It’s naive to think anything else would be the case, but it’s still intensely disappointing, disheartening, and upsetting to see that hateful shitbags have not be dissuaded by Wednesday’s glorious and extremely democratic YES vote for marriage equality. If anything, the result of the vote has forced the nastiest edges of the No campaign to thrash around like a run-over snake; a sickening display of petulance that not even the most aggrieved children are capable of.
Facebook group Christian Lives Matter are in the middle of a particularly massive tantrum that, worryingly, is emboldening its members to encroach on inner-Sydney suburbs to brazenly deface LGBTQIA-positive street murals and artwork in broad daylight.
A (admittedly questionable) mural painted by artist Scottie Marsh on the side of the Botany View Hotel in Newtown caused the Facebook group to launch a dedicated attack of coordinated harassment on the business, with 743 one-star reviews posted to the pub’s Facebook page, and a barrage of hateful and threatening phone calls so large that the pub was forced to take the phone off the hook.
The mural was then firstly defaced with a thrown bucket of paint, before three men arrived and took it upon themselves to paint over the mural entirely, threatening staff and on-lookers while claiming the mural was “hate speech.”
Similarly today, another of Marsh’s public artworks – a much beloved mural of the late George Michael in Erskineville – has been brazenly defaced.
Unlike the Botany View Hotel mural, the George Michael artwork is barely questionable, merely depicting the deceased artist and LGBTQIA icon as a rainbow saint.
And yet today, Christian Lives Matter posted a call-to-arms, inciting members to rail against the mural, calling it “offensive,” “discriminatory,” and some-bloody-how “pornographic.”
A short time after the post was made, a member of the group posted evidence of someone spray painting over the mural in plain sight.
Some of the more unhinged comments on the ensuing thread has suggested we need to “bring back the terrorists” to “clean up Aus,” and suggesting the George Michael artwork is “demonic.” There’s also suggestion that No activists and group members should organise a march into the streets of Newtown.
This is, to put it lightly, fairly crook. A childish, hurtful, spiteful backlash to not getting their way.
Seems fairly un-Christian if you ask me.
