There is a very real chance that marriage equality may come to Australia by a popular vote, which no one who supports it wants. Our biggest concern is the harm that it’s going to do, which I explain here. If a plebiscite does go ahead, I’m going to be okay. I’ve dealt with everything that I mention here, and it doesn’t bother me anymore. I’m worried about others.
I also want to give you an idea about some names you may be unfamiliar with.
Loree Rudd is former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s sister.
Margaret Court is a great tennis player but a horrible person.
Jim Wallace is the former managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby, an anti-LGBTI group.
Tess Corbett was a candidate with a socially conservative political party in 2013.
Bernard Gaynor is a member of the Australian military, a right-wing activist, and a Senate candidate with the Australian Liberty Alliance party, whose main platform is opposition to Islam. (No, I don’t support it.)
The Safe Schools Coalition is an initiative to end anti-LGBTI school bullying by changing attitudes.
Kevin Donnelly is a homophobic researcher at Australian Catholic University and an occasional commentator.
David van Gend is a doctor, socially conservative activist and the president of the Australian Marriage Forum, an anti-LGBTI hate group worse than the ACL.
The Marriage Alliance is an anti-LGBTI group more hostile than the ACL is now (the ACL was worse in the past) but not as much as the AMF, known for sharing offensive memes on social media and blocking anyone who criticizes them.
Piers Akerman is a conservative commentator and just a plain asshole.
Minus 18 is an LGBTI youth charity.
The following is my piece, written like a newspaper column. A warning: some of the themes may be confronting.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
If, when I first fell in love with another boy, you told me that this new development would have a negative effect on some of the events of my life, I wouldn’t have believed you. When considering the possibility, I thought what a lot of people think about misfortune: “That will never happen to me.”
Two years later, I can see that that statement was about as far from the truth as creationism. For almost four months last year, my mind was constantly occupied with a million different questions about my sexuality that, until I could answer to my satisfaction, made me indescribably anxious. This was most noticeable during our most active discussions about marriage equality.
This isn’t new or surprising. A 2010 study from Columbia University found that in U.S. states with same-sex marriage bans compared to states without them, LGB people were 37% more likely to have mood disorders, 42% more likely to have alcohol-use disorders, and 248% more likely to have generalized anxiety disorders.
I, and I’m sure those studied too, were made more anxious simply from seeing everything that marriage equality opponents were saying about us. Constantly having your own equal validity questioned is inevitably damaging. I can’t explain it more specifically than that, but that’s the nature of hate speech: it gets you down, no matter how irrational it is.
More than once, it was all too much. Two days after Tony Abbott blocked a conscience vote on the issue, I arrived home from school and broke down crying. And more than once, I could see no path out of what I was feeling. That compounded the problem enormously.
And all this happened even though I have never been rejected by my parents, or bullied at school because of my sexuality. In fact, I am among the luckiest people who are in my position. If what I described can happen to someone as lucky as me, what must be happening to those who are not?
Put yourself in this position (because there are people in it for real). You’re a young gay person in a religious and conservative area, encountering judgement and disapproval from your parents and bullying from your school peers. Then a plebiscite brings out your whole community’s attitude toward you, and you have no hope of leaving that place any time soon.
What reason would you have to stay alive?
And what would get out of it? Do we really need to give people like Loree Rudd, who wants a Russia-style anti-propaganda law here, or Margaret Court, who calls homosexuality “an abomination to the Lord”, or Jim Wallace, who says (falsely, let’s remind ourselves) that gay people die 20 years earlier than straight people, or Tess Corbett, who views gay people in the same category as pedophiles, or Bernard Gaynor, who calls gay relationships “utter depravity”, a reason to express their hateful views?
Somehow, I don’t think sacrificing a few gay kids in exchange for something else bad is a good idea.
In a debate on Patricia Kaverlas’ Sky News show with Australian Christian Lobby managing director Lyle Shelton, Australian Equality Party Senate candidate Jason McCheyne mentioned elevated suicide rates among LGBTI youth, which Shelton promptly dismissed as “terrible emotional blackmail”.
He might want to check the Growing Up Queer report from the University of Western Sydney, which found that 42% of Australian LGBTI youth have considered either suicide or self-harm.
Shelton represents, of course, the same Australian Christian Lobby that, five years ago, actually criticized the Safe Schools Coalition for “suggest[ing] that children who might be homosexual attend” the schools the Coalition work in, which they described as a “homosexual ghetto”.
Memo to the ACL: historically, ghettos have not been places of love and acceptance, but quite the opposite. And how can any civilized person suggest that gay students should not go to safe schools?
Since then they have adopted a more moderate tone, but they have not adopted more moderate attitudes. This week, on his radio show “The Political Spot”, Shelton admitted that he opposes the program because “for many people, they don't agree that lesbianism or homosexuality is something that should be promoted or necessarily affirmed.”
Of course, the newly ignited debate over the Safe Schools Coalition is now threatening a double dose of hate for LGBTI youth. Australian Catholic University’s Kevin Donnelly criticized the Coalition for teaching that “all forms of sexuality are acceptable”, and said that LGBTI students should only not be “unfairly discriminated against or victimized”. Meaning they should be, just in a way that he thinks is “fair”.
Australian Marriage Forum president David van Gend was even more blunt, calling the Coalition “gay recruitment” and saying that it was inflicting “moral damage” on children, while denying that LGBTI students are disproportionately bullied.
And if you read the Marriage Alliance’s Facebook posts about Safe Schools, you’ll routinely come across comments like “why don’t these sick bastards get their own school… No one gives a fuck of these cunts dying of Aids anyways.”
Malcolm Turnbull has sought to assure us that this kind of hate will not be unleashed by a plebiscite. Back in October, he said that “if there are unruly voices heard, they will be drowned out by the common sense and the respect and the general humanity of our people.”
Two problems. One: it’s not a question of “if” there will be unruly voices. There will be, because those voices have said as much. The Australian Marriage Forum has described Ireland’s effort “to be kind to the two percent of their neighbours who identify as same-sex attracted” as “the stupidity of nice”. You read that right: they think being nice to LGBTI people is stupid.
And two: marriage equality opponents routinely complain about being called homophobic, which they say is a word used to smear and silence them. During his Sky News appearance, Shelton said that he objected to his side “being labelled as haters or homophobes or bigots” (while also fretting about if people think he’s gay). I’m sorry, but how else are we supposed to call it out?
He also tweeted that he was “genuinely grieved” that his side is accused of calling same-sex parent families “not normal” in response to Penny Wong’s comments that this argument against marriage equality is the most hurtful one.
He’d do well to remember Piers Akerman’s column about the Gayby Baby documentary from last August, in which he directly addressed a 12 year-old girl raised by lesbian parents and told her that “you are not in a “normal” family, no matter how many LGBTQI-friendly docos you may be forced to watch by politically driven school principals.”
If that’s not despicable enough, a conservative group opposed to the Safe Schools Coalition tried to sabotage a formal for LGBTI youth held by Minus 18, one of the Coalition’s partners.
That plan was foiled, fortunately. But if they had been successful, it wouldn’t have been too different to strapping some of these students to an electric chair and pulling the switch themselves.
The malice that seems to be driving many opponents of marriage equality is even spilling over into violence. Last month, flyers reading “kick a poofter to death” were posted in Melbourne, and a gay man was brutally bashed in the St. Kilda Gardens.
Remember that we haven’t even started the plebiscite yet.