The marriage equality postal vote is slowly lurching towards its conclusion, but the ‘No’ campaign is still out in force, and this weekend, Straight Lives Matter supporters have announced that they’ll be walking the streets of Sydney trying to provoke ‘Yes’ voters and filming their responses.
You may recall that the Straight Lives Matter campaign reared its head in the city last month, holding a public rally against marriage equality in the gay heartland of Oxford Street, to which an estimated 15 people turned up, finding themselves outnumbered by police and counter-protesters.
Unconcerned with this piss-poor turnout, organiser Nick Folkes has said that they’ll be taking another crack at it this weekend, and will be walking down streets in two of Sydney’s most heavily LGBT-populated areas to hand out ‘Vote No’ material and “test the tolerance” of people there.
Folkes told News Corp that he and his supporters will be taking cameras with them on Sunday in an attempt to “fire up the same-sex marriage supporters” as part of a “social experiment”. He said of their plans for the weekend:
“There will be no megaphones or placards. We will be handing out the flyers to test their tolerance and fair play … So far, there has been a lot of hostility towards ‘No’ supporters and we want to prove a point that the ‘Yes’ supporters are aggressive in the way they deal with opposition.”
A group of around ten Straight Lives Matter supporters have said that they’ll be on Oxford Street in Surry Hills as well as King Street in Newtown, another area with a historically high LGBT population, handing out materials and filming pedestrians.
The cynicism of that strategy is pretty dang obvious. Since the postal vote campaign kicked off, Australia’s LGBT population have had to put up with weeks of bullshit in our letterboxes, on our screens and in our skies in an effort to keep us as second-class citizens before the law. Folkes and his cohort are clearly hoping to catch that one person who is pissed off or fed up enough to argue back, then plaster them on social media as an example of how marriage equality supporters are actually the intolerant ones in this scenario.
Folkes added that in his view, ‘Yes’ campaigners “don’t appreciate democracy” and said: “So far, there has been a lot of hostility towards ‘No’ supporters and we want to prove a point that the ‘Yes’ supporters are aggressive in the way they deal with opposition.”
So there you have it, Sydney, the respectful debate that Malcolm Turnbull promised us when the plebiscite kicked off will now include Straight Lives Matter gronks sticking actual cameras in your face and daring you not to react to their very clear provocation.
On the other end of the spectrum, this week also saw the announcement of Yes Fest, a music festival in support of marriage equality that will take place on October 29, and feature a heap of great Aussie artists, including Client Liaison, The Preatures, Flight Facilities, Tkay Maidza and Jimmy Barnes.
Your boy Osher Günsberg will be hosting, and if you can’t make it to Sydney, the whole thing will be streamed on YouTube, so if the ‘No’ campaign’s got you down, this serves as a pretty solid reminder that a tonne of Aussies have got your back.
We are stoked to be performing at @YesFest! 🌈💗💋Tickets on sale Midday https://t.co/C75n2m6p0U pic.twitter.com/1YVvcSL5Oc
— The Preatures (@ThePreatures) October 5, 2017
Of more than 16 million Australian Marriage surveys sent out by the ABS, an estimated 9.2 million had already been returned after late last week. Participants are “strongly encouraged” to get their forms in by October 27 but will have until the final deadline of November 7.
The result on November 15.
