One of the issues is whether or not me complaining about the comments was what caused the ANZ and IBM to withdraw their sponsorship, or, as some suggest, they withdrew because of the article and not the comments.  I think the answer is both.

The email from the ANZ in response to my request says, amongst many things this:

Whilst ANZ’s advertising does appear on this site, I can confirm that we do not have a sponsorship relationship with Online Opinion and do not endorse their content and opinions.

While they may have withdrawn support because of the overall piece, they did indeed pay attention to my email, took the trouble to return my email and told me what they were doing.

From my initial email to Young and his refusals to remove the comments, I started writing to the advertisers within a couple of hours, there was little point in waiting really, and as already stated, I had outlined to Young that that was my intended action.

It is my intention to make this issue known to your sponsors, I’ll be expressing my dismay to them

Full copies here.

I don’t know if anyone else complained.   There seems to be some notion that I have been trying to gain publicity.  For what end?  Apart from my name appearing on a few blogs around the Internet, I’ve hardly become a household name, and in fact I’m not overly excited about all the attention this has generated.

There was also some suggestion that I changed my own website by removing content so as to avoid people landing on an article about Gillard and marriage equality.  Just to set that right, this blog was intended for the 2010 election campaign, and has not be used since just after last years Federal Election.  The only change I made was the landing page, that is, instead of landing on the “About Me” page, which was sensible when I was running for election,  when you type in gregory.storer.com.au you now get my most recent blog.  I started using the blog again when I realised people where visiting it to find out about me, and this seems like the appropriate place to post this information.

And again, to reiterate the issue, as far as I’m concerned, I acted alone, I took it upon myself to challenge the vilification on a website that is an issue for me.  Right from the start I told Young I was going to talk to the sponsors.  I have made no demands on anyone or told anyone how to respond.

It seems to me that Young is attempting to shift the focus from his original post where he claimed that I was an activist and was lobbying the advertisers:

Which leads us to the question of whether it’s right for someone who disagrees with my publishing decisions to go to people who supply us with advertising and pressure them to withdraw that advertising?

And this in one of his latest rants:

He’s been very quick to claim credit for this, even though, as I keep saying, there is actually no evidence that anyone took any notice of him.

Well, I know that two companies took notice of me. ANZ and IBM, the same two companies that have withdrawn from the advertising agency.  And as I have said, while other companies did respond, they more or less said it wasn’t their problem.  And again, mostly I was just ignored, whether deliberately or unintentionally I’ll never know.

In November last year, On Line Opinion published an article on ‘homosexual marriage’ by Bill Muehlenberg.  Muehlenberg is a self-appointed Christian activist working to stop what he thinks is the moral corruption of our society.  He does this on his own blog and has a tendency to simply quote large amounts of text from other authors without adding anything new or different.  He, of course, only sees things from his Christian perspective, and there is no other side to any of his arguments.

In his On Line Opinion piece he attempts to dismantle homosexual marriage by using quotes from the ‘homosexual’ activists.

I disagree with Muehlenberg, on many levels.  However misguided he is, he is entitled to his opinion and in trying to reach an understanding of marriage in Australia, it’s important that as many people as possible express their opinions.

Then the comments start.   The first comment was just disgusting, followed by a range of fors and against, then one that set my teeth on edge:

Certain lgbt’s want their perversion to be called “normal” and “healthy”

I decided to do something about it.  It’s this sort of language that doesn’t help anybody.  It doesn’t add to the debate and is really very nasty.  It’s driven by no science or fact but by a religious belief based on the bible that some of humanity considers divine, not all humanity, just a small group of them.

So, I sent a very upfront email to Graham Young, expressing my feelings and saying that I intended to raise awareness with the advertisers on his site about the sort of comments they were supporting.  The full exchange can be found here.

After it was clear that Young was not interested in pulling the comments I then wrote to IBM and ANZ.  I’m well aware of IBM’s support of the GLBT community, I’ve seen their diversity stall at the annual Midsumma Carnival Festival for a few years now.  I also assumed that a bank like ANZ would have a diversity policy too.  While I was at it, I sent similar emails to any other sponsors I could find on the website.

Hello,

I see that you are a sponsor of Online Opinion website.

I’d like to draw your attention to this particular blog post:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11268

While I disagree with the authors stand, I believe he has a right to express his point of view.

However, I think that some of the comments that follow the article are offensive, hateful and potentially harmful and should be moderated.

There is a clear link now between youth suicide and sexual orientation, overly negative comments such as on this site may have a detrimental effect and as such should be removed

ANZ is inclusive and respectful of people from all walks of life. To maintain your integrity I believe it important that you distance yourself from such websites and urge you to encourage Online Opinion to either remove the offending comments or withdraw your support for them.

