Engayment.org

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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