A train guard from Thalys Railway Company has
been suspended after allegedly shouting at a lesbian couple that their farewell
embrace “cannot be tolerated”. He went on to tell the astonished and humiliated
pair that it would have been fine for heterosexual couples to kiss.
One of the women
on the receiving end of the homophobic rant, Mirjam, 35, from Amsterdam, said “Imagine
it. You spent the weekend with your partner in Paris. You say goodbye on the
train platform with a hug and a kiss. It’ll be a while until you see each other
again. Then an angry train official strides over to stop you kissing – he says
it ‘can’t be tolerated’. Humiliating,” she wrote on the All Out site. “My
girlfriend and I can’t believe that a Thalys official picked on us just because
we’re not a straight couple.”
Later, she told Le Nouvel Observateur magazine: “I couldn’t believe someone
was telling me what I could and couldn’t do. I was also shocked because he
wouldn’t stop talking, from our arrival on the platform around 8am until the
train left 15 minutes later. He certainly spoiled our au revoirs.”
In 2013, Thalys
launched an advertising campaign showing couples, including a same-sex couples,
embracing, having been reunited by Thalys trains.
“Just like us!
But in reality, they didn’t let me kiss my girlfriend on the platform. And
they’re staying silent after one of their staff went on an anti-gay rant,”
Mirjam wrote. “This isn’t just about this one person’s anti-gay rant, it’s
about pushing the company to turn their marketing messages into action and
ensure they treat everyone fairly.”
Agnès Ogier,
chief executive of Thalys, said: “Let’s be quite clear: no homophobic word or
gesture is tolerated by Thalys. Following the reporting of this serious
incident we immediately launched an inquiry with the help of our service
provider RailRest, for whom the staff member involved works.” RailRest, is a
Belgium-based Thalys International partner company that provides passenger
services.
Ingrid Nuelant,
deputy CEO at Thalys, said staff received regular training on equality issues:
“Thalys has always shown open values without any ambiguity through its
publicity campaigns and in its support of pride marches … This incident
profoundly affects us and from now will be used as a case history to make our
agents more aware.”
Guillaume Bonnet
of All Out France told Libération: “The object of this
campaign is to say to this company that they can’t run a very gay-friendly
marketing campaign and at the same time offer a service that does not treat all
customers in the same way. Mobilising people is important to combat everyday homophobia.”
Photo Credit: Photograph: Kenzo
Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images
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