I have been the best man at two weddings in the last year and as a gay Australian man, I’m tired.
Tired that I’m constantly in the bridal party of straight weddings. You know the drill…putting up with crazy nervous brides, organising hens nights, bucks weekends, writing the best man speeches.
At the moment I’m in the middle of picking the topless waiter for a hen’s night. (So not tired about that task!)
But even though I love the people I’m doing this for, it makes me reflect on my wedding. And when I think about that it makes me tired, and to be honest, so incredibly frustrated.
Will it ever be my turn? Will I ever be able to marry my boyfriend? When can my friends organise my best man speeches and wedding party. And the topless waiter for my buck’s night – actually no, I might keep that task!
Think about it. What person doesn’t want be with the people you hold closest to your heart, and saying ‘I do’ to the person you want to be with for the rest of your life?
I feel like it won’t be me because this postal plebiscite is doomed to fail.
I am from the sunny, very white, and relaxed Central Coast of NSW. A beautiful place to live, but talk about laid-back and overwhelmingly heterosexual.
In Sydney we have a high density of same sex couples. According to the most recent ABS statistics “the top ten suburbs for male and female same-sex couples were all in inner Sydney”.
You can’t throw a stone in Sydney without hitting a queer person (please don’t start throwing stones at us). Everyone in Sydney knows a person who is attracted to the same sex, meaning they have a higher chance of relating to the heartache we feel when queer people do not have equal rights to marry the person we love.
But what about places like the Central Coast where the density of same sex attracted people are significantly lower?
When you go on a hookup app like Grindr in a place like the Central Coast, the nearest person is at least several kilometres away. In a Sydney suburb like Darlinghurst, you go on Grindr and your phone implodes with possible hookups, oh I mean ‘soul mates’.
How can we expect people who have no interest in an issue that doesn’t concern them, and doesn’t concern the people they interact with on an every day basis, to take the time out of their day to fill out a form and post it back to a Government who hasn’t even committed to changing the law as a result of the plebiscite?
But these are the cards we have been dealt. And we have to work with them.
So I urge you to contact that cousin from Blacktown you haven’t seen since you were a child, that aunt in Tamworth that you only see at Christmas, that high school friend from Port Macquarie you haven’t seen since year 12 graduation, and tell them that they have to fill out the from and vote YES.
Tell them to vote YES because people in the country they live in do not have equal rights. Tell them to vote YES because the only affect it will have on society is positive.
Tell them to vote YES because children will be loved, not neglected in a same-sex marriage.
And tell them to vote YES because same sex people are just that, people who want to be loved and have that love recognised under the law
…and topless waiters at their very own hen’s/buck’s night.
