So comedian and all-round good bloke Josh Thomas has been actively involved in the ongoing and demoralising debate surrounding the marriage equality postal vote.
First he started the viral hashtag #TheyGetToVote, which documented the experiences of LGBTQIA Australians at the hands of homophobes and bigots in an effort to shine a light on the ‘Yes’ campaign’s fight for a safer, more inclusive society.
Then, this week, he kick-started a donation spree that saw a little Adelaide primary school’s charity fundraiser soar past its $900 goal to raise a staggering $200,000 – all because he couldn’t stand to see known fuckwit Cory Bernardi try to cut down kids who were trying to do the right thing.
Tonight, Thomas told PEDESTRIAN.TV that while he had never expected the fundraiser to go so superlatively well, he understands why people got so involved in the simple act of supporting schoolkids.
So many of my gay friends have been hit surprisingly hard by this [postal vote]. We all knew it was going to be terrible, but really everyone feels pretty degraded by it. This, in the middle of it, it felt like an opportunity to do something really constructive and nice. I think everyone just wanted to do something nice in the middle of this miserable junk.
He also said that he thought the pure act of kindness – donating to a children’s charity fund after a paranoid right-wing berk had attempted to make out that they were somehow using it as a ruse to force boys to wear dresses – was a small act of rebellion against a conservative movement increasingly out of touch with the truth.
We’ve seen the conservative right lie and be disingenuous [during the campaign]. I think they’ve seen Trump and thought like, ‘Oh, we can just make things up and then they’ll become true’. And this was just a really good chance for everybody to stand up and go like, ‘No, you’ve misrepresented what children are doing, you’ve misrepresented what primary school teachers are doing’.
https://twitter.com/JoshThomas87/status/910715557816631296
[Bernardi] just misrepresents facts constantly, and I think for his followers, they don’t care, ’cause they’re just desperate to find an excuse to vote no in this campaign because they don’t like gay people. If you don’t want to call yourself homophobic, it’s really difficult to justify why you would vote no. Unless, of course, you’re a homosexual terrified of commitment.
More than anything, Thomas says he wanted the kids involved with the fundraising to know that they hadn’t done anything wrong by trying to raise money for charity – event though they’d been singled out for harassment by a right-wing pundit with a complex about the gay agenda.
“The people donating aren’t all huge same-sex marriage advocates, they’re all types of people that just wanted to see these kids supported,” Josh told us. “Cory refers to us as the Rainbow Mafia, which I really love. I’m just so happy to be a part of the Rainbow Mafia.”
In times when many LGBTQIA Australians are facing doubt, fear, prejudice and oppression in their everyday lives to a greater extent than ever before, we need the Rainbow Mafia, and their small acts of simple kindness, more than ever.
