Australia - We shouldn’t have to endorse a bill that enshrines in law new and different ways for some groups to discriminate against us.
I voted for marriage and equality – not one without the other.I have imagined this moment many times and it goes something like this …
We’ve been in Canberra for a few days for some final lobbying and number crunching. Everyone is tense but excited. Is it really going to happen? After all these years, have we finally got this thing across the line? My partner Sarah and I have managed to score two spots in the public gallery and we sit, whispering and still, in accordance with the strict protocols.
The arguing is over, the debate has run its course and it’s time for the vote. We know we’ve got the numbers, but that doesn’t make it any less nerve-wracking. I am so anxious I can barely breathe and I know Sarah feels the same. Fifteen years we’ve been campaigning for this and here, today, now, it ends. It is the seminal moment in an extraordinary and historic movement for social change.
The kids are at home – waiting – and every time we call to check in they ask: Have they voted yet? Did we win? When we got married in 2003 in Canada, our son was nine months old and we carried him down the aisle before passing him to his aunt for the ceremony. This year he turned fifteen, and his two younger sisters turned ten and twelve. Our kids have lived this campaign their entire lives and this is their moment too.
The bell rings. The division is called. The vote is taken.
I can feel my heart knocking inside my chest and I grab Sarah’s hand. We watch the to-ing and fro-ing on the floor as the count is tallied. Then the whispering in the public gallery stops, and the Speaker makes the announcement: The ayes have it and, despite the rules, we are out of our seats and punching the air and cheering and clapping. I throw my arms around Sarah, laughing and crying at the same time. We did it! We won. We finally won. I am ecstatic. Jubilant. Triumphant. I have waited fifteen years for this moment and it is everything I wanted it to be.
Outside the public gallery, I share this sweetest of moments with all the other advocates who have marched and campaigned and lobbied and raised funds and written and spoken and doorknocked and struggled and fought. They have given so much of themselves to bring us to this time and we smile and embrace. The relief and the joy is indescribable.
I ring the kids first and tell them: Yes, we won. Yes, it’s over. When you spoke at that rally, when you talked on the radio, when you were featured in that magazine – when they attacked your family and you spoke up – you helped us win and that is an extraordinary thing. From today, in the eyes of the law, your family is just as good as everyone else’s family. You have legally married parents just like your friends and no one can ever take that away from you.
And then I call Mark and Tom who we have known forever. Start planning boys. Send us an invite and we’ll stick it on the fridge. Use any florist, or baker or celebrant you want – there will be no signs that read: “No gays”. You get to plan your big day in exactly the same way as anyone else. Congrats guys.
And my last call will be to young David, a friend of our girls since before Prep. Hey buddy, we won. I know you’re a long way off thinking about marriage, but it’s not just about that. This vote says that the leaders of your country have listened to you and learned. It says you are valued as much as your straight friends. It says you are equal under the law. It says your country respects and affirms you. It says the people who said those horrible things about you were wrong. It says that you – and that boy you’re going to fall in love with one day – you are both right. Enjoy that.
That’s how I imagine it. That’s how it should be.
I do not want to be sitting in that public gallery listening to the vote on a bill that is riddled with exemptions, a bill that enshrines in law new and different ways to discriminate against us, a bill that says every butcher, baker and candlestick maker can legally refuse to serve us.
Nor, do I want to listen to a vote on the Dean Smith bill. I know that right now, it feels like the easiest way forward and I do understand that the “religious protections” restated in the bill largely, though not entirely, reflect existing law. But that’s not the point.
To me, it still feels like a loss – that our law, the one that is supposed to be about us and that finally recognises my marriage of 14 years, is actually about them, the religious right. This bill is about making them feel OK because now they have to let us get married and somehow they need to be protected from that. The title of the bill says it all – it isn’t actually about equality, it’s about religious freedoms. And that’s not good enough. I need our win to be an unequivocal celebration, not a compromise.
I want the government to pass a bill that says, purely and simply, two people can get married. That’s all. Let’s get rid of the amendment under John Howard’s government, which states that marriage means the union of a man and a woman, and replace it with two people. Oh, and take out section 88EA that bans the recognition of overseas same-sex marriages, because Sarah and I are not getting married again. It’s that easy.
I do not want us to accept lesser so that we can move on with our lives. I do not want us to compromise because we are exhausted. I do not want us to endorse something unless it gives us everything we deserve. When the Speaker says, The ayes have it, I don’t want to applaud politely and say: Yup. Good job, guys. Back in twelve months to get rid of those exemptions, tighten up that loophole?
Religious institutions do not have to marry us now and we are not asking them to marry us in the future. But let us remind ourselves that religious freedom means being free to practice whatever religion you chose and to do so under the protection of the law. It does not mean – and never has meant – having the freedom to discriminate against people of whom you or your religion disapprove.
Sarah and I – and many thousands of others – have been fighting for marriage equality for fifteen years and we have been fighting for two things, marriage and equality. If we do win on 15 November, we should not sacrifice one for the other – we should not endorse any legislation that gives us marriage and denies us equality. We have come so far. We have worked so hard. We owe it to ourselves to accept nothing less.
Jacqui Tomlins is a Melbourne writer, trainer and advocate for the LGBTI community. She is a member of the Victorian state government LGBTI taskforce’s health and human services working group
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