Readers Of Murdoch Media Lose Shit Over Our Photos

By Samuel Leighton-Dore

The gay agenda strikes again.

Just as you’re starting to cautiously enjoy a renewed belief that Australian society is mostly kind, decent, and tolerant – you accidentally scroll through a comment section at news.com.au.

Earlier this week we were super proud to release the photos we took of local legend Isaac Keatinge and his fabulous group of unapologetically fierce friends. We wanted to give Isaac the chance to have the final word against his attackers – and that he did. The story was shared all over the world, with thousands of readers commending Keatinge on not only his unique sense of fashion, but his unquestionable resilience.

We were inundated by emails from those who wanted to share the strength of Isaac’s message; and the public response was overwhelmingly positive, with personal shout-outs from the likes of Newtown MP Jenny Leong and musician Katie Noonan.

However, it appears to be a rule of thumb that with the gloriously reaffirming comes the concerning and inevitable bigotry. And as usual, it came wrapped up in something Murdoch-funded. Now, this in itself isn’t news – and this article certainly isn’t a click-bait attempt at validating or further inflating the warped judgements of those who continue to live and breathe among us.

In fact, we’re not even going to share them.

However, the comments posted beneath Newscorp’s article by the likes of “Dave of Brisbane” (puh-lease) are indicitive not only of the newspaper’s general readership, but of the consistently evokative and prejudicial undertone of their content.

For example, today The Daily Telegraph published a column by Australia’s most senior transgender military officer, Catherine McGregor. Now, the very notion of DT publishing any op-ed penned by a transgender person should be shocking – considering they regularly publish filth from “journalists” such as Miranda Devine and Andrew Bolt referring to gender reassignment surgery as mutilation. But this column wasn’t shocking. Rather, it was a completely predictable article against the introduction of Safe Schools.

ANOTHER article against the introduction of Safe Schools – that just happened to be written by a transgender woman. The powers that be must’ve been rubbing their chubby hands together at the luck of it all.

Conservative media is nothing new. But with the possibility of a plebiscite this coming November, it’s a chilling reminder of the impact such a public debate might have on young members of the community. Especially when one of the country’s biggest media organisations appears to be taking on such an active role; hell-bent on being a fertile breeding ground for hatred. Because nobody is immune to the fiery pits of a comment section – and when narrow-minded readers connect with narrow-minded stories, shit gets dangerous.

To their credit – many of the awful comments have since been removed by administrators. But if a story about love can rile up so much hate, well, we might be in more trouble than we think.

I suppose all we can do is keep sharing the good stuff, and trust that it wins out in the end.