Rainbow colours, loud music and good cheer spread through thousands of people gathered outside the State Library of Victoria to hear the expected win for same sex marriage; I found it hard to feel happy about a vote we should not have had. My ratbag queer kin were running late. I took photos with queer activist friends holding the banner, No Pride in Detention.
We thought we would find a moment to show this slogan to the crowd while the world was watching. We didn’t. Instead, we lamented over queers who don’t find solidarity with asylum seekers and the politics of race and migration. Given how issues of race and sexuality are represented as at loggerheads in our cultural fabric, this lack of solidarity is not surprising. Little did I know there would be more to think about migrants and queers later that day.
As the countdown began, I noticed how many people were crying: sobbing, actually. And then it came: 61.6 per cent yes, to 38.4 per cent no. Shimmering rainbow confetti and the disco hit ‘Celebration’ pumped over the crowd as people cheered and bawled into each other’s arms. I received a text from my mum: “I told you it would be yes!” Then, tears started to flow for me too.
For those of us from non-white and/or non-English speaking backgrounds, the ‘migrant vote’ (as if this could be easily calculated) was an extra track to navigate. My mum had previously struggled with my queer difference in a world where ‘normal’ is a ticket to belonging. Migrants are seen as inherently conservative, and my Anglo-Indian catholic upbringing fits the stereotype. The plebiscite forced me to have conversations with my family I didn’t want to have – again. For countless queer folk, this plebiscite shoved us into a debate about ourselves, over an issue we privately didn’t care for. In ‘going postal’, the political had become terribly personal.
During the campaign, I posted a call to my extended family on Facebook asking how they were voting. Responses were mostly positive – I received messages ranging from “Defo” (with an unmistakably Aussie accent) to “We are all equal before the eyes of God” (heard with an Indian accent). One relative sent an email around the family urging everyone to vote no. Most of my extended migrant family had risen to the occasion to vote yes.
So when I got home to see the ABC’s electoral analyst Antony Green proclaim the No vote in Western Sydney correlated with ‘very high proportions of people from a non-English speaking background’, prompting tweets and commentaries about conservative (read: homophobic) migrants, it felt like a stab in the heart. This trusted reasonable man made an irresponsible and dubious call.
We know demographic information was not collected, and not all eligible voters voted.If we weigh votes from the survey against ABS census data, the strongest correlation with the no vote was religious beliefs, which we then have to presume are conservative. We do not know the participation rate of voters in Western Sydney electorates on grounds of religious beliefs. Even if all conservative religious people in these electorates were born overseas, all voted, and voted no, this could not account for the entire no vote in these electorates. But the thought about the migrant vote was unleashed.
Each time one marker of a marginalised identity gets played off against another, the White face of Australia emerges to present itself as a reasonable and open society. White Australia manages to absolve the prejudices of cultural conservatives withinreligious lobbies, parliament, big business and media moguls even though they are the very same people who cultivate them.
It is not just my personal experience of racism that tells a different storyabout Australia. My ‘mixed-race’ family status, knotted within this larger history of British Empire in India, enabled my family to move to this stolen land at the end of the White Australian policy. This nation was built on racism.
Days after the vote, I was standing outside the State Library of Victoria again; remnants of fading confetti were lodged in the lawn beneath my feet. We gathered to protest the monstrous policies successive Australian governments impose on asylum seekers. The men on Manus Island, speaking from their phones, congratulated Australians on the vote. Some fled their countries due to persecution on grounds of sexuality and gender identity. We shouldn’t have to remind ourselves there are LGBTIQ folk who are refugees: who are from non-English backgrounds; who are migrants. We don’t need to share an identity to know prejudice, whether on the grounds of race, sexuality, or otherwise, is wrong. If we do not see other people’s struggles as part of our own struggles for justice, we not only diminish the win for same-sex marriage, but also diminish the meaning of equality and freedom.
This is an extract from , published by Brow Books on November 15.
