Politics

Conservatives Are Having A Strop After Anna Wintour Dragged Scott Morrison Over LGBTIQ Rights

Tony Abbott, Chris Kenny and Miranda Devine are mad.

by Tom Clift  25 January 2019
Anna Wintour hits out at Scott Morrison and Margaret Court

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Vogue Magazine editor-in-chief Anna Wintour has delivered a stinging attack on Prime Minister Scott Morrison over his “backward” record on LGBTIQ rights, while also calling for Margaret Court Arena to be renamed due to its namesakes vocal opposition to marriage equality. And you’ll be shocked to learn conservatives are having a big old strop about it.

Wintour was in Melbourne on Thursday to deliver a keynote address at a lunch organised by the Australian Open. Addressing a crowd that included former deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop, the fashion and publishing icon said she was “alarmed by your prime minister’s record on LGBTQ rights, which seems backward in all senses”.

“That no one can be expelled from school for their orientation should not require clarification,” Wintour said, in reference to the government dragging its feet on protections for LGBTIQ school students. “A government should protect its people, not make it unclear whether they will be accepted and we are struggling with these issues in the United States as well.”

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Wintour also hit out at former tennis great Margaret Court, who caused controversy in 2017 after coming out against marriage equality and comparing LGBTIQ activists to Hitler. Court’s remarks led many to suggest Margaret Court Arena should be renamed, a push that Wintour said she supported.

“I find that it is inconsistent with the sport for Margaret Court’s name to be on a stadium that does so much to bring all people together across their differences,” she said. “This much I think is clear to anyone who understands the spirit and the joy of the game. Intolerance has no place in tennis.”

“Margaret was a champion on the court, but a meeting point for players of all nations, preferences and backgrounds should celebrate somebody that was a champion off the court as well,” she added.

Afterwards, Bishop said Wintour had made some “pretty pertinent points”.

Former PM Tony Abbott, on the other hand, accused her of giving an “ignorant lecture” and insisted she had her “facts wrong”.

Conservative media commentators have likewise gotten themselves worked up into a big old tizzy. Sky News host and The Australian associate editor Chris Kenny accused Wintour of making “a spectacle of herself”, while also proudly declaring he had never even heard of her until yesterday. Gee, that’ll show her.

Then there was The Daily Telegraph‘s Miranda Devine, who in a column titled ‘Who Does Anna Wintour Think She Is?’ accused Wintour of “lecturing us like some dowager duchess come to the colonies to instruct the natives on etiquette”. She also called Wintour a “virtue-signaller”, because I’m pretty sure her employment contract stipulates she needs to work that into everything she writes.