Engayment.org

I NEVER MADE A COMPLAINT ABOUT TELSTRA.

But even if I wanted to, I can’t.

So thank you to all of you who have contacted me to tell me to build a bridge, get a life, move on, get a boyfriend/girlfriend and so on. Also, thank you to all the people who contacted me to call me names. I’m especially surprised about the sheer amount of abuse that I’ve received over the last 24 hours. I had no idea that there was so much hate and anger and homophobia in this Country.

Joe Hildebrand from News Limited’s Daily Telegraph made it seem as though I’d complained to HREOC about Telstra when he said “Andrew WANTED to be discriminated against by Telstra.” I never said I wanted to be discriminated against. What person would WANT to be discriminated against? Joe, you’re an idiot.

Through Joe’s deliberate and surgical misuse of my words, my point and my original intentions have been lost.

I want to make a few points very VERY clear to the people who are reading this, and forgive me for the tone, but no matter how hard I try to articulate my position, people just don’t seem to READ WHAT I’M SAYING.

1. I don’t think the Telstra Ad is worthy of a Human Rights and Equality Opportunity Commission Complaint. I do think the ad is not very funny, and I believe it to be a rather stupid attempt at humour, where the punchline only works if you understand fear and prefer cricket over sex.
   But the only reason I ended up at the website www.humanrights.gov.au, was because every other regulatory authority responsibile for advertising issues or complaints would not entertain a complaint that was to do with discrimination. ACMA sends you to Australian Standards Bureau, who then sends you to HREOC, who then says in not so many words, “Sorry, you’re gay, not our issue” This is regardless of the nature of your complaint (unless you got sacked)
2. I’m gay, so I have no recourse to complain about advertisements that offend me because of my sexuality. I say again:
   I NEVER MADE A COMPLAINT ABOUT THE TELSTRA AD WITH HREOC.
   
3. My complaint is that I cannot complain to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission about ANY matter of sexual preference discrimination UNLESS it is soley to do with employment. <– READ IT AGAIN
   Imagine you’re married, and you go to a Gym, and the owner of the Gym says to you, “I’m sorry, we don’t accept people in this Gym who are married.” – If you were to try to complain about the discrimination you encountered, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Comission WOULD CONSIDER YOUR COMPLAINT

   Imagine that you’re gay, and you go to a Gym, and the owner of the Gym says to you, “I’m sorry, we don’t accept gay people in this Gym.” - If you were to try to complain about the discrimination you’d encountered, The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission WOULD NOT CONSIDER YOUR COMPLAINT, because they can legally only entertain complaints of a discriminatory nature if you fall into one or more of the following categories: Sex, Pregnancy, Martial Status, Family Responsibility, Race, Disability and Age.

Gay People Cannot be discriminated against, unless it’s to do with Employment AND ONLY EMPLOYMENT – and that’s just not cricket!

Do you see the discrepancy?

Do you see the discrimination?

If you can’t, close this blog, and don’t come back. I really can’t figure how to explain it more clearly than I have already.

I want to see same-sex marriage become possible for us all. I have received thousands of emails, all of which are abusive and homophobic. Google “Gay Activist Telstra” and read any number of the comments on any number of the sites that come up, and you will see a terrifying picture of just how homophobic Australia is.

The Daily Telegraph and all of its News Limited subsidiaries relied on an abundant and huge amount of latent homophobia in Australia to create a furor on the internet, which meant more of their advertisements (including Telstra ads) would get clicked, which in turn meant they’d make more money.

They used me, my picture, and my situation as a tool to make money. To do that effectively they had to paint me as the bad guy who wanted to complain about Telstra.

I just want to get bloody married.

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THIS IS NOT ABOUT TELSTRA

When I discovered that the Australian Human Rights Commission would not hear any sexual preference discrimination complaints (other than employment complaints), I wrote the Minister Tanya Plibersek a Letter.

