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Singer Darren Hayes has blasted Instagram for being “homophobic” after one of his photos was deleted for apparently being too gay (or something?) for the platform.
The Savage Garden frontman shared a photo of himself, fully clothed, lounging in bed, with a naked man laying face down across him. He captioned the image with three hashtags: #HappyPrideMonth, #Homo and #Queer.
NBD, right?
Wrong!
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The image, which was taken by photographer James Reese, was almost immediately yanked down. Hayes reposted a cropped version of it along with the caption, “The full picture of this was just pulled for ‘soliciting sex’ lol. It is me, fully clothed, with a nude male model lying across me with his butt censored.”
“Homophobia much?” he added along with a link in his profile for where followers could see the uncensored image.
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After Hayes called out Instagram for censoring the image, his original post was restored.
Of course, this is hardly the first time the social media platform has scrubbed certain content for being, well, a little too gay.
In March, it yanked down an ad for HBO Max’s show Minx because it showed actor Taylor Zakhar Perez walking through a men’s locker room fully nude with a large graphic reading “New Episodes” over his groin.
Oddly, the ad was removed from Perez’s page but not from the show’s official @minxonmax account:
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And in February, an Italian Vanity Fair cover featuring Eurovision stars Mahmood and Blanco was pulled down for apparently being too hot, prompting the @vanityfairitalia account to reshare a censored version of the photo:
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HoraceFemm
Really Queerty, “the Savage Garden frontman?” He has been a solo singer for far longer than Savage Garden lasted and while that is what most people are familiar with him from, that wording trivializes all the great music he has recorded since SG split.
HoraceFemm
I would also like to add that although that phrase really ruffled my feathers, as a whole I really enjoy this site, I just couldn’t let an inadvertent slight of the lovely Darren Hayes pass without note.
otherus
Really? As an avid solo Hayes fan myself, I can empathize with the sentiment but I think the crux is, as you pointed out, casual readers are more likely to recognize Savage Garden than Darren hayes. As far as I can tell,those 2 albums outsold everything else by about 13x. Don’t ride the writer for being populist – let’s just celebrate any broadening of his audience!
inbama
Why would you write an article criticizing Instagram for censoring the original and then not post it here?
Thad
As long as Darren Hayes isn’t getting into brawls, I love the guy. And Happy Pride too.