Last week, I had an interesting chat about why it matters if a person is gay with host Stephen Cenatiempo at six-in-the-morning on his 2CC (Canberra) breakfast radio show. We were supposed to be discussing the feelings of over-55s in the workplace, and how although many of this cohort were in management or leadership roles, they were less likely than ‘all’ to think the company they worked for was ‘inclusive’ and yet, strangely, weirdly, counter-intuitively, they were also less likely to support inclusion initiatives. It’s like they are saying: “I feel left out, but also, I don’t want the company to do anything about it.” 

We were supposed to be discussing the reasons why that might be (I have a few theories, they’ll be published soon). But what happened was, like many conversations, it became derailed, not in a bad or good way, just in a way, because Stephen asked an even bigger question: “What’s it matter?”

It was in the context of LGBTIQ+ sentiment, and so I interpreted the query as “What’s it matter if person X is gay or not?” and this coincides with the release of a 4-Corners report on the potential ‘coming out’ of a gay AFL player, to which, on social media, a lot of the comments seem to be saying the same thing:  “But what’s it matter if person X is gay or not?” There’s a hundred answers to that and people more eloquent than I can answer it better than I ever will, but, I have one answer with some data to support it. 

The answer I gave on the radio was a bit stumbly so I’d like to express it more eloquently here. On our Diversity Atlas survey we ask people about their ‘social and cultural identity priorities’ – a way of asking, “What’s important to you?” 

We see different sorts of answers in different regions – in the Middle East for instance we see ‘my religion’ high up on the list, in France and Italy we see ‘my language’ appear pretty high and in Australia ‘my country of birth’ is the most common top priority, but we also see differences in metrics other than region, for instance, in people under 30, ‘my education’ and ‘my appearance’ comes a lot higher than the over-55s, and ‘my gender’ is consistently in the Top 3 identity priorities of women and consistently in the bottom 3 priorities for men. 

You can see where this is going: ‘My sexuality’ is a ‘cultural or social identity priority’ for many, most notably, those who identify as LGBTIQ+ . 

So, in answer to the question, “What’s it matter if someone is gay or not?” is that, well, it might not matter to you, but it may matter for them (and their friends, family and community) as much as religion, language, country of birth and gender matters for other people. That’s why. 

And think about it: There’s thousands of people, just in Australia, finishing University with (for instance) data security degrees, and companies are lining up, desperate for them to come and work with them, and these graduates can pretty much choose to work anywhere they want. Pay-slip aside, let’s imagine one of these graduates is gay, and it’s an important aspect to his identity; which company is he going to work at? The one with the rainbow flag on their website and the internal pride group / ERG, or the one that flatly refuses to address sexuality difference on the grounds that ‘it doesn’t matter if you’re gay or not’? 

We know the answer.

Thanks heaps to 2CC and Stephen for having me on the show.