Eight-year-old Abbey joins ranks of little marriage equality advocates

Eight-year-old Abbey joins ranks of little marriage equality advocates

THE eight-year-old niece of a Melbourne gay couple is set to appear in a TV show in which they will live with a anti-gay marriage priest, has written a letter to Prime Minister Tony Abbott urging him to allow her uncles to marry.

Michael Barnett and Gregory Strorer will star in the SBS special, Living with the Enemy: Same-Sex Marriage, which will see them live for a week with a conservative Anglican minister, David, who is not in favour of marriage equality.

The documentary series will follow the atheist couple and the father of three as they become immersed in one another’s lives and worlds.

When Barnett’s eight-year-old niece, Abbey, found out her uncle was to appear on the TV series, she felt compelled to write a letter to the Australian Prime Minister, asking him to legalise marriage equality.

In her letter, she wrote:

“To Tony Abbott

My name is Abbey and I am 8 years old.

My unkls are gaye and we had to go to New Zeland to have ther wedding it is going to be on TV it’s called Living with the Enemy they won’t to get marred in Astralea but that’s eligle.

I will write to you once a day for a week.

P.S. I wold like the law changed.”

Abbey's letter
Abbey’s letter to Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott (Image via mikeybear.wordpress.com)

 

On his blog, Storer wrote of his niece: “How awesome is it that a child can understand the inequality in our society and also work out how change can be started.  From her heart comes her plea and her question to the Prime Minister of Australia. My niece is awesome!  Thanks Abbey.”

Abbey joins Sabrina Franco, 4, and Orlando Burcham, 11, both of whom wrote letters to Abbott earlier this year.

Sabrina, from western Sydney and who wrote her letter on a Disney princesses piece of paper, was in a similar scenario to Abbey’s, having written her letter after learning that her mother’s gay friends had to go to New York to marry.

Meanwhile, Newcastle boy Orlando wrote his letter because his own mother couldn’t marry her partner. Unlike Sabrina, he received a response from Abbott.

Both Sabrina and Orlando’s letters went viral on social media and grabbed the attention of international media outlets.

 

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4 responses to “Eight-year-old Abbey joins ranks of little marriage equality advocates”

  1. The right to marry is a basic human right for heterosexual couples and a societal expectation for all of those couples.

    The fact that we are denied that right in this country is both a denial of our human rights and an abuse of our place in Australian society, which subsequently,is the poorer for it.

    • Hmmm…. not too many years ago the “societal expectation” of marriage was scorned as oppressive and patriarchal. Now it’s a benchmark of equality. Really? We do live in a funny world.
      I wonder if future generations will look back on this equality campaign with the same disdain the feminists of the 60s and 70s now seem to attract?

  2. Wake up and smell the coffee Australia – it is high-time to join in with the rest of the western world and pass the aussie marriage equality bill to legally allow marriage equality!