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Dear Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum,
We haven’t met so I hope you’ll pardon this note, but as you serve as both the prime minister and president of Dubai I feel obliged to bring a matter of considerable importance to your attention: it is past time to end the criminal sanctions you impose on homosexuals, to stop their harassment by your police and, most important of all, to legalise same-sex marriage in your country. Should you fail to do this, the economic consequences could be severe.
Personally, I couldn’t care one way or the other if two people (or three or four, for that matter) wish to formalise their relationship in any way they wish, although I’d prefer the state get out of the marriage business entirely and leave that trade to clerics. Civil unions are fine and dandy, with the state at hand to adjudicate contacts and the division of property should a relationship break down. But the taking and administering of sacred vows is probably best left to those with a hotline to Heaven.
The thing is, though, your nation’s attitude in regard to homosexuality might very well jeopardise a vital commercial relationship established in 2015 between Qantas and Emirates, your state-owned airline.
As you may be aware, the Qantas CEO is a jolly little chap, Alan Joyce, who is very keen on seeing our own legal code amended to permit same-sex marriage. Indeed, Mr Joyce takes it so seriously that, only last week, he put his signature to a joint letter by a group of similarly minded business chieftains. In this cause he brought not only his personal view and signature but also, by direct implication, the heft, prestige and prominence of the company he leads.
Well here is the problem. Some 13 of Mr Joyce’s jetliners touch own every day in Dubai, their comings and goings authorised by a formal pact with Emirates. Yet going by the text of that joint letter, Mr Joyce might be inclined to scrap the pact at a moment’s notice, such would be his disgust at your nation’s institutionalised and quite vicious homophobia. The letter states:
In the globally competitive marketplace, customers are becoming more discerning and are selecting products and services from companies that better represent their values. By supporting marriage equality, businesses send a powerful message to their customers that they think fairness, equality and dignity should be available to all
Now Mr Joyce is, as you might be aware, a very smart man. He has done a fine job of turning around the fortunes of Qantas, battled the unions tooth and nail and generally made shareholders very happy. I can only assume he was unaware of Dubai’s vile laws at the time he cut that deal with Emirates. We can be certain that he knows the meaning of the word ‘hypocrisy’, and were he ever to be made aware of the treatment to which he would be subjected should he take up residence in your country, some might well construe his airline’s current association with Emirates as an example of that vice.
Consider this report from a gay Australian, who wrote in November about the perils of queer life in Dubai (as your first language is not English I have taken the liberty of underscoring the most contemptible aspects of your laws):
…for those unlucky enough to fall foul of the law, the consequences are severe.
According to the International Lesbian and Gay Association, consensual gay sex in Dubai is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Because the mentality here is that gay men need to be deterred from homosexual activity, police raids of clubs and private parties are common. For a time, the authorities even patrolled the plethora of Dubai malls, searching for “obvious” signs of homosexuality.
When unsuspecting gay men are entrapped, the consequences of their sexuality are dependent on their nationality. Foreigners are often put in jail and then eventually deported, locals may have to endure hormone therapy to deal with their “problem”.
Given how Mr Joyce endorsed his fellow CEOs’ observation that “customers are becoming more discerning and are selecting products and services from companies that better represent their values” only one conclusion can be reached: should Mr Joyce ever learn of the way in which your country victimises homosexuals he might well pull Qantas out of its alliance with Emirates.
As his letter also states,
The most effective way for the diversity and inclusion policies to be supported is to exist within a national legal framework that promotes equality for all.
As I said, should Mr Joyce become aware of Dubai’s concerted oppression of homosexuals, consistency of both the moral and marketing varieties would demand that a key commercial relationship must end.
I trust you will act in accordance with common sense, legalise homosexuality, stop shooting up gays with hormones and, above all, legalise the marriage of Mohammad One to Mohammad Two.
Were an Australian reporter ever to bring your homophobic laws to Mr Joyce’s attention, he would have no other choice. After all, what man wants to be known as a hypocrite?
Regards,
Roger Franklin
Editor, Quadrant Online
> “We can be certain that he knows the meaning of the word ‘hypocrisy’ …”
Yes of course … but only as applied to deplorables. As I’ve probably commented before, Noble Cause corruption is much favoured by those denizens who enjoy abusing power. Amongst others, Joyce pretends as a “private” citizen that the public megaphone afforded to the CEO of a major public company is pure coincidence. Just lucky, I guess …
There’s a term I apply to the likes of Joyce: corporate homofascist.
Avoid Qantas. So last century. Emirates is the only way to go. Have travelled heaps with them and found them excellent.
My peripatetic son agrees with you, Jody.
We’ve travelled Business with them many times; when you arrive they take your coat and hand luggage, then a fellow comes along with a laptop and introduces himself and confirms one gluten free meal. They stow luggage no matter how cumbersome and heavy. Top drawr service, polite staff, excellent business lounges (Dubai dodgy, though) and a chauffeur service up to 60km from each airport.
Absolutely brilliant. Joyce can suck their dust!!
If IS started an airline with great business class, strong cabin personnel and competitive rates…….would you jump airplane, Jody?
Or do you stick to Emirates, whose owner punishes gay people only with jail rather than throwing them off tall buildings?
Great article that exposes the ability of clever elitist people to simply overrule the laws of physics, logic, ethics, magic and astrology in a single bound.
