Two years ago the results of the God-awful, months long postal survey about were announced. Marriage equality passed with 61.6% of the vote, and the legislation was passed in parliament on December 9th. It was one of those moments that if you ask someone where they were when the marriage equality vote result was announced, almost everyone can tell you.
Within the first six months of the laws passing, just over 3000 same sex couples registered their marriages, and a year after a year that number had risen to 5420.
Passing marriage equality was undeniably a huge milestone for Australia, but it wasn’t the end of discrimination in Australia – as much as we hoped it would be. Two years down the line, where do we stand on LGBTQI rights?
Over the last year, we’ve seen a step up in politicians calling to ban gau conversion therapy. Victoria has planned to and Labor went into the Federal election saying they’d outlaw it (but we all know how that went). When surveyed, 93% of LGBTIQ people said that banning gay conversion therapy was important, and rightfully so.
At different points in time, the ‘therapy’ has involved flushing people’s bladders out with silver, electric shocks, and even lobotomies. The end results for LGBTIQ people haven’t gotten any better since conversion therapy first became popular, but despite that it’s still happening in Australia.
A couple of months ago, Victoria became the fifth state to reform their birth certificate laws. Up until then, people had to get surgery before they were allowed to change the gender on their birth certificate. People in New South Wales, Western Australia and Queensland don’t have those same rights yet.
Then we have Margaret Court, a woman who seems to take every single opportunity to tell the world that same sex marriage is a sin. Or a rainbow crossing in Adelaide that had “Jesus Loves You” graffitied across it. Or the fact that half of LGBTI Australians hide their sexuality at work for fear of discrimination.
Marriage equality was a great start, but two years down the track, we still have a long way to go.