I was stupid, in that I mentioned the Telstra Ad that had spurred me to look into making a complaint when I wrote the letter, and of course, this is what The World and Tanya focused on. 

I asked Tanya to explain to me why there was a discrepancy at www.humanrights.gov.au surrounding sexual preference discrimination. Tanya had assured me in person a few weeks earlier that there were NO DIFFERENCES between Homosexual people and Heterosexual People in terms of Government Policy (Apart from Marriage). So I was shocked and confused to find this discrepancy on their website.

My issue is that the Australian Human Rights Commission WILL NOT handle a complaint made about Sexual Preference Discrimination (Unless it is specific to Employment, and only employment).

Why can’t they handle sexual preference complaints?

Because it’s the Law.

Who can change the Law?

Politicians.

Who is a politican?

Tanya Plibersek.

What does Tanya Plibersek say about the fact that the Australian Human Rights Commission is bound by a discriminatory law that has supposed to have been fixed?

Because I was stupid enough to preface my letter by mentioning Telstra, Tanya went on to give me advice on how to complain about the Telstra Commercial. I really wish I had not mentioned it, because it subsequently meant that Tanya did not answer my question as to WHY the Australian Human Rights Commission is not legally capable of handling Sexual Preference Discrimination complaints that fall outside of the realm of Employment Issues.

I want to know why this law has not been changed?

I will have to respond and ask Tanya again.
 
If you choose to comment on this Article, do me, the world, and yourself a favour, and don’t mention Telstra or their stupid Ad.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT TELSTRA

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My complaint is not with Telstra, or their stupid Ad.
My complaint is with HREOC for not treating sexual preference discrimination the same as all other types. 

Joe from the Telegraph took my words out of context and misrepresented what I said.

I was contacted by Joe at the Daily Telegraph about my blog. How he found it so soon, when I only started it a few weeks ago makes the mind wander off to a scary place indeed. Joe at his sticky keyboard googling anything with the word gay hoping to find someone he could publicly embarrass, so that his boss might not fire him for being a crappy blogger? After all, he does work for News Limited, what else do they have to do over there? Surely reporters have no need to write about any of these, what do you call it….news things?

I’m really grateful that Joe superimposed my picture over the tent scene. It makes me look fantastic, and scary. Here is the before and after:

I almost feel like I was in the tent with the thespians, pretending to have gay sex. I wonder if Joe considered putting a moustache on my picture too? Another time perhaps, when he is home alone.

It’s worth mentioning, I did send another picture to Joe but he chose not to use it. I think I look much better in this one:

It’s better if your Gay activists look mean, so, he picked the one he could work with, even if it did involve drawing in an imaginary jaw line where the white light managed to wash me out. What better way to make your Gay activists look bad than to cut out their pictures and superimpose them over a dark background with big angry white text. (For the record, I’m not your mate Joe, or Telstras for that matter).

I looked for a picture of Joe to see if I could return the favour, but sadly, there are only two, and they’re bad enough on there own. Here’s the best of them; I like to call him, baby Joe, cause this is as big as it gets, possibly in more ways than one.
Say hello baby joe :

He would say hello back, but he doesn’t have anything nice to say.

Now that my vanity can be swept aside, onto the issue at hand.

My blog was designed to point out the discrepancies I encountered with our Governement, specifically surrounding Government Policy on same sex marriage in Australia. I encountered a discrepancy when I attempted to make a complaint about a homophobic Telstra Commercial. I did not alert the press about my intention to complain to HREOC, and I was not after media attention. I was just wanting to complain that the ad offended me.

But I received this lovely email from Joe this morning, which made me (believe it or not) think that someone might actually care. I asked him how he found my site, he was shady on the details; “Oh, I don’t know, someone forwarded it to me.”

