Melbourne Man Targeted With Online Hate After Sharing Homophobic Experience
Image: Brad Cresswell-Lee/Instagram
A newsreader for queer community radio station, JOY FM, has spoken out after a homophobic incident in Melbourne last week left him shaken.
Brad Cresswell-Lee was in JJ Holland Park in Kensington on the evening of January 2 when he alleges an older man told a pair of men, “all you poofters need to get the fuck out of Kensington.”
Speaking up for the younger pair, Cresswell-Lee confronted the man and took out his phone to film, only for the man to escalate the incident and threatened to call the police. He then approached a nearby family, alleging that Cresswell-Lee had been filming him and attempting to touch him inappropriately.
“He’s put it to the police that I tried to touch him and I was filming him inappropriately. That’s where it’s dangerous, and that’s where it’s like, absolutely stuff shouldn’t be happening, and we need to stand up to that, because we’re not going to be bullied to be silent.”
He notified Melbourne North Police about what had happened, and was informed the man had already called them with his own series of events and admitted to the homophobia.
Cresswell-Lee said he was also concerned about the likelihood of the man harassing other queer people, and wanted to protect his community where he could.
“Vile”, “threatening” online comments
After posting about his experience online, Cresswell-Lee was hoping to find solidarity and possibly get in contact with the two other men from the park, however his Instagram has been flooded with hate comments.
View this post on Instagram
“The comments are just vile, and some of them are threatening,” he said. “So it’s, it’s getting pretty scary… I just need to stand my ground.
“I think it’s really important, because the minute we stop standing up to that behaviour is the minute that they win.”
As a way to counter the hate he experienced, Cresswell-Lee is planning to organise a Stand Up To Hate picnic on the January long weekend at the same park later this month.
“Families can come together, queer people can come together and take up that space,” he said. “We do live in the area and we’re not, we’re not going anywhere.
“It’s about having lunch together and coming together as a community.”
Melbourne has seen an increased wave of queer hate crimes over the last year, including homophobic and antisemitic graffiti on Eagle Leather and The Laird, and multiple incidents of men lured into violent attacks through dating app, Grindr.
“This culture of hate is growing, and we need to stop it at the roots,” said Victorian Commissioner for LGBTQIA+ Communities, Joe Ball.
“It is all connected: violence, abuse, hate speech. We must stand up for drag storytime, for safe schools and for respectful relationships programmes. These shape how the next generation treats us.”
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I get no pleasure in saying this but: “It were ever so” – particularly for our LGBTIQA+ Community. For many decades the Hatred, the Discrimination, the Slurs, the Violence against us was, in Australia, led by all of Australia’s Police Forces. They took the greatest Pleasure out of their actions and that included Murder, with the latter being, at best, half heartedly investigated and always ended up with the police being either exonerated or by a carefully picked homophobic Jury found Not Guilty.
It won’t matter how many Hate Laws are passed because no-one can control how other people think. Parents and, especially, Religious leaders, who teach their children and followers to Hate from a very early age.It becomes part of their very nature.
Want to control how people think? Then establish a Communist or Nazi regime and if anyone disagrees with you then there is only one very simple answer, an answer we saw Hitler, Stalin, Mao and all autocracies and dictatorships use to great effect and that is to just Kill them.
We have to teach ourselves not to hate and for many within our community that is very hard ask.