Singer Delivers Beautiful Rendition Of National Anthem, Audience Member Delivers Anti-Gay Slur

After an Australian opera singer sang the national anthem at a basketball game attended by thousands, one audience member felt the uncontrollable need to offer a rendition of his own peculiar response.

On Stage with members of both teams and about a dozen young children, prominent Opera Australia tenor Kanen Breen sang the national anthem Saturday night at the FIBA basketball final at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne. When he was done, one of the 15,000 audience members yelled “faggot!”

Breen, who has appeared on Broadway, is gay and raising a child with his best friend and fellow Opera Australian principal singer Jacqueline Dark.

“I am beyond stunned by this,” Dark wrote on Facebook in a post that has been shared over 800 times. “Beyond hurt and beyond angry.” She suggests Breen’s rainbow tie might have had something to do with the attack, adding that Breen told her the slur was “clear as a gunshot.”

Breen “took it in his stride,” she notes, “texting me that it had happened and adding ‘My work here is done.’.”

“I found myself unable to accept it with such grace, and then found myself wondering why this was so,” Dark writes. “The sad conclusion I have reached is that he can accept it because it happens to him every day. Every. Day. Stop to consider that – imagine that every time you leave the house, you’re resigned to the fact that you’ll cop abuse from complete strangers. That you could be standing in a silence in front of 15 000 people – the most vulnerable a performer will ever be – and be shot down by a pathetic, cowardly word. I sometimes see it: When we’re walking down the street and a stranger sneers “Nice pants”, or when he’s riding on the train with our son and an ignorant bigot yells out “Oh, look – the poofter’s got a baby!” I’m outraged every time and can’t believe that this is 2015 Australia. He shrugs it off and occasionally tells me if there’s a really bad event. I find this sadder than the abuse itself. That people are walking around every day expecting to be abused. Resigned to it. USED to it. This appalls me beyond words.”

Dark also turned the event into a plea for marriage equality, an issue Australia is grappling with currently.

“People ask why we need marriage equality in this country and say there are bigger issues to deal with. This. This is why we need equality. Because neanderthal bullies like this still exist, some of them wearing business suits and responsible for running countries.”

Because some people are made to feel like second-class citizens and lesser people every day. Because in a thousand tiny ways, our society tells those people that they are worth less and that they should be ashamed of who they are. Because good people often do nothing when bigots attack somebody for their gender or their sexuality or their size, or just for looking a certain way. Because to a great many people, this is NOT a small issue.”

“It may be insignificant to you, if you’re a happily married heterosexual looking out at it from your position of privilege, never even questioning that your relationship is accepted and validated and that you can walk down the street without fear of being spat at. It’s a huge issue if your country tells you that the relationship you’ve been in for 20 years is not legitimate, that you are not worth fighting for, that it’s OK that you have less rights than someone who was born just slightly differently to you. I say it’s time. It’s time to stop hiding behind religious or ‘moral’ arguments which, upon examination, are frivolous at best and consist of the same tired old chestnuts which have been comprehensively refuted time and again. It’s time to stop clinging desperately to what IS and look to what is RIGHT. It’s time to silence the bigots. It’s time for all good people to stand up and say that this is not OK. It’s time to be on the right side of history.”

And she also took the opportunity to slam the bigot who saw fit to hurl the homophobic slur, and those who chose to allow it to go unchecked.

“Heckler, you are an embarrassment. Everyone else in the crowd who didn’t comprehensively shout this bigot down, you are also an embarrassment,” she wrote. “Heckler, I hope your children were not there to witness this. Actually, I hope they were. I hope they were incredibly embarrassed by your bigotry. I hope your family were embarrassed. I hope your mother was embarrassed. I hope they all sit you down and tell you that you are a disgrace and that your actions have brought shame on them. I fear this will not be the case, because bigots are made, not born.” 

Dark has now changed her Facebook profile image to a photo of Breen’s rainbow tie.

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