Five people from the frontline look back at the moment Australia said yes to same-sex marriage and the decades that came before
I’m a big picture kind of gal, and yet this one year anniversary feels acutely painful. Every other day, I marvel at the sheer scale of the yes campaign. How millions of people from all walks of life harnessed their creativity and compassion to speak up for LGBTIQ Australians, making the largest, decentralised campaign in this country’s history. Most days I can see that big picture with the silver lining. Today I can’t. The LGBTIQ community begged the parliament to be spared a national vote on our rights. It was unnecessarily cruel and tangibly dangerous. We fought for parliament to block plebiscite legislation for a year, and won. When the government announced the postal survey, we took it to the high court in a desperate bid to protect our community. We lost. For many of us, the repercussions of the survey were too much. Legitimising questions of our worthiness and equality scratched an underbelly of anti-LGBTIQ hate and offered the loudest platforms to broadcast it. Australians were forced to pick a corner to fight from. Mental health services buckled with an influx of people in crisis. Many people I speak to today are still in counselling. Some of us didn’t survive to see the yes result come through. I’m a big picture kind of gal, but I can’t forget this trauma. It lives in me and it lives within the people I love. We are scarred. Let’s celebrate, but let’s celebrate the couples who’ve finally married after decades of waiting. Let’s celebrate 7 December, when the law finally changed. Let’s celebrate for the rest of our lives the Australia that we created together – over decades, not weeks. And let’s remember what the anniversary of the survey result really means.
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