Wow, what a momentous day! I was sitting on the couch in my lounge room, nervously awaiting the news as to see how Australia had voted. With my new little baby on my lap, I was thinking about the future. My children’s future. I hope, for a lot of people, this was a moment in their lives that they will remember forever. Something just so memorable, a moment in time that we measure things by. Similar to when people ask if you remember what you were doing when you heard that Princess Diana died. (For those playing along at home, I was working my Sunday shift at the Reject Shop