Here’s the email:

Joe seemed nice right? I called him, and he was lovely on the phone. He wanted to know what upset me about the Telstra Commercial, and I told him that, “What upset me is, we are only led to believe that the two men in the tent are gay because they are afraid when they get caught by their other buddies. The look of fear on their face is the reason we assume they are gay not that we saw shadowy sex through the tent. What’s worse, the characters in the ad are redeemed in the end, much to the audiences releif, when we find out that they are in fact not gay, but rather, watching sport on their cell phone.”
How funny. Sorry Graeme Innes, Commissioner of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, I still don’t get it, unless I try to think like the kind of idiot who’d want to watch anything on a mobile phone whilst paying for Telstra’s ridiculous data rates.

Joe said that my encounter with HREOC would make an interesting story, and it would be one that hopefully sparks some debate. Little did I know, that Joe would be on the opposite side of the debate, batting for the other team,as it were.

Then Joe went on his photo rant, demanding I allow a Telagraph photographer to catpure me in the moment. “We want to take a picture of you looking angry in front of a computer or something.” I explained that I could not take time off work and have my picture taken in my work uniform. I offered to send him whatever pictures I had on my computer. I did, I wish I hadn’t.

Two important Facts, that are sadly lost amongst Joe’s witless rant and my scary picture

• I did not complain to Commissioner Graeme Innes of the HREOC about the Telstra Commercial, (which as hard as I try, I still cannot find funny.)

• I complained to the HREOC that when I had attempted to complain to them about the Telstra Commercial, I was given no opportunity to complain as being gay allows me to only complain if I’m discriminated against in employment. Sexual Preference is a category of discrimination not severe enough to warrant the attention of the HREOC (unless its because you get sacked). Sexual Preference is a category of discrimination equal only to discrimination against convicted criminals, political extremists, and religious fanatics.
  Here are the options you get: (click for larger version)
  

  

Now, I have to give Joe a tiny bit of credit. He did manage to pretend to be nice through an email and an entire phone call. Good Job Joe!

What did I learn, apart from the fact that News Limited continues to hire people who are both bad writers who are only good at twisting other people’s words to try to milk a story out of nothing?

I learned that these are the people who make it harder for me to gain equality and hopefully one day get married. These people are the ones who make it harder for teens coping with homosexuality to accept who they are.

I don’t want special Treatment. I just want to get bloody Married.

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Tanya Plibersek - the Minister for Housing and the Status of Women, also the Federal Member for Sydney, told me in person that the Rudd Government had eradicated all human rights violations surrounding the treatment of homosexual people in Australia. She was wrong, evidenced by the recent complaint rejection I received from www.humanrights.gov.au, the Australian Federal Government department tasked with handling discrimination complaints.

So I’ve sent Tanya Plibersek an email via the ALP website contact form, here it is:

I will post Tanya’s response, as soon as I get it.

If you wish to send Tanya Plibersek a letter, you can do so here : 
ALP website contact Tanya Plibersek form

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They are fast!

Karen from www.humanrights.gov.au responded, quickly I might add.
Sadly her response is a palm off. Not her fault, but still…
Here it is:

My favourite part is the quote at the end: “Human rights: everyone,  everywhere, everyday”
Well, no so much Everyone Karen. Maybe you should update your quote to be:
Human Rights: Everyone, Everyone except Gay People, Everywhere, Everday.

So, Tanya Plibersek who told me that the Rudd government has wiped clean all of the human rights discrepancies was either not telling me the truth, or she was wrong.

Time to send her a letter.

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The Government won’t assist us.

I woke up this morning and logged in to www.smh.com.au to read the news. Telstra pays a fortune to advertise on fairfax, and in their most recent campaign for Next Gen Mobile coverage they try to be funny in a homophobic and utterly stupid way.

