. In colloquial Australian English, an 'ear-bashing' is a long-winded 
monologue to which
a speaker subjects his hearer(s): e.g., 'He gave me an awful ear-bashing 
about his exploirs in the war.'

2. Sir Arthur Waugh in a letter to the editor in FOLKLORE 74.2 (1963): 

p415:
That is very relevant when we consider ‘modern’ folklore, particularly the 
growing volume of industrial folklore; for folklore it undoubtedly is. As an 
example, may I quote a practice in a modern factory not far from London? [¶] 
When an apprentice leaves to take up a regular job, he is seen off to a 
tremendous ‘tin-bashing’. Nobody can say when or how the custom arose; but it is 
rigorously observed. It may date from the nineteenth century or earlier.

It is only a few years later that we find "Paki-bashing" in the same locale, 
and shortly after that that "gay-bashing" is recorded on the same side of the 
Atlantic. It does not seem to me to be too much of a stretch to assume that 
the early Paki-bashers were working-class folks--and that "Paki-bashing" may 
have been a sardonic extension of "tin-bashing." 

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