The sort of ‘spooky entanglement at a distance’ that only geniuses (who can hold two opposing opinions at the same time, without them being in conflict) can conceive of. Neils Bohr would have approved, but Einstein would not. For instance, Mx Joyce and his cohorts can hold one opinion in Oz and insist that it is the right and only opinion, but while they are in Dubai can hold exactly the opposite opinion and insist that it is the right and only opinion. There is no conflict or hypocrisy, but unless you are into String Theory and parallel universes, it really is spooky.
As Little Bill once said (and I paraphrase): “I don’t know your opinion at this time and place, but whatever it is, I agree and fully support it.”
Solved … How easy was that?
On the other hand, I think this article is a plea for hormone therapy for Alan Joyce.
What a prize example of PC intersectionality: How an Australian leader of the Homintern deals with leaders of the Religion of Peace. The answer is, as it always must be, submission.
It is extremely doubtful and most unfortunate that Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum will ever read this letter, or that he’d be likely to acknowledge it if he did. Not that it matters one way or another, because he would be certain to effortlessly match Joys’ hypocrisy.
“The most effective way for the diversity and inclusion policies to be supported is to exist within a national legal framework that promotes equality for all.” The word “all” in that sentence presumably means “all who agree with me.” If it really meant “all” there would be freedom to discuss and debate or live by a variant standard or code of ethics without being shut down, pilloried, or verbally abused in the media or through loud hailers. But in the (if I might borrow Matt’s term) homofascist world of Mr Joyce, the Coopers family and other corporate citizens, the ethic of equality means agree with me or be destroyed. However, to be fair, perhaps Mr Joyce doesn’t yet realise that when I book Emirates I am often put on a flight operated by Qantas or vice versa. Perhaps no one from the reservations department has let him know. Should we tell him? Lots of us?
There’s never been a better time to be gay in Australia, and much of the rest of the western world. Homosexual people have a lot to be thankful for, and I have no doubt that many are. I would expect, however, that the noisy few who are not have never learned to count their blessings.
Bless the little darlings little cotton sox, but don’t point out how wrong he is because … he can’t be wrong and would likely be offended.
And if the Laborr party has its way he’ll be able to complain to Jillian Triggs and seek redress and money.
A better example of virtue signalling would be difficult to find. Empty rhetoric designed to entice those who would like to think better of themselves can be ignored as impotent, laughing at them is the best response that has the happy advantage of lifting the psyche.
Those that fall for it have the intellectual depth of wet pavement and ought be considered a lost cause. Use any repetition of Mr Joyce et al admonition as a rule of exclusion from ones circle of friends and interlocutors, your world will be better for it.
LACEY UNDERPANTS (off topic). In London this morn ing: The religion of peace strikes again.
I think he must have twigged that going through Dubai may have a fundamentalist downside given their views on homosexuals because I read somewhere that the new jetliners Qantas have purchased will fly from Sydney to Perth for a refuel then all the way non-stop to London. That’s a better way and it avoids the unstable Middle East. And there’s more – Such a brave and arrogant gesture painting a Qantas jetliner with the colours of the gay activists. I wonder if that plane is going to land in Dubai or overfly Iran on its way to Europe. I would be a bit chary about being on such a flight in that region.
Sodomy spreads death [syphilis aids] and is prohibited on page 26 in my Bible. Marriage gives Life. How can death equal life?
The word sodomy spreads greater fear among the sodomists.
Why do we so seldom hear it. It is so descriptive, it’s not about love but the physical act of anal intercourse.
Here is another term you’ll never ever hear, homosexual paedophiles.
It is interesting how the left have managed to turn the tables just by tinkering with words, largely through nifty coinages. So, the adjective ‘homophobic’ throws it back on the unsuspecting ‘heteronormative’ bloke, with a tendency to dislike chappies who jump into bed together. So, the problem lies not with those who have a penchant for misdirected sex, but with the one who is critical of them. The latter is riddled with fear: he has a mental health issue because he abhors the idea of two blokes fondling each other.
Now we have a similar problem with a Pauline Hanson, for instance, who may feel inwardly riled when she sees a woman with a hijab sitting next to her on an Ipswich bus. OK, she’s not likely to be slumming it on a bus nowadays, but before her return to the hallowed halls with grass on their roof, she might have. Now she’s one gutsy lady so she is unlikely to fear the hijab wearing Muslim, that in similar circumstances I might, with some justification too.
But this is not what homophobic or Islamophobic actually means in the screwed up lexicons of the left: what they actually mean is that I, this wartyfied individual, hate, detest, abhor, denigrate, castigate, again HATE homosexuals and militant Islamists. It has almost become viscerally entrenched. Blame the backward sort of Rhodesian society I was brought up in. We weren’t so indoctrinated back then and the term ‘politics correctness’ hadn’t been coined.
Sorry, ‘political correctness’ not ‘politics correctness’.
Is the author, Roger Franklin, well known in Dubai? If not it is a strange conceit to gift them with a personal opinion: “Personally, I couldn’t care one way or the other if …”, even rhetorically.
No need to publish this Roger but my apologies for plagiarising this article in my short letter to The Australian published today. I wanted very much to relay your thoughts on this but didn’t think they would publish a link to QOL. Hopefully at least, your poignant observations reached a larger audience. Yours,