Marriage equality is not your victory, Malcolm Turnbull. It belongs to us.
Image: Image: SBS News / Periscope.
Malcolm Turnbull is no longer Prime Minister, but as anyone familiar with the ongoing cravenness of Australian politics would expect, he tried to take credit for marriage equality as his political career went up in flames.
“I have been a reforming Prime Minister,” he said after being narrowly ousted in favour of now-former Treasurer Scott Morrison.
“One of the many difficult political challenges that we face has been the issue of marriage equality. We have delivered that.”
No, you didn’t. Sorry Malcolm, but that historic milestone was the product of years upon years of glittery blood, sweat, and predominantly tears.
It doesn’t belong to you. No matter how significant and shocking it was that you were the first Prime Minister to openly support marriage equality.
Yes, we all still hold bitterness towards the Labor Party for so insipidly hamstringing themselves during their own factional in-fighting and leadership carry-on by refusing to make legalising same-sex marriage a priority while in office, ignoring the long-held desire of the electorate to see it become reality.
But their failure in that regard is also your failure. Because, Malcolm Turnbull, you failed to prevent us from enduring the deeply harmful postal survey.
You failed to stop your anti-LGBTI colleagues – one of whom is now Prime Minister – from publicly, and no doubt privately, dehumanising us at every possible opportunity.
We narrowly avoided the Prime Ministership of a man so paranoid about a changing world that he wants to cease immigration entirely for the man whose Church’s founder insists on the Biblical wrongness of our sexualities and gender identities.
It’s impossible to be pleased we are instead saddled with a man who oversaw the initiation of Operation Sovereign Borders and a similar immigration platform through which he did everything in his power to delay asylum seekers – including the gay and bisexual refugees Australia presently imprisons – from access to safe and humane living conditions.
It’s impossible to be comfortable being led by yet another man whose disdain for LGBTI people shone through when he moved an amendment to marriage equality legislation which would have allowed parents to take their kids out of classrooms if same-sex marriage were discussed.
The postal survey – which gave license to homophobic vandalism of our property, attacks on young people, abuse that made us feel even more unsafe that we usually do, and a tidal wave of hate speech against us – is your achievement.
The outcome, the relief on that joyous Yes Day and all the same-sex marriages that have taken place since? They’re ours.
All that activism, that heartache, the years we spent – and some still spend, by choice or by fear – in closets were a toll on us, not you.
We have paid for marriage equality and the great symbolic milestone it represents. And there is still so much more to do.
Though you will soon find yourself out of a job, Malcolm Turnbull – despite the fact that you remain exorbitantly wealthy and will still be afforded a deeply undeserved governmental pension – marriage equality cost you nothing.
And that is why it is not yours. That is why it belongs to us.
Bye, girl. You won’t be missed.
“… marriage equality cost you nothing.”
Wrong. It cost him his Prime Ministership.
You are quite simply not being fair to Malcolm Turnbull.
If memory serves, Tony Abbott, homophobe & disgraced and deservedly dumped PM proposed the Plebiscite on Same Gender Marriage. He did so for just a few reasons.
One because he knew that if he had proposed a Referendum, as the Irish did, and it passed he would have been required by Law to change the Australian Marriage Act which would grant us Equality.
This Abbott was not prepared to risk so he proposed the Plebiscite knowing that even if it passed by 100% he could simply ignore it as Plebiscites are not binding on any government..
Abbott was dumped and Turnbull, who never shied away from his support for Same Gender Marriage = Equality said he would honour Abbott’s promise.
Yes, it may have been a very expensive exercise.
Yes, and in this the loud mouths within the GLTBIQ Community were in lock-step with the Australian Christian Lobby, opposed it.
BUT
If Turnbull had not gone ahead with it we would still not have the same Rights as the rest of Australian Society. Turnbull did not have to respond to the result. He could have done what Tony Abbott would have done and simply ignored it.
I am not sure what the rules are but I suspect as PM Malcolm Turnbull could not have introduced his own Private Member’s Bill to change the Marriage Act.
No Liberal Prime Minister can order any of his MPs & Senators to support an issue to which they are strongly opposed if it is in conflict with their what passes in their minds for moral beliefs.
The ALP is different. If you speak against or vote against ALP policy you are automatically expelled from it.
If that Plebiscite had not been held and the issue had been put to the Federal Parliament – the only place the Marriage Act can be changed – it would in all probability have been defeated. Don’t forget for the ALP, the Nationals and Liberals their Party Policies were Opposed to Same Gender Marriage. Yes, Liberals can cross the floor and vote against Liberal Party Policy (so long as you are not in the Cabinet. ALP MPs & Senators don’t have that Right. They must vote in favour of ALP Policy.
What did you want? The Right to marry the person you love or to remain a Second Class Citizen?
Turnbull can’t stop anyone from saying what they think. Imagine the outcry if any PM managed to change the Law so that he/she could silence any of us.
That is the sort of thing Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Mao did (and the current Chinese Communist Dictatorship still do)
All these claims – and yes I saw some of the dramatics on TV – were just that drama for the sake of drama.
Turnbull made it possible and it is one of the reasons some within the Coalition – Tony Abbott, Kevin Andrews, Peter Dutton, Erich Abetz (have a look at Erich’s family history) turned on Turnbull and we have now lost one of the Fairest, Most Decent Prime Ministers Australia has ever had.
I’m gay, soon to be married to my incredible fiancé and I disagree with most of this hate speech article whose intention and foundation is centred around revenge and anger.
We would not have equality today if he didn’t take a gamble with our minds and lives, and whilst that’s never ok (I’m no idiot) ultimately having the support and knowing we have the support of the majority of Australian’s has given both my fiancé and I a new level of confidence never before felt when engaging with society.
My viewpoint is actually subjective and those who can’t let go of the past and insist on holding onto pain I too endured, have a choice to allow this to continue on as toxic or you can choose to move forward, remembering but focusing ahead on how we want to be perceived.
I am no longer a victim and I choose to integrate with my fellow Australian’s as kind, respectful, generous, helpful and part of humanity.
Let it go. Let the toxicity go….