Tuesday 13 September 2016

'Funding people to insult us': children of LGBTI families say they don't want a plebiscite

Extract from The Guardian

Rainbow Families group travels to Canberra bringing 27 children to help lobby MPs to oppose ‘very hurtful’ same-sex marriage plebiscite
Children from Rainbow Families discuss marriage equality plebiscite

A group of LGBTI Australians and their children have come to Canberra to lobby parliamentarians to legalise same-sex marriage and block the plebiscite, which they argue would harm their families.
The 49 members of Rainbow Families, including 27 children aged from 10 months to 22 years, met Labor and Greens politicians in parliament on Tuesday.
Corin Nichols-Tomlins, aged 13, told Guardian Australia a plebiscite was a “very expensive public opinion poll, that we pretty much already know the outcome of; it’s also an excuse for opponents … to say whatever they want, slanderous things [and] make up lies”.
Nichols-Tomlins was worried ads would focus on young people with messages like “your parents are unnatural, to transgender kids saying you’ll feel like a man again, there’s no point transitioning”.
Nichols-Tomlins described public election funding as “funding our own doom … funding people to insult us”.
His mother, Jacqui Tomlins, said she and her partner Sarah married in Canada but she was happy to wait to have the marriage recognised in Australia if it meant avoiding a plebiscite in favour of a free vote.
Maude Marlowe, seven, and Sadie Sparks-Brown, 10, said they both had two mothers and didn’t want a plebiscite “because it’s very hurtful to our family”.
Asked what it would mean if her mothers could get married, Sparks-Brown said: “It would feel like our family is a bit more respected; and [would] be happy.”
She recounted being told at school “it’s weird having two mums – it’s not right”.
Marlowe said she didn’t want to see posters that said her mothers shouldn’t be allowed to marry, and recounted a bully punching her in the stomach because she had two mums.
The deputy Labor leader, Tanya Plibersek, quoted one child, Eddie, in a question to the prime minister. Eddie asked her “why should people who barely know us make an assumption on our families and vote on how we can live?”
Plibersek questioned why Eddie “should have to put up with a $7.5m campaign … telling him that there is something wrong with his family,” in reference to revelation of public funding for the yes and no cases in the marriage equality plebiscite campaign.
Turnbull replied he was “very disappointed” Plibersek would take advantage of Eddie’s presence in parliament “because what she has said is that people who do not know Eddie are not entitled to express a view on the Marriage Act”.
He expressed confidence the plebiscite campaign would be conducted “respectfully and civilly”.

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