 Iain Clacher
A gun lobbyist and former councilor
who sold anti-gay bumper stickers and allegedly claimed gay people were less
than human will face Queensland’s Anti-Discrimination Tribunal tomorrow, Thursday, April 3.
Gun shop owner and former Cooloola Shire councilor Ron Owen (pictured) is expected to represent himself when he faces the tribunal
in Gympie to answer charges of anti-gay vilification.
A group of Sunshine Coast
lesbians will argue Owen publicly vilified gay people during a 2005 council meeting.
The then councilor was asked
how he could claim to be the champion of the underdog while driving a car with
an anti-gay bumper sticker.
Owen reportedly replied, “That’s
because I probably don't class gays as humans.”
The sticker, once sold through
Owen’s now defunct extreme right-wing magazine, Lock, Stock & Barrel, reads: “Gay rights? The only right ‘gays’
have is the right to die”, followed by a Biblical reference.
Owen will use religious texts,
including the Bible, and a claim to free speech as his defense, according to an
article in the Courier-Mail.
Other stickers Owen sold in
the magazine, at gun rallies and at public events such as the 1995 Spring Hill
Fair, included, "Register poofters, not guns" and "Animal
vivisection is cruel – use the morally degenerate instead".
Though Owen’s fellow councilors
considered making an anti-vilification complaint against him, they withdrew
when legal advice revealed they were not qualified to do so. Under the
anti-vilification provisions of Queensland’s Anti-Discrimination Act,
complainants must themselves be members of the vilified group.
Evolution Online has been told
several gay men living in Gympie declined to put their names to the complaint
for fear of retribution.
Only two previous
anti-vilification cases have been successful since the laws
were introduced in 2003.
Earlier this year, a group of
gay men in Townsville were successful in their case against a Mission Beach
newspaper and a man who wrote a letter to the editor. The group did not seek
damages.
And in May 2005, drag
performer Rick Peters (AKA Tamara Tonight) was awarded $3,000 in damages after
the tribunal found the former television host had been “greatly upset” when a
business visitor to his home wrongly called him a “pedophile” within earshot of neighbours.
Owen is a former leader of the
Australian Firearm Owners Association (AFOA), which drew national attention
during the gun debate of May 1996, when its president, Ian McNiven, referred to
John Howard as “Jackboot Johnnie”.
"The only currency you can buy
your freedom back with is blood," McNiven told an AFOA rally at the time.
The Office of the Film and
Literature Classification Board banned several issues of Lock, Stock & Barrel under laws prohibiting publications that
"promote, incite or instruct in matters of crime or violence".
The magazine has featured
instructions on how to make explosives, alongside ads for the chemicals. It
once ran a five-part series on organising "resistance groups" against
"our collaborationist government" with tips on sabotage,
counterfeiting and assassination.
Elected to Cooloola Shire
Council in 2005, Owen’s career in local government ended last month when his
bid for re-election failed with 4,000 votes.
Evolution Online
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