A private room rental in the Krems-Land district, which describes itself as an “anti-gay house”, is causing a stir. “We don’t want anything to do with homosexuality, pedophilia and gender ideology,” reads the neighborhood’s website. In a broadcast on Wednesday, the SPÖ parliamentary club identified a “new peak in homophobic advertising in Austria” and called for an amendment to the Equal Treatment Act. Aids Hilfe was “appalled” by the operation.
“The ‘anti-homo-house’ will remain. You won’t be able to talk me out of that,” said the operator of the quarter for workers and fitters when asked by APA. Because they reject homosexuality and “do not want anything to do with AIDS or syphilis,” they have been blocked from booking platforms, according to the website of the accommodation, which has been run as an “anti-gay house” for years.
According to a “NÖN” report, the municipality has deleted the accommodation from its website. The anti-discrimination agency in Lower Austria remains “powerless,” said the SPÖ: “This is because discrimination based on sexual orientation is still legal in Austria when accessing goods and services, such as accommodation.” SPÖ-LGBTIQ spokesman Mario Lindner called on the federal government to enshrine protection against discrimination in law. A ready-to-decide draft is available. The turquoise-green coalition rejected several requests from the Social Democrats. “We cannot and must not accept that a hotel in the middle of Austria advertises as an ‘anti-homo house’ and equates sexual orientation with HIV – that is absolutely unacceptable,” stressed Lindner.
Further passages on the quarter’s website, according to which “homosexuality, pedophilia and gender ideology” are described as “philosophies” that “destroy the mental health of all those affected”, called Lindner “completely intolerable”: “Freedom of expression stops where the freedom of our fellow human beings ends and where hatred is fomented.” According to the SPÖ politician, this company has crossed the border.
The Aids Hilfe Vienna, which is responsible for Lower Austria, was “horrified” by the accommodation facility, “which does not accept homosexual guests and discriminates against them with sexually transmitted infections”. Managing director Andrea Brunner offered the operator “broad information on the subject of sexual health” in order to enable prejudice to be broken down. “If he has irrational fears, we can take them away with good advice. We can educate him how HIV and STI (sexually transmitted diseases, note) are transmitted – not in everyday life, as is the case in a hotel.” , said Brunner.