Hi Malcolm Turnbull. Can I call you Malcolm? I think I can, you probably wouldn’t want to hear the other names I have lined up for you. Anyway, I’m writing to inform you that I have felt a lot of things over the last few weeks of the marriage equality debate in this country. Feelings of pride and love for my community has been interspersed with sadness, despair, confusion, deep concern, and desperation. It’s like I have been stuck in a warped version of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs‘, where you are the villain who wants me to eat a poisoned apple so I remain stuck in my tower forever. And then I meet a fish called Dory. Maybe I’m getting my stories mixed up, I don’t know.
The point is that yesterday all of these feelings were blown completely out of the water, and replaced with an all-encompassing rage instead. It was a fury that coursed through my gay veins until I thought all of my limbs and my head were going to explode from my body under the force of it.
You might immediately assume that this feeling was caused by an encounter with a homophobe. Maybe I heard Lyle Shelton or George Christensen or Eric Abetz say something terrible. Maybe I was thinking about those completely fucked signs that were found in Melbourne, calling my community ‘fags’ and ‘child abusers’. Maybe, like in the past, I had just been spat at from someone driving past who was upset at the sight of queer people holding hands walking down the street.
But no. The rage was not caused by those kinds of people. To me, these are lost causes, those who have picked their side, and decided to remain on the wrong side of history because of bigotry, hatred, ignorance, or a warped sense of what is right and wrong. These are people who I don’t respect, who I have absolutely no faith in. They will never be on my side, and so I can dismiss them, and work to protect my people from their words and actions. Don’t get me wrong, they make me angry. Their reliance on false facts to denigrate LGBTQI people is infuriating. Their unwillingness to see the damage they are doing makes me livid. But none of them have caused the anger that I experienced yesterday.
Anger caused directly by you, Mr Turnbull.
The anger has been there before now, bubbling away under the surface throughout your entire run as PM. The fact that you have been unable, or unwilling, to stand up to your party in order to do the right thing is incredibly disappointing. The fact that you are dragging my queer family through the trauma of this unnecessary process because you are too spineless to do the right thing is sickening.
But what you have said over the past couple of days, in response to the viciously homophobic attacks we are being forced to endure, because of your actions? It is unforgivable. First was this amazing piece of helpful advice.
https://twitter.com/BevanShields/status/899752590245679104
Then this equally helpful sentiment.
Turnbull: if you have friends feeling affected by it … hug them. Lucy and I are voting yes, it doesn’t threaten my marriage #auspol
— Paul Karp (@Paul_Karp) August 21, 2017
Sorry. But what are you thinking? Do you truly think that ‘getting hugs’ will help the physical and emotional attacks that LGBTQI people face around Australia? What about that kid in the closet who doesn’t have a community of people to lean on? Who doesn’t even feel safe enough to tell anyone that they are queer? What do they do during this? Do you think ‘believing in themselves’ will help the increased anxiety and depression that many people are facing after being forced to experienced a sustained campaign of hate and dehumanisation?
Your response is the response of a straight, white, rich, middle-aged man who has obviously never faced a day of discrimination in his life. It is the response of a person who does not have to wake up every morning and wonder how people like him will be dehumanised today, or wonder what awful tactics someone will use to try to prove that his relationship is not equal to everyone else’s. It is not the response of a man who has to wonder what pamphlets his children will see on their walk to school, or what emboldened bullying they will face when they get there.
A couple of weeks ago you were ridiculed for saying that the harmful debate was the “weakest argument” against a postal vote. This is because the people on the other side of the debate, LGBTQI people, we knew what was coming. We have been here before, and we told you what this would unleash.
And now, in the very face of that unleashing, when confronted with undeniable proof that what we were scared of has predictably come to pass, you again choose not to take our side. Not to stand for us. When asked about the “Stop the Fags” posters, you replied that they are part of a democratic debate. In fact, you said “Social change takes time, it takes debate and discussion, and you should not be distracted by a handful of extreme posters or flyers.” Distracted. As if they are a shiny bauble that we are preoccupied with, and not incredibly public, harmful, vicious, outrageous attacks on our community.
If that wasn’t enough, you double downed on your claim that ‘both sides’ of the debate need to be respectful, and that you “deplore disrespectful abusive language, whether it is directed at young gay people or people of other religions or people of other races.”
What. A. Fucking. Cop. Out.
You say all of this as if this ‘debate’ is not one side made of up flesh and blood human beings, loving people and happy families who just want to be treated equally, and one side that is made up of people who want us to remain second-class citizens. As if the side of the ‘debate’ that lends itself to this sort of hate speech is as valid as the side that is trying to fight for their rights, and their lives. As if you, a person who claims to support marriage equality, who has gay friends, thinks that putting us through this long, drawn-out, unnecessary, traumatic, horrible life draining fight is just democracy. And the people who hate us, who fight us, who denigrate us, who attack us, who have killed us – they matter just as much.
You are a person who I am sure personally does not hate us, or think we are second-class citizens. You are not a religious man, dedicated to a cause. You are putting us through this, even though you don’t believe in what you are doing. You are forcing us to endure untold harm because of your own political and personal weakness. You are sacrificing us.
And that is unforgivable.
Kind Regards,
Rebecca Shaw (Australia‘s seventh favourite lesbian).
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