Here is the ad (click the speaker to enable sound, although I don’t recommend it)

It shows people in tents at night in a camping ground. One of the men in the tent looks at his phone and then asks his tent mate ‘Gibbo’ what he’s doing. He replies and says he is doing nothing. The first man asks Gibbo what Barry is doing, and Gibbo says he does not know. We see an empty tent. Inside it, Barry is no where to be found. We then see another tent with shadows moving inside it in a way that suggests more than one person is inside it. We then see inside the tent that has two people moving around, and two men look up as though they have been caught doing something untoward. They look very worried they have been caught doing something their friends would dislike.  It then turns out they are watching football on a mobile phone.

This ad implies that Barry is gay, and he has been caught having homosexual sex in a tent. Gay men who do choose to have sex in a tent should not have to be afraid of getting ‘caught’ by their friends. The ad implies that being gay, or having homosexual sex is something to be ashamed of. The look on Barry’s face and his friends face when they realise they have been caught is the reason we assume they are gay. They are scared, and ashamed. This was the intention of the advertiser. The audience see’s that they are scared and ashamed and is led to believe they have been having sex with each other, the audience is then supposed to be relieved when they realise Barry is not in fact having gay sex with his friend, but instead they are watching football on their mobile phone together. The men and their reputations are saved. This is blatantly homophobic and very offensive.

So I went to www.humanrights.gov.au to make a discrimination complaint. But it turns out that the Australian Federal Government Department tasked with eradicating discrimination, is itself, discriminating against gay people.

They only deal with sexual preference discrimination if it is to do with some kind of employment issue. If you’re being discriminated against by a company who offers a service, or by any other organisation, they will not assist you. Your complaint is void. Here is the options you get to choose from:

As you can see, pregnancy, marital status, race, disability, age, sex, gender are all issues that you can make a complaint about. But if it is sexual preference, you are on your own.

So I decided to lodge a complaint with humanrights.gov.au about humanrights.gov.au.

Here is a copy of my lodged complaint:

We will see what they say.

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Well Ellen, I admire you for going there with John McCain who was the most recent loser in the last episode of the American Idol Presidential Election. But is your Marriage still a marriage? I hope so, but since California voted recently to ban Gay Marriage, what now? Are you gal’s just contracted like John McCain says?

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The Honourable Tanya Plibersek,
Member of Parliament.

She’s lovely, but she can’t help us… Yet.

Minister for Housing; Minister for the Status of Women.

Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting this extraordinary woman. It was the annual Glebe fair, and Tanya and our local member (both members of the Australian Labor Party) had set up a Labor stand on the street, and were generously answering questions all day. Now I have to be honest, I’ve seen this lady on TV, in fact, I watched her with awe as she verbally annihilated Joe Hockey on channel Seven the night that Kevin Rudd won the Federal Election. She smiled, she laughed, and when Kevin Rudd gave his victory speech, she cried. She is, if ever there was, an honest and down to earth Member of Parliament.

So what did I do? 

I asked her about Gay Marriage.

Now, it’s important to mention that from my discussions with Tanya, I’m convinced that she supports the notion of Gay Marriage. She indicated that she had been the MC at her gay friends commitment ceremony, and that she has a long history (being the ALP’s member for Sydney) of being positive and supportive to the gay community.

That said, my issue is not then with Tanya Plibersek the lovely lady I met in Glebe that day, My issue is with the Honourable Tanya Plibersek, Minister for Housing and Minister for the status of Women. Side note: Women and their status get a minister? But gay people don’t? Okay

Anyway, she pointed out to Kyle and I that as Gay men, we should be proud of how far the Rudd Government has progressed in removing a number of discriminatory policies and laws that in the past made our partnership basically null and void. She went on to tell me that as Defacto’s we have the exact same rights and protections as any Married Couple. I was grateful and indicated my pleasure at these facts, but I asked again, “But what about Gay Marriage?” She then pulled a face not entirely dissimilar to this one: 

But it only lasted a second. Then she went back to smiling (and its a beautiful smile) and she reminded me that a few years ago, gay people were getting bashed in the streets. That we have come a LONG way, and that I should remember where I come from.

I asked again, what her policy was on Gay Marriage.

