On the morning of the announcement of Australia’s same-sex marriage vote, I woke up in Malaysia. It was my birthday and I was on the island of Penang with some friends, celebrating a pal’s 40th. We had talked about what would happen if there was a no vote. I could see how it would pan out. It would be an angry dinner, where we would rage against the state of the nation, and the churches and our country’s fear of change. I played these scenarios in my head, because on previous occasions of popular votes, I had not been prepared for the results.
But Australia voted yes.
For too long now we liberals have suffered through our sad suppers.
The night Trump won progressives, disorientated at the news, drank too much in front of their laptops and posted howls of disbelief into the social media echo chambers. Or went out to dinner to celebrate a Hillary win, and had their meal go cold in front of them as the states went from blue to red.
That day I lost a bet with my gym instructor about the election results and had to pull a 70kg sled behind me while he laughed and filmed me. Later I had dinner alone in an empty Indian restaurant as friends texted me back and forth with shocked WTFs.
Everyone has their Brexit story, too. Friends in London tell me about going to the park with a flagon of cider and crying or getting into fights with old men on the tube. It wasn’t meant to turn out like this.
All the sad suppers through the Abbott years in Australia, all little bits and big bits of shame that accumulated. The good not done, the opportunities missed, all the humiliations on the international stage. The knighting of Prince Philip. The eating of the onion. The denial of climate science. The culture war fights. The crucifixion of Gillian Triggs. The cuts to welfare.
Even those who appeared at first blush to be people of the left disappointed us. Remember Julia Gillard, the Malaysia solution, the weak environmental legislation.
Everything was compromise. It has been like that for years now. Pragmatism has knocked the joy out of everything.
And then yesterday happened. And it was wonderful. You saw it in the people in Prince Alfred Park in Sydney, or on the forecourt of the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne. You saw it writ in the face of Penny Wong – a relief, and a release. Then pure joy that lasted long into the night and put a spring in people’s steps on Thursday morning. All this … and the Socceroos too. To Russia, with love.
My colleague Steph said she walked from Prince Alfred Park back to the office “in front of a man carrying a huge rainbow flag, and all the cars driving along Elizabeth Street honked at him and cheered.
“And last night I walked from Taylor Square to a bar on Oxford Street behind a drag queen in full garb – pink dress and fishnets, red glitter beard and high blue Marge Simpson hair – who was cheerfully receiving hugs.”
Another colleague, another Steph, was in Melbourne. “Despite the fact that it was raining most of the evening, people were still dancing, drinking, laughing, hugging. Cops were making no real attempts to police the alcohol consumption in the street, which was great. It was such a love-fest.
“It was like a strange, off-the-cuff, serendipitous reunion with *everyone* – we kept running into old friends from high school, from old sports teams, from old workplaces, even people we knew from different cities. I saw a girl I went to primary school with, and a woman I knew from a few weeks in Brisbane. It really felt like everyone was there, and united over something. It was so lovely.”
When was the last time we all danced in the streets? The 2000 Olympics? Kevin 07? It was a long time ago. The years in between the dancing have felt bleak at times. The ballot box was producing all these results that divided people, not united them.
The numbers for this could have been better. There were still 38.4% who weren’t in favour of marriage equality. But 61.6% was still good enough to celebrate with gusto.
A friend of mine summed up his feelings via a Simpsons clip: “I feel less shame – about my country.”
With the vote, as with all times of heightened emotion, there was a deeper need to connect, to be with people to celebrate. Couldn’t make it to a party? My social media feeds were popping with colour as people from all over the world posting jubilant memes and messages. There was a sort of collective “hurrah” crossing mediums, platforms and time zones. A lot of it felt like relief. What would it feel like to belong to a country that said no?
Some had more skin in the game than others. They could now soon marry the person they love, in their home country. Denial of this particular human right was to be over. But for the rest of us, it was this: our country had got it right. Finally. It had shown its hand without help from the politicians – and the hand shown was that we are fair and decent and that this was the right thing to do.
There is in this, the hope we can do it again – but this time with Manus, or with the Uluru statement. We don’t have to stop here, with marriage equality, when it comes to righting the wrongs.
Instead of the gloomy evening I was ready for and half-expected, I read David Marr’s piece and wept. I liked about 200 rainbow flag photos, watched a video of people in the country town where I lived hearing the news of vote and going totally ballistic with joy, and then went to dinner, where we toasted our country. A happy birthday.
