Yesterday the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced the results of the same-sex marriage postal vote survey. 61.6% of those who voted (79.5% of the eligible population or 12,727,920 million people) voted Yes. 38.4% voted No. I watched this while in a 4WD going on a tour of the Daintree Rainforest in Queensland. Surrounded by people who had no idea this was going on, or who couldn’t give a damn, my heart sank as the results were read out.
My husband Glen was on the other side of the country at an outdoor event where the atmosphere was charged. A collective breath was held and silence descended over the crowd as they waited for the results and when they were told the Yes side had won, they were jubilant. They cheered and hugged and cried as the relief broke through them. I wish I’d been there.
Instead I spent my day going over and over those numbers and getting more and more depressed. Only 61%. 38% of people disagreed. The margin didn’t seem big enough. I’d expected a Yes result, but I’d hoped for an even bigger margin. 70%. Maybe 75%. To get just over 60% felt too shaky for me.
Meanwhile my Facebook feed erupted with rainbows and #yes but I couldn’t feel the same happiness that others experienced. I felt like an outsider and that there was something wrong with me.
I knew I should have been happy that of 80% of people who bothered to cast their vote in a non-compulsory, non-binding opinion poll actually did so. I knew I should have been happy that the result was well over 50%. But it just wasn’t happening.
And so the day passed while looking at rainforest and crocodiles and birds, inside I was tearing myself apart. You see, I’m not going to say thank you to Australia for doing what should have been a given. As far as I’m concerned, this is a human rights issue and you don’t say thank you for your rights.
It gets better. It’s got to.
I was able to talk to Glen later in the day once I was home and he’d left work and I promptly burst into tears. Talking to him helped. It is a landslide politically. The only result that should really matter is the one that says yes, Australians want this change.
I should take heart from the fact that my own electorate voted over 70% for yes and that my home state of Western Australia returned the third highest Yes vote out of all states and territories (63.67%). I’m getting better at accepting these things and using them to comfort myself. I also went down the road to a Yes party at a bar and soaked up the atmosphere and it helped.
I will, however, never forgive Prime Minister Turnbull and his government for putting us through this. It’s been two months (and years) of hell. The amendments to the Bill better pass quickly and without a whole lot of hate dressed up as religious protection.
I’ll be home in a few hours and will be able to hug my husband of three years and partner of 13 and feel less like shit. I feel for the queer people in the 17 electorates that returned a majority No vote. They’re going to need our support more than ever.
I have hope, however, that once the law is changed, society will continue to progress where the issue of same-sex marriage is no longer such a divisive one, and that it will in fact just be called marriage.
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