Telstra bows to Catholic Church’s marriage equality threat
Image: Telstra has reportedly bowed to pressure after the Catholic Church threatened to boycott its services. Picture: Youtube.
AUSTRALIAN telephone company Telstra has come under fire after it bowed to pressure from the Catholic Church over its public support of same-sex marriage.
Telstra has been a vocal supporter of marriage equality over the past few years, most recently featuring in a full-page Australian Marriage Equality advertisement in May, 2015.
In response to the advertisement, the Archdiocese of Sydney’s business manager Michael Digges wrote an email to all the companies participating in the campaign and threatened to boycott their services.
Telstra, which has the contract for Catholic schools across Australia, decided to back away from its public support as it “did not want to risk its commercial relationship with the church”, the Australian’s Rick Morton reported.
“The government has committed to putting same-sex marriage before the Australian people in the plebiscite, and ultimately, it will be parliament who determines any changes in the institution of marriage,” a Telstra spokesman told the Australian.
“In view of this, Telstra has no further plans to figure prominently in the wider public debate. Telstra has demonstrated it places great importance on diversity and standing against discrimination, in all its forms. Our workforce reflects this diversity, including people … in a broad range of relationships.”
The Aus people and Parliament will determine any changes to institution of marriage. We have no plans to drive further public debate.
— Telstra News (@Telstra_news) April 12, 2016
Australian Marriage Equality director Rodney Croome told the Australian that Telstra has made no request to withdraw its logos.
Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays spokesman Shelley Argent OAM said she was disappointed that Telstra would succumb to bullying by the Catholic Church.
“Your LGBT employees must feel abandoned and not worthy in one of Australia’s largest and high profile companies. You have abandoned your LGBT employees and lowered their self esteem which will affect their productivity,” she wrote in an open letter on Facebook.
“Your web page states that you will stand against homophobia! However, you allow the Catholic church to demonstrate one of the greatest acts – deliberate exclusion, bullying and humiliation by your lack of support. Short term profit over what is morally right is nothing to be proud of.
“Shame on you, your Board and those who condoned this cowardly decision.”
In the past, Telstra has been a supporter of the LGBTQI community. Last year, the company stripped a Telstra award winner of his prize after a foul-mouthed, homophobic rant on Facebook.
It also released a video in 2011 as part of the It Gets Better campaign.
Telstra customers and commentators have taken to social media to air their frustration and disappointment at the decision.
Hey @telstra give me a reason I should stay with you seeing you don’t support my family anymore. @optus @VodafoneAU do you need new business
— Rodney Chiang-Cruise (@rodneycruise) April 12, 2016
So @telstra really pulled support for same-sex marriage due to pressure from the Catholic Church? Is it 700 AD?
— Osman Faruqi (@oz_f) April 13, 2016
.@telstra after you caving to the Catholic church and removing your support for marriage equality. I’m taking my business elsewhere.
— Adam (@wanderingaussie) April 12, 2016
What we are seeing is the “cult” of LGBTIQ2A+ where once you are in, you can never leave – Telstra has been caught out and many other businesses/individuals/politicians are going to get caught out too – it’s the “Hotel California” scenario….”You can check-out any time you like, But you can never leave!”.If you back-track from their support….wow!….are you in for it. There’s no love or tolerance then, just plain hateful, malicious blackmail and bullying. We can now start to see the ugly underbelly of the same sex lobby movement! Persecution of all descriptions will follow over the years. Just like how a man who unfortunately got bashed at Newtown and the same sex people instantly want militant homosexuals to come out of the woodwork?….like “Bash Back” in America?…..they take the law in their own hands with out due process – how do they know that it was an attack based on homosexuality?…..sure, the media reports it as such and most likely the media is wrong (as is usually the case). Talk about politicised, emotional reactions without facts. The attack could have been for a thousand other reasons and it just happened that the recipient is a homosexual. I have already seen malicious attacks occurring as a result of false media reporting and so I know first-hand what the gay activists can do.
Btw, the more you create a “special” activity to help a “different group” of people, the more different they become because they have to have “special” help – it is circular reasoning and works against itself. It creates “perpetual victim-hood”. For example, when I was a child, I remember a group of children leaving out another child from their group (as children do from time-to-time) and so an adult stepped in to help out by telling/suggesting that the group include the other child. This just made the other child look more different from the rest because an adult had to step in to help him (when no adults had to step in for any of the other children), and so the child felt more left out and the the child himself got upset with the adult for exacerbating his situation. The adult thought they were doing something helpful, but just made the problem worse for the child. If the adult had just made a generalisation to ALL the children that they need to be inclusive without identifying any one child or drawing attention to any specific issue, then the group of children would apply the teaching to their circumstances by including the other child…..and the other child wouldn’t feel different from the rest (thereby maintaining his self-respect and normality). So in the case of the “Safe Schools” program, the more that the LGBTIQAPX people get “special” attention, the more different they look. In stead of being a genuine anti-bullying program that teaches anti-bullying across ALL issues, it focuses on one group thereby exacerbating their plight. Talk about a massive back-fire….and it’s not just with “safe Schools”, they look more different and unnatural the more that the same sex lobby group tries to “help” them. There are also gay-only groups that teach people how to have gay relationships, gay sex, etc….so much for homosexuality being “normal/natural” if you have to be taught it….and it is discrimination to make the group a gay-only group (oh….that’s right…..discrimination and abuse only works one way, the heterosexuals have to cop it).
The customers of Telstra do tend to be mainly old conservatives who still belong in the days when there was only a government provided telephone service viz. the PMG and then Telecom,
Broadminded, thinking people tend to go elsewhere and get better service at lower cost – I certainly did.
A lot of large organisations probably wave the pink banner because it’s the trendy thing to do, but here we see an example of where it was just for show.
Telstra it’s how we disconnect!
Totally true!
I would say Telstra and the Roman Catholic ‘Paedo’ Church make a ‘marriage in hell’ Both are appalling! Good riddance to both of them.
What’s next Telstra employing peadophile Catholic Church priests? Fuck you Telstra! My smoke signals in a paddock, just outside of Forbes are far better than your shit service anyway!
Telstra is shit anyway! Over the past month there have been outages within there own network anyway! What is wrong with Telstra? It was much better with Telecom back in the day, that was owned by the government! Now today since the privatisation of Telstra, we get a shit embarrassing communication service in the whole developed world! The NBN is even slower than what it was two years ago, the reason the government cut backs and “fibre to the node” cheap option that still uses the old outdated copper network! I did in the past work for Telstra and copped a lot of bullying and intimidation, it does not surprise me that the ACL has bought the SSO and now the Catholic Church has bought Telstra! No wonder why Telstra is complete shit!
It shows that companies who appear to be supporting GLBT issues are really only going after the pink dollar. When their bigger source of revenue is threatened, they quickly drop that support. If Telstra is genuinely supportive, then they would not be afraid of what the catholic church has threatened to do. IT’S ALL ABOUT MONEY!
And the Catholic Church wonder why the faithful flock diminishes… they should be ashamed of themselves.
In Animal kingdom rams mount rams, bulls try mounting Bulls. It is in DNA. all Farmers know this The Church know this! p.s Man is animal!