A same-sex couple in Port Melbourne plan to fight to display a gay pride flag from their apartment balcony, after they were asked to remove it last week for breaching their building’s ‘advertising’ guidelines.
“The days are gone where we would just sit in the closet and say nothing. I’ve had it with the homophobia, the anti-gays, why should we put up with all this crap?” says resident James Bellia.
Bellia and his partner, Murray Sheldrick, have lived in the building for 11 years, and had not received a complaint about the flag since they hung it in February last year.
Bellia contests the real reason property managers MICM asked them to take the banner down, saying “what are we advertising, for God’s sake – that we’re gay?”
“When the Grand Final is on, lots of football flags are hanging up everywhere – nobody says anything. If you can’t display the rainbow flag… what about the Aboriginal flag? Would that also cause consternations?”
Bellia says the “discriminatory” letter from the building’s body corporate distressed him and Murray, but the couple still intend to challenge the warning and bring attention to the lingering homophobia that exists in Australia.
“There is this minority in Australia who say we shouldn’t have rights at all. We can’t be loved by everybody – and we don’t want to be. But it’s very important: It’s a matter of freedom of choice, a matter of civil liberties.”
via News Corp.
