Hannah Gadsby – Aussie comedian ledge and re-creator of Ruby Rose photos – has taken to Facebook, penning a heartbreaking account of why the upcoming plebiscite on marriage equality is, in her words, “a very bad idea“.
Pictured left: Hannah Gadsby… we think.
In 1997 Tasmania became the last state in the country (and one of the last places in the western world) to decriminalise homosexuality. Gadsby, who grew up in Tasmania in the 90s, was deeply affected by the hateful public debate at the time:
I don’t care about marriage equality for myself because I do not have an aptitude for relationships. The reason I care about this is because I don’t want young kids to hear the kind of horrific bile I was forced to listen to in the 1990s when Tasmania debated on whether to legalise homosexuality. For many, the debate was theatre. For me, it made me hate myself so deeply I have never been able to develop an aptitude for relationships.
It illustrates one of many reasons that the plebiscite is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. The majority of parliament and the population already think we should have marriage equality, and it’s going to cost a whole heap of money. How much? Roughly enough to buy 162 million Mars Bars.
Frankly, we’d rather have a free parliamentary vote, and 7.04 Mars Bars each.
The plebiscite was thought up by Tony Abbott when he was still PM, and was carried on by the (avowedly, but clearly not actively) pro-marriage equality Malcolm Turnbull when he took power mid-term. Turnbull assured his right-wing coalition MPs that they’d get the plebiscite, although, at this point, it’s not entirely clear why they even want it; some members of the coalition like Eric Abetz have indicated that they won’t be bound by the vote regardless of what happens.
Australia as a whole, it seems, isn’t impressed by the ineffective, costly public vote, as indicated by a recent ABC News poll:
Currently the poll, which has been voted on by a whopping 70k+ people, signifies that 88% of respondents want the marriage equality question to go “straight to a parliamentary vote”.
Photo: Facebook.