Thanks for your attention.

Gregory Storer.

That’s it.  I urged them to talk with the website to either remove the comments or withdraw their support.

I had responses from ANZ and IBM that were encouraging.  A couple of polite responses from others that basically said ‘not our problem’ and the vast majority of sponsors just ignored me.

I also sent an email off to a mailing list I’m a member of.  I don’t know how many subscribers it has.  I told them of my actions, supplied details of the email I’d sent and invited them to do the same.  There was one response from the list, and that was to tell me they didn’t agree with my approach and wouldn’t be joining in.

All then went quiet for a couple of weeks, then Young published this blog, in which he expresses his opinion that he’s under attack by a number of gay activists.

and we are currently under attack from a number of gay activists because we dared to publish this piece by Bill Muehlenberg(which is mostly a pastiche of comments by gay activists) even though the majority of articles that I can find on the site on the issue support gay marriage.

And by attack I mean attempting to intimidate me, sponsors or advertisers.

Young was pretty quick to close the comments thread on this topic.

Next up was an article in The Australian that drew a bit of attention and then another blog by Young where he names me and provides a link to my outdated election blog and gives me the grand title of “activist”.

It seems from that point onwards that the truth was thrown out the window as various blogs began their own little forays into supporting On Line Opinion and simply making up things to support their cause.

Club Troppo launched into legal arguments based on corporate thugs suggesting I could be guilty of secondary boycotts, and this little gem from the author Ken Parish:

I agree that the person/s with bullying/thuggish intent is the gay activist/political candidate Gregory Storer. ANZ and IBM simply buckled at the knees reflexively no doubt for immediate commercial reasons, rather than even consider taking anything resembling a principled stand. They are undeniably the immediate agents of the thuggery though without the requisite thuggish intent/purpose under the TPA to inflict loss or damage.

Bully?  Thug?  Gay activist?  Political candidate?  The only part of that that is correct is the political candidate.  However, my actions have nothing to do with the Secular Party or my membership of the Secular Party.   A little later a full apology was forthcoming:

In those circumstances I certainly agree that I should apologise to Gregory Storer unreservedly, and I do so.  I feel both angry and stupid, but hopefully most of us learn from our mistakes.

A few unimportant and unread bloggers went so far as to suggest that I somehow was wielding huge economic powers, able to make multi-national corporations bend to my wishes and that I am the head of some big gay lobby group.  Seriously.

There was even some mention of this being a political stunt to get the Secular Party of Australia into the news, and that I was only undertaking this ‘lobbying’ to draw attention to myself.  May I suggest that it is in fact Young that has turned this into a media circus to draw attention to himself and increase his readership and revenue from the site.  He’s already had numerous donations and plenty of media exposure.  I have nothing to personally gain from my efforts.

I must say that I am stunned by all of this.  While there is no doubt in my mind that Young and his On Line Opinion perform an important role in our online discussion, he also should bear the responsibility of letting abuse, vilification and intolerance on his site.

It’s really quite simple – comments that vilify other people, whether its a group of people or an individual, should not be allowed to be published.  Plenty of blogs actually do this moderation thing really well, but not On Line Opinion.  Stupid, hateful comments are permitted so that the rest of the online community can pull them to shreds.  That’s not changing anyone’s opinions, and for too long now this backward policy has allowed radical, fundamentalist Christians the right to vilify and hurt people without just cause.

I’m not aware of Young’s financial arrangements, nor do I care.  It’s not my fault the advertising has been pulled.  All I did, and this is really simple, was state my case to Young, and when he refused to budge, I took the matter up with his advertisers.  Do I want to close down his site?  No.  Do I want to cause him financial ruin?  No.  Do I want him to understand that vilifying comments are not helping, that youth suicide, especially in the young gay demographic, is way too high and that one of the contributing factors is intolerance by family and friends?  Yes.

I am not a bully.  I am not a thug.  I am not an activist.  In my dealings with Young, the advertisers and sponsors, I have made no demands, I’ve politely asked them to reconsider their advertising.

I think this is a valid approach and I don’t regret any of it.  It’s a way of protesting that any Australian can do, and sometimes we get lucky and can enact a change.

An additional blog in response to some comments posted on On Line Opinion.

The result of this has been a saga of misinformation  by people who are ill informed and happy to create conspiracy theories.

This blog site has become a place that people link to – and I’ve not used it since the election, however, I thought it an appropriate place to state the case from my view and reveal the real story, without the spin.

Read on here.