Blinkered in rural Arkansas
January 28th 2011 02:32
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Vyoos news
David Furnish and Elton John
VYOOS EDITORIAL
Elton John is fuming, and he has every right to be. Just last week he said he was getting increasingly annoyed by anti-gay sentiment, and now this.
With the world looking at pictures of a grinning John and his partner, David Furnish, with the baby they have just adopted, a supermarket in a rural US community has decided the pictures are offensive.
The Harps store in Mountain Home, Arkansas, has decided to hide magazine covers featuring pictures of John, 63, Furnish, 48, and Zachary, born on Christmas Day, covering the happy family in wrapping normally used on pornographic magazines.
The supermarket said it decided to wrap the magazines after customer complaints and to "to protect young Harps shoppers".
Now the world is crying "homophobia". Maybe so - as mX columnist Anna Brain wrote today, one assumes it is not the baby that people are protesting about.
But I don't call this homophobia. I reserve that noun for cynical acts of hatred or violence against gays. I don't think this is a homophobic act. I think it's an act of ignorance, and I think criticising it is the wrong response.
A person or persons in rural Arkansas was offended by an image of a gay couple celebrating parenthood. It's an unenlightened reaction, but there will always be an uninformed minority, and there will always be a need for tolerance towards them.
The supermarket to which the complaint was directed decided to take action, meaning its management was as naive as the complainant. This is a Keystone Cops sequence of the dumb influencing the gullible. Instead of labelling them homophobic, we have a chance to explain how and why majority perceptions differ from their own.
It needs a gentle approach.
Now get those moronic covers off those magazines, and give Elton a quiet day or two until the next piece of stupidity comes along.
news.com.au
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