A CLIMATE OF HATE

Just after the bill was passed, Chloe rushed in the door.

She’d left work early to try and make it home in time to see the results. When she arrived, we danced around the house cheering, then walked to our favourite bar to celebrate. We held hands the whole way down the street.

I gripped hers extra tightly as we passed a swastika sign stickered to a lamp post on the corner of our street.

This has been our reality in Australia since we arrived.

There has been a sharp contrast between the majority of people who support same-sex marriage, so much so that they never saw it as being an issue in the first place, and a small conservative minority who seemed irrationally intent on making life difficult for the LGBTIQ+ community.

It was in the intrusive way many “vote no” campaigners spread their rhetoric.

It seemed like night after night there were debates across the television with outspoken lobbyists given equal airtime to broadcast views bordering on discriminatory.

As soon as I switched on any media, they were there – on the TV, on social media, clogging ad channels – trying to convince everyone that people like me are a threat to society.

For a large chunk of the year it felt like I was enveloped in a climate of hate; from swastika signs to vandalism of rainbow flags and propaganda about how marriage equality would feminise children.

Like the weather on a muggy day, its sticky, unseen presence was constant, unescapable and exhausting.

Anti-gay rhetoric even clouded the sky. The weekend before I first saw that swastika, I had been