Thursday, March 01, 2007

Straight Talk - Australian Style

Remember Carson Kressley, the flamboyant blonde guy from "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy"? Well, he's at the centre of a blatantly homophobic barrage by an Australian radio broadcaster that has been upheld by Australian authorities as allowable:

Veteran Aussie broadcaster John Laws delivered the following tirade in response to Kressley's inclusion as a judge at a fashion contest:

"'He was judging girls - now what the hell does a pillow-biter know about judging girls?' Laws asked.

"'They should have had a few truckies down there, or me….fair-dinkum Aussie blokes judging fair-dinkum Aussie girls. Not this pompous little pansy.'

"'I remember when Australia was a land of proud, dedicated women and hard-drinking and hard-talking men. Why this sudden proliferation of pansies I don’t know. The sooner this fairy flies out and lets us judge our own women on our own criteria the better.'

"Declaring Australia a land of 'truck drivers, wharf labourers and free thinking red-blooded men,' he then went on to play a recorded message incorporating the words 'piss off pansy'".

The Australian tribunal which judges complaints about this sort of thing found Laws remarks hateful, "We rule unanimously that the statements that Mr Laws made constituted homosexual vilification, because they incited severe ridicule of homosexual men on the ground of their homosexuality."

Having done that, the tribunal then concluded the remarks were protected, "By majority, we rule further, however, that his publication of these statements on the radio fell within an exception established by the (Anti-Discrimination) Act that is designed, within appropriate limits, to preserve freedom of expression. Our majority decision is accordingly that the publication was lawful."

Only in Australia, eh?

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