Aussie blogger who goes by the name of One Sleepy Dad was horrified to find that a gay slur was stuck on his luggage after a flight from Perth on Jetstar. The “white heterosexual male” recalled on his blog that he felt the degradation homosexuals face every day when his suitcase had been covered with stickers forming the words “I Am Gay.”

On Sunday, Sleepy Dad posted a photo on Twitter, writing, “Utterly disgusted to find my luggage front and centre on the @JetstarAirways luggage carousel looking like this.”

Utterly disgusted to find my luggage front and center on the @JetstarAirways luggage carousel looking like this. pic.twitter.com/ErU7LhRZDd

— Sleepysaurus Rex! (@aaronpp) October 13, 2013

The photo has caused quite a stir online, prompting Sleepy Dad to write more about the incident.

As he explained the next day, he didn’t notice the words pasted on his bag at first, just thinking that they stickers that were stuck at random.

“I plucked the suitcase off the carousel and had many eyes look me up and down. I was taken aback by the slogan but I thought I had thick enough skin to ignore the leering. My connecting flight was about to board so I had to speed through the terminal to check in with Qantas. As I dragged the case through the terminal, I looked back at the people I had passed and they too looked at me differently. My luggage was a scarlet letter.”

Sleepy Dad said that even with a trifecta of privilege, being a white heterosexual male, it doesn’t mean that he was not subjected to prejudice. However, walking in the shoes of a gay man in a public place for a few minutes had left him feeling degraded and humiliated.

“For me, this was only a few minutes of one day of my life. If what I felt for those few minutes is extrapolated out every day over a lifetime, then I can fully understand why our gay friends feel persecuted and why they have such high rates of suicide. It is unacceptable.”

He doesn’t know who had emblazoned the words across his luggage or why, but he knows it was not done so as a celebration but was used as a pejorative.

“Unfortunately, the mistreatment of our gay friends spans society. It goes all the way up to our political leaders and includes such luminaries as our Prime Minister. Our laws ensure that homosexuals are not afforded the same rights and dignities that many of us straight people take for granted every day.”

He also posted a quote Lieutenant General David Morrison, “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.”

Sleepy Dad ended his post with, “This incident isn’t about me, it’s about what we as a society find acceptable.”

The article has attracted over a hundred comments to date, with most of them commending the blogger of his insightful post.

Jetstar has contacted the stay-at-home dad to offer their apology, which he accepted and is grateful for. He is assisting the airline with their investigation regarding the matter.