Bullying The Straights For Marriage Equality

I’m an Australian gay man fighting for my right to marry, and there are straight people mistaking it for bullying. Which is kind of ironic when you think about it. I mean, the other day I was told gay marriage is disgusting while the same guy sequentially proclaimed he was being bullied. What a twat!

Usually in personal essays it is custom for the climactic, all-knowing sentence to appear somewhere in the middle. But (sorry, not sorry), I’m going to go against that and say this:

Just like women and blacks, you don’t get your rights by asking for it nicely.

Rosa Parks, the famous African American who went against social norm by sitting at the front of the bus, must have pissed off all those poor honkeys around her. The anger they must have felt. I wonder how much power came out of the bus driver’s mouth when he told her she needed to move. And I further wonder how he must have felt when she overpowered him with her stubbornness.

All the white people in that scenario would have felt so bullied. Let’s all have a moment for them.

And while you’re having that moment, think about what would have happened if Rosa sat at the back like she was supposed to do… Would coloured people in America have the rights they have today?

But, even today they are socially discriminated against — and if you’re against this, while the colour of your skin is lighter than an oak tree, please shush .. you are only making it worse.

And what about all those powerful women who bullied men?

Eleanor Roosevelt utilised her power as a first lady to bully all the men… by publishing a controversial newspaper article about her day. Oh no. All those poor men being bullied by a first lady. Let’s have another moment…

Actually, let’s not. Let’s instead head into the modern era. Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard bullied Tony Abbott, who was then leader of the Liberal party. She called out his blatant sexism. Shock, horror!! He nearly squirmed in his seat. Women need to learn their place, right? Their place has to be below men, right?

But now there’s us, the people who have sex with the same sex. And we want to marry too. The interesting thing here, though, is we transcend race, and we transcend gender, so some of us have been through those other fights above

And we are called the bullies.

As many of you would know, Australia is going through a non-binding, non-compulsory, and unnecessary postal survey vote. The question: should same sex couples be allowed to marry?

That’s right, we don’t have the same right as straight couples to marry, and yet we are called the bullies… such irony, right? It’s like me saying you can’t have my sandwich because you’re black and then when you whinge at me and call me names I say your a bully. Stupid, right?

Now, I’m not advocating for downright nastiness. As our third grade teacher once said: Two wrongs don’t make a right in any scenario. But us same sexers are not gonna get the right to marry by going:

.. we gotta be like Rosa Parks and Eleanor Roosevelt and Julia Gillard. We gotta show them why we want to marry. And we may have to be a little arrogant about it.

Because as I said at the start: You don’t get your rights by asking for it nicely.

So let’s show them what we want!!!