She told me not to get caught up on the word, and that if my relationship was meaningful that should be all that counts. “Marriage is just a word” – Well, if it is just a word, then why wont you let us use it?

She admitted, that whilst her personal opinion may differ, “It is not Labors Policy to support Gay Marriage.”

Oh, no. Well, if Labor is the left wing party (not taking into account the greens), and not even the left wing party of Australia is willing to make it law that any Australian be entitled to Marriage, then who the hell is going to fight for us? Certainly not the right wing and conservative Australian Liberal Party.

So, basically, we are screwed.

As nice as Tanya is, and I mean it, she really is nice, I was so depressed to hear her tell me that it was not ALP policy to support Gay Marriage.

So, this is a rant. I’m going to write her a letter and I will post it when I’m done. If you feel like writing her a letter, please do! She will probably tell you the same thing she told me, but it can’t hurt.

The Hon Tanya Plibersek, Suite M1 45 Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600
Ministerial Office Suite 4&5, Level 10 Commonwealth Parliamentary Offices 70 Phillip St Sydney NSW 2000
Sydney Electorate Office 422 Crown Street Surry Hills, NSW, 2010

Or email her here

By the way, if you ever get a chance to meet Tanya Plibersek in person, do me a favour and compliment her on her smile. I wish I had when I met her, she really does have a killer smile.

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Recently, my boyfriend Kyle and I got commitment rings. We can’t get engaged because it’s not legal to get Married. Getting engaged when you can’t get married seems kinda pointless right? I compare it to buying pet food and a dog collar for the pet dog you really want to get when you know you can’t get a dog because your apartment has a no pets allowed policy. So we got ‘comitted’ and my family and friends were very supportive and sent numerous congratulatory messages. “Congratulations, about time!” That kind thing. Very lovely. But we became quite confused about it all.

Why were we being congratulated? We weren’t engaged? We weren’t anything. We were just agreeing to commit to each other and get rings to symbolise it, which seemed almost pointless because we’ve been together for 2 years, committed the whole time. 

My grandmother called Kyle on the phone to welcome him to the family, which was just lovely, but also confusing. Kyle has been part of the family for two years?

Engagement seems like something worth receiving congratulations over. Commitment is not the same.

I tried to explain to my family that we are not engaged, we are just committed, and they all uttered similar words, “Oh, if you love each other, it’s the same thing!”

BEEEEEEP – WRONG!

It is NOT the same thing. Engagement is what you do when you’re getting MARRIED, which we cannot do.

Because people believe commitment is the same, nothing ever changes. Because gay people overwhelmingly accept the support offered from their family and friends when they say “Congratulations on getting committed! It’s the same thing as marriage!”,  No one gets angry enough to actually do something about it. No one unifies. No one rallies. No one complains to government in large numbers.

Well, I’m angry! I’m angry that when we went shopping for rings, I had to tell the store sales clerk that we were looking for Engayment rings.

Imagine if we lived in country where White people could get married, but Black people couldn’t. The riots that would ensue! People would be screaming to end the human rights violation! People would unify, black and white behind the cause and they would end up toppling the regime that enforced the senseless bigotry.

The Australian Government allowed Kyle to immigrate to this country because he was my partner. They accept his partnership with me as one of significant importance. The fact we are together and have been together for 2 years allows him to benefit from Australian medicare, health care, superannuation, HECS, tax incentives, you name it. But NOT Marriage. But in the eyes of the very government that extends him all of his rights, we are not to be married. Not now. Not ever!

So I want to know who makes these decisions. I want to know what their excuses are for such blatant discrimination. I want to know who they are. I want their decisions to be a matter of record, for all to see.

This blog will document my journey as I challenge the Australian Government to come up with some meaningful answers to the discrimination  many hundreds of thousands of Australian’s must face because of their sexuality). Please feel free to subscribe and show your support.

Engayment is not the same as Engagement and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

We should all be treated the same and until we are, get off your bum and do something about it!

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