Open Letter to the Socialist Alternative

Dear Socialist Alternative members

I can’t tell you how my heart sank as I watched this banner being erected at the Brisbane Marriage Equality Rally.


I don’t have a great shot. On the right it says “Dear Tone, Stahp ur homophobia or else, sincerely de gayz”
On the left, a depiction of Abbott being hung by the neck using a rainbow noose.

Put simply, Socialist Alternative, if that’s your idea of supporting our cause, then we don’t want or need it, leave us alone.

More disturbing to me is that it really reveals how you see us. You seem to see us as a weapon, a tool to get what you want. The only piece of gay imagery on the whole banner is the rainbow used in the noose.

We are not your weapons, and not your tools. We aren’t the rope you’re going to hang Abbott with, and if you think I’m going to do anything *remotely* like fucking Abbott, you’re totally delirious.

These are *our* rights that you’re toying with. I get that you see them as part of your political theory, for some of you, I know, they are more personal… but they are my, our, everyday life. Our reality you’re playing with and using as a platform. You see it as a left-of-centre thing. I see it as a spectrum of life thing. There are plenty of Liberal-supporting queer and queer-supporting people out there. There are a multitude of people who, like me, actually don’t hate Abbott, they just think he’s wrong, and some of them only think he’s wrong about one or two issues.

Equal Love rallies are peaceful. I will never condone violence against anybody. I will not remain silent while people threaten our prime minister regardless of how I feel about him. I cannot condone actions which will cost LGBTIQ rights the support from the right that we actually need.

So, Socialist Alternative, Take your red wedge and stick it wherever you find it most uncomfortable. I don’t want it, and I reject it.
Sincerely,
Dylan Carmichael.

(This is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of any organisation I am involved with. I am a member of Equal Love Brisbane, but this statement is not endorsed by or a reflection of their opinion.)

Everyday life as a second class citizen.

It’s a day much like any other. I woke up far too early and got myself to work on time.
About half an hour into the work day, I overheard a conversation in the open plan outside my office door between the team leader and some of his minions, talking about how long to live with his girlfriend before he proposes. Each of my apparently straight colleagues has some level of response from “not until I’m good and ready” to “I waited x years before I married my wife.”
And I got angry. Angry that this perfectly normal conversation is a conversation that I have no right to enter into, no position I can justify, no position that I can hold for my life.
It brought home to me (again) just how heterocentric our society is, that it doesn’t factor into the conversation that there’s a question about being able to get married.
These people have been nothing but supportive of me and my push for Marriage Equality. They’d be horrified to find out they’d made me uncomfortable in any way. They just didn’t see that talking about something as normal as proposing to their significant other might have any impact on the people around them.

And really, should they? It shouldn’t have any impact on the people around them. It is only through the failings of the Howard Government, Rudd Government, Gillard Government, Rudd Government #2, and now the Abbott Government that it does cause concern, angst, and frustration…

So yet again I have to ask… Why? What do/did these governments gain from prolonging the discrimination against me and my community, when it’s already seen as inevitable? Is there a rational reason politically for the delay in reform? Do the polls suggest that they’ll lose significant votes by legalising it? I don’t think so. Is there significant financial backing within the parties from anti-marriage-equality sources? Maybe, but both of them? If they can’t provide some understandable rational reasons for their refusals to legislate Marriage Equality, we get back to homophobia as the real reason for the delay.

So to the government today, and the opposition too, I say: Your abstract fear and concern actually makes my life concretely more difficult every day. How can you as my representatives continue to do me harm by voting down this legislation every time it comes up? How do you sleep knowing that the prejudice of about 50 of you actively harms around 800,000 Australians directly, as well as their families?

That’s right. Only 50 people in Australia need to grow a conscience in order for Marriage Equality to succeed.

I can only hope that insomnia is rampant in Canberra.