Corporate supporters stand up to religious right

Corporate supporters stand up to religious right

The owners of Marquette Turner Luxury Homes are encouraging other businesses to speak out against homophobia after receiving -œhate mail from FamilyVoice members after they registered as supporters of Australian Marriage Equality.

Marquette is one of 17 organisations, small and large, to have registered their support for same-sex marriage on AME’s website. Other organisations include IBM, Westpac, the Commonwealth Bank and the City of Sydney.

FamilyVoice member Malcolm Pryor responded by contacting 12 of the companies to object.

-œMy wife and I note with disappointment your company’s appearance on the AME website, the letter sent to Marquette read.

-œHomosexual behaviour is unhealthy and should not be promoted. Homosexual activists are attempting to change the definition of an institution (marriage) that has existed in every major culture in the world since the beginning of time.

An outraged Michael Marquette, who co-owns Marquette with his partner Simon Turner, responded to Pryor’s letter, explaining his business was not wanted. He encouraged others to do the same if they receive such correspondence.

-œAt first I read the letter in surprise and then abject disgust, Marquette told Southern Star.

-œOur response was short and sharp and basically said we are a company that stands for anti-discrimination in every form and would never choose to do business with a group of people who didn’t share those beliefs.

-œIt’s so easy to be silent about it and maybe throw the letter in the bin or put it under a pile of papers. But the more we come out as a group of people and support worthy causes and point out the prejudices that exist, the quicker people will start to get behind the cause.

Four major companies on AME’s website contacted by Southern Star did not report receiving Pryor’s letter, or any other form of negative feedback from registering on the site.

All said they would continue to lend their name to the AME cause despite any such feedback.

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2 responses to “Corporate supporters stand up to religious right”

  1. Do you dislike smoking and support bans on smoking?
    How could you be so hateful!!!!
    Yes, that would be silly wouldn’t it. Nobody suggests that telling people smoking is bad for them, that it can kill you, that it can harm others, is ‘hate’.
    So why be so ridiculous as to suggest that a letter stating they oppose the normalisation of homosexuality for some good reasons is “hate”.
    After all your own newspapers state that it can be harmful, that it can kill if you get HIV/AIDS and that it can harm others by spreading nasty things like Shigella.

  2. Malcolm, (the man named in this story) here…

    Since I’m the main subject of this story, I guess I should clear up a couple of misrepresentations that it contained.

    Firstly, to call the letter that I sent to Marquette Turner hate mail is laughable and inflammatory. There may have been others that wrote (and if they were in fact genuinely hateful, I apologise) but my letter was definitely not hateful.

    Secondly, I don’t even know who family voice are… I wrote the letters because I wanted let companies (whose business I might otherwise use) know that their stance on this issue might preclude them from obtaining my custom.

    Thirdly, I don’t know what sort of administration Marquette Turner have, but I didn’t ever receive a letter of reply from them. Having now seen this article, I can imagine what might have been in one though :)

    It’s really sad that any document that questions homosexuality’s morality is automatically labelled hate mail and anyone who questions it is called a homophobe.

    I’m a keen cyclist and you don’t hear me calling Rex Hunt a bikeophobe, nor railing on about him denying my right to cycle…