Dear Liam,

I believe that you are being honest when you say that you are not homophobic. I also believe that you genuinely meant no harm. I don’t believe that you should be vilified for your “throw away statement” about a song that you love.

“This is my favourite song off the last album, and it is about trying to find that number one woman of your life… which none of you can relate to, because most of you are girls.

“Except for the boys in here, you know what I’m talking about.”

I think that your comments came from a place of innocent ignorance. I think that you were blissfully unaware that your comments were heterosexist and therefore expressed a bias towards heterosexuals and a prejudice against the non-heterosexuals in your audience.

Essentially, you discriminated against your LGBT fans by not including them in the conversation and by implying that they couldn’t experience the emotions that you referred to.

If you are smart you will take a moment to educate yourself about heterosexism and use the opportunity to make people aware that heterosexism is a prejudice that discriminates and causes harm.

I won’t vilify you for your heterosexism because heterosexism is insidious in our society but I would ask that next time you try a little harder to be more inclusive, that next time you check yourself before making presumptions about people’s orientation.

We are surrounded by a world that is dominated by representations of heterosexual love and attraction, making it difficult for young non-heterosexuals to express themselves when they are viewed as not conforming to the norm. LGBT love is already underrepresented in our songs and our movies don’t add to that. Don’t presume that girls only love boys or that boys only love girls.

I won’t vilify you because I see this as an opportunity for me to educate you and for you in turn to put your hands up and say,

hey I was being prejudiced and I didn’t know it. In future I will never make assumptions about a person’s sexual orientation. I will not view the world, or speak about the world in a way that implies that heterosexuality is the only norm because doing that insinuates that any other kind of sexuality is ‘abnormal’ or second-class.

You have an opportunity to acknowledge your  heterosexism and your LGBT fans – go for it.

yours sincerely,

Sabina Brennan

This Open letter was published by Pink News