Hunting for homos

The coverage of homosexuality in the Australian media recently has rivalled that of countries like Uganda and Iran, where same sex love is punishable by death by stoning.

Too harsh?

The Herald Sun and Channel Seven have been the main offenders, while Channel Ten’s The 7 PM Project deserves a fabulous round of applause.

Jason Akermanis’s comments were of course the worst. But worse for the Herald Sun newspaper to publish them.

Sure, free speech is great, but we don’t give pro-rape advocates a voice, we don’t give racists a voice (most of the time), and we should not give dangerous comments like his to get the chance to gain support.

Thankfully, the Triple M and 3AW football commentators have called Aker out for what he is: wrong.

And Tim Duggan wrote a beautiful article in The Age.

But Aker’s comments should have never left the cave.

The same fag-bashing is happening with a NSW politician. The now former roads minister David Campbell resigned after he was ‘caught’ coming out of a gay bar in Sydney by Channel Seven cameras.

The reporter? Adam Walters:

Can someone tell me how being gay affects one’s ability to manage roads in NSW? Maybe Channel Seven could run a segment about the pitfalls of homosexuality in politics.

A ‘gay witch hunt’ is how Brendan Bolger describes it in SX. And he has had almost unanimous support.

I’ve never found Aker’s comments very insightful. Asking Aker about gay footy players is like asking the Pope what he thinks about condoms: you know what’s coming. Pun intended.

Another blight on the media was the coverage of the Equal Marriage rally across the country on May 15.

It was allocated about a 15 second time slot before sport on most major networks. A disgrace.

The 7 PM Project on Channel Ten gave the rally a big preview, but that was the only decent coverage of the issue by the electronic media.

Channel Ten has also done public announcements in support of equality – ‘This is Oz’ – please visit.

The amount of air time/column inches reflects how important a story is. If Jason Akermanis and his ‘gays should stay in the closet’ mantra get more attention than an issue of human rights, we have a lot of work to do.

If Adam Walters thinks a politician being gay affects ‘family value’ in his electorate, he should look at the rate of divorce among heterosexual couples in Australia.

There is a lot of thinly veiled homophobia out there. And stories like this, while not homophobic in themselves, incite hatred and bigotry.

In Uganda, they have just created a law which lets people hunt gay people and stone them to death. Of course Australia is nowhere near that level of barbarism. But we need to push gay rights onto the agenda and let them marry.

After all, marriage is a mistake everyone should be able to make.

Links:

What Aker said: The Age video – his column.

Visit the Gay News Network

Or put human rights on the political agenda and support marriage equality:
http://www.australianmarriageequality.com/