Gay restaurant diner in Australia’s popular tourist destination was told to use public loos across the street, because the restaurants facilities were ''reserved for real men''.
AUSTRALIANS like to think that they live in a broadly tolerant society, reports The Brisbane Times, and broadly it is true, at least that's what they say. Homophobic abuse slammed at tourists down under in cities such as Sydney, Melbourne and Cairns perhaps tell a different story of life down under for the money bringing tourist.
Earlier this month the gay American novelist Armistead Maupin and his partner Chris Turner were in Alice Springs, where they visited one of the town's better-known restaurants, Bojangles Saloon. When Turner asked if he could use the men's room, he was directed to a public toilet across the street. The barman told him that Bojangle's facilities were ''reserved for real men''.
The consequences were unsurprising, except perhaps to the barman. Maupin and Turner reported his comments to Tourism Central Australia, and in an interview with local ABC radio. They received a flood of messages from sympathisers outraged by the barman's behaviour and, via Tourism Central Australia, an apology from Bojangles' management. Maupin was magnanimous: ''The reaction was quite extraordinary and took the bad taste out of our mouths … As a gay man I look on this as progress.''
Yes, it is progress. Many Australians over 50 can remember a time when apologies for such remarks would either have been refused or made with extreme reluctance, even to internationally celebrated writers; it was a time when such incidents were as likely to happen in Melbourne or Sydney as in Alice Springs. That they can still happen at all, however, is reason to ask whether Australia is in fact as tolerant as we perhaps too complacently imagine it to be.
How many people who are not international celebrities, and thus much less likely to come to the attention of tourist authorities or the media, are able to tell similar stories? And are they as likely to happen in the capital cities as in places like Alice Springs? After all, Alice Springs, despite its robust self-image as a tough frontier settlement, is no small town. It has a diverse population, many of whom came from larger towns or cities, and is not entirely unrepresentative of the wider Australia.
The story of what happened there to Armistead Maupin and Chris Turner is a reminder that prejudice sometimes dies slowly, and that it takes more than changes in the law to overcome it.
“Homophobic and views of hate, distrust and prejudice like these will always exist in a country which point blankly refuses to give it’s gay and lesbian citizen’s equality. By denying equal rights to a section of society purely on the grounds of their sexuality the Australian government is holding up it’s hand and saying, ‘It’s OK to discriminate against these people, we do!’” Said gay rights writer and campaigner Jason Shaw today.
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