Telstra backflips on marriage equality stance

Telstra backflips on marriage equality stance
Image: Telstra has reportedly bowed to pressure after the Catholic Church threatened to boycott its services. Picture: Youtube.

AUSTRALIAN telecommunications company Telstra has backflipped on its position on publicly supporting marriage equality after it was criticised for bowing under pressure from the Catholic Church last week.

Telstra CEO Andrew Penn said the company would renew its “active” position on marriage equality after “significant debate and commentary”.

“Telstra supports marriage equality. Last week we advised that out of respect for the individual our view had been that we would not add further to the debate on marriage equality ahead of a plebiscite or parliamentary debate,” Mr Penn wrote on the Telstra website.

“It is clear that rather than Telstra stepping back we should in fact step forward and support our view for marriage equality and so that is what we will do.”

Mr Penn said Telstra has “long advocated and often pioneered the fostering of a more supportive, diverse workplace”.

The company was the focus of intense criticism last week when it was reported that it would no longer “figure in prominently in the wider public debate” about marriage equality after reportedly receiving threats from the Catholic Church to boycott its services.

LGBT business leaders called for businesses to boycott Telstra’s services after the announcement.

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6 responses to “Telstra backflips on marriage equality stance”

  1. Excellent news
    Marriage combines the natural characteristics of men and women as defined by nature in that only a man and a women can produce another life…. Two men with a synthetic child deny that child the natural mother
    If its just about love and so called equality that would mean any relationship where people love each other should also have the right to be married ( 3 people / cousins / a mother cant marry her son there have to be restrictions
    Marriage is rightly discrimitory
    Everybody has a right to love whom they choose but no body has a right to redefine an instiution that has stood for thousands of years
    One man and one women

  2. What’s next? A straight man becomes CEO of the gay and lesbian Mardi Gras! The whole world has gone mad!

  3. This was going to be my excuse to change providers after over 20 years of being with Telstra. I am still livid at their original decision and now I just view them as completely spineless of LGBTI rights. However, if I change providers now, I am worried it will send Telstra the wrong signal.

  4. Our Cayman Island Prime Minister ,Turnbull, is using our taxes, not the money in the Cayman Islands, but our taxes, to fund a plebiscite that will liken us to a pedo when we are on a bus, we will see adds on TV and we will see trains billboarded with the language Cori Bernadi has used. It will sicken Australia. The plebiscite will cost over 500 million but Turnbull does not care. He will do anything to satisfy conservatives. Turnbull should never have used his power on the Telstra Board to support LNP policy. Some commercial reality for Telstra has made other board members anxious no doubt. I am yet to hear Turnbull apologise for the plebiscite disaster. Turnbull must resign!

  5. Oh good.

    Our internet future is in the hands of the stone-aged RCC. Great move there, Telstra! Kind of like Abbott in charge of “Women’s Issues”.

    I will NEVER use Telstra services & will let their ridiculous cow-towing to a CHURCH (believers of the “super-natural”– oooooh!), of all freaking things!, be known far & wide.

    Telstra– the company of OLDEN DAYS.

    Ugh.