Damien Grant on Sky City
Damien Grant writes:
Last week, faced with a massive media backlash, well, a reporter phoned them, they deplatformed American philosopher Peter Singer.
They trotted out a spokesperson to announce; “Whilst SkyCity supports the right of free speech, some of the themes promoted by this speaker do not reflect our values of diversity and inclusivity.” …
None of this seems to be an issue. Nor his support of abortion. In fact, he thinks that not only should a woman be allowed to abort their child before they are born, he makes the logical extension that if the child isn’t viable there isn’t any moral prohibition to killing it post birth.
This is the thought crime that had someone on Facebook upset, caused a journalist to call the PR department of the Auckland equivalent of the Death Star and before a SkyCity executive could digest the contents of Peter Singer’s Wikipedia page the philosopher had his speaking gig cancelled.
Now, I’m not sure if I’m on board with killing babies. I have a few questions. But I’m willing to listen to his perspective and see if he can overturn my instinctive position that killing new born children is as morally abhorrent as killing unborn ones.
What I’m not willing to do is accept at face value PR spin from a parasitic monopoly that preaches diversity and inclusivity while peddling addictive gaming technology and indulging our political class with free room and board in return for sweetheart deals.
SkyCity doesn’t have any idea what a moral compass is much less which way it is meant to be facing.
I used to be a fan of Sky City. I have stayed with them over a dozen times. I’ve attended many conferences there
But if they wish to be a cowardly pandering corporate that can’t even stand up to one person complaining about a guest speaker, then they’ve lost my support for good.
The only way we will stop venues pandering to cancel culture is if we make the price of cancelling more expensive than the price of capitulating.
One way we can do this is to stop staying at Sky City, and to remove them from the list of possible venues for your conferences. I mean who wants to trust them with your conference when they might cancel the booking at the last minute because one person has complained?