Gay rights activists have hit out at homophobic comments uttered at a meeting of the far-right Q Society this week, saying jokes about the murder of homosexuals were not funny and “not conceptual” given Australia’s recent history.
The cartoonist Larry Pickering and the former Liberal MP and Sky News commentator Ross Cameron caused outrage through their speeches to the Q Society in Sydney on Thursday.
According to Fairfax Media, Pickering said he disliked Muslims, except those who threw “pillow-biters off buildings”, while Cameron described the New South Wales branch of the Liberal party as “basically a gay club”.
“I don’t mind that they are gay, I just wish, like Hadrian, they would build a wall,” Cameron reportedly said.
He also described the Sydney Morning Herald as the “Sydney Morning Homosexual”.
A second meeting of the Q Society, held in Melbourne on Friday night, sparked protests in St Kilda, where activists attempted to prevent a busload of attendees from reaching the event.
Liberal National party MP George Christensen and senator Cory Bernardi both spoke at the Melbourne event on Friday. Both condemned the comments made at the previous night’s meeting, the ABC reported.
“No matter how much I celebrate free speech, they were absolutely out of line,” Bernardi said, according to the ABC.
The comments of Pickering and Cameron have outraged those campaigning for LGBTI rights.
The Just.equal national campaigner, Ivan Hinton-Teoh, said it was appalling that in 2017 any Australian would find humour or common ground with the murder of gay people in the Middle East.
Hinton-Teoh said the comments “left me cold”.
“In our nation’s recent history we know many gay men were routinely attacked and thrown to their deaths for being gay, so for many of us it’s not conceptual,” he told Guardian Australia.
“Did the audience laugh? Did they think it was funny that their disdain for gay people was shared with Isis? Did any of them quietly yearn for the good ol’ days when Australians were thrown to their death for being gay?
“It left me cold that we still have such a willingness to laugh at the violence we experience, rather than collectively recoil and commit to never again having such contempt for human life.”
The Australian Marriage Equality co-chair, Alex Greenwich, also condemned the comments. Greenwich said his group believed in respectful debate.
“To in any way suggest or promote violence against someone because they are gay is extreme, dangerous and unAustralian,” Greenwich said.
Hinton-Teoh criticised political leaders for not immediately condemning the comments. He said Australia needed to unify against such hatred and intolerance if it was to truly progress as a nation.
“This is no laughing matter and the impact is only amplified when it’s met by silence from political leaders,”
“When our prime minister, the member for Wentworth, found his mojo in parliament this week, not a word was said in horror of the comments made about his own constituents.
“Imagine if, rather than reading stories of jokes about our deaths, young LGBTI Australians saw our leaders in full flight in question time, defending the sanctity of their lives.”
