"I AM GAY" was plastered over my suitcase while in transit...a response.
Having
missed out a night's sleep, I am quite tired at this moment and ask
that any mechanical language errors below be treated kindly.
Yesterday I tweeted a photo of my luggage after a Jetstar flight from Perth and it has caused quite the stir on social media. It has burst out of my own digital echo chamber and has been reverberating around the world for the past 24 hours.
I would like to point out that Jetstar has contacted me and offered a very sincere apology. For which I am grateful.
They
are also conducting a "serious" investigation that I am assisting them
with. Their PR machine is making all the right noises and saying all the
right things. I have set no expectations of Jetstar with regards to their procedures or outcomes.
I have also been
approached by media of all forms from around the globe but I have not
offered any comment or answered any questions. Whatever you
read/hear/see is based purely on the content of my Twitter feed and the
posts in this blog. In the age of soundbites and limited column inches, I
am not confident that anything I say won't be used out of context for
the sake of time/space limits. Also, I can't keep up with the requests so I apologise if you don't get a personal and polite decline to your queries.
What I would like to
share with you is what happened from the point where my luggage is on
the carousel. I won't speculate as to what happened in the lead up.
My
suitcase was the first bag on the carousel. The entire flight's
passengers were shoulder-to-shoulder looking for their bags and I'm
pretty sure that most people would've seen mine rattling along the
rollers. I saw a big red case approaching and excused my way through the
throng in order to retrieve it. I noticed some white bits on the side
and turned back, apologising to the people who I had just pushed passed.
"False alarm," I said to one gent. Then I realised that it actually was
my bag and that the white bits were the sign you see in the image
above.
I plucked the suitcase off the carousel and had
many eyes look me up and down. I was taken aback by the slogan but
thought I had thick enough skin to ignore the leering. My connecting
flight was about to board so I had to speed through the terminal to
check in with Qantas. As I dragged the case through the terminal, I
looked back at the people I had passed and they too looked at me
differently. My luggage was a scarlet letter.
I am a
white heterosexual male. This trifecta of privilege means that I'm not
routinely subjected to prejudice. But for a few minutes I got to walk in
the shoes of a gay person in a public place. For no good reason I had
had a slur marked over my luggage. I was degraded. I was shamed. I was
humiliated.
For me, this was only a few minutes of one
day of my life. If what I felt for those few minutes is extrapolated out
every day over a lifetime, then I can fully understand why our gay
friends feel persecuted and why they have such high rates of suicide. It
is unacceptable.
It is said that words can't hurt you.
That it is true. But it isn't the words that hurt, it's the intention
behind them. "I am gay" was not emblazened across my luggage as a
celebration. It was used as a pejorative. It was used to humiliate. It
was used as a slur.
Some people have been commenting
that it's probably just some loser in backrooms making a distasteful
joke. Or that Jetstar has a culture of homophobia. Unfortunately, the
mistreatment of our gay friends spans society. It goes all the way up to
our political leaders and includes such luminaries as our Prime
Minister. Our laws ensure that homosexuals are not afforded the same
rights and dignities that many of us straight people take for granted
every day.
Until our political/religious/community
leaders acknowledge and address these inequalities, until we
de-normalise prejudice, we can't expect the "losers" to follow.
As for the people calling me a whiner and telling me to toughen up, I would like to quote
Lieutenant General David Morrison: The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
This incident isn't about me, it's about what we as a society find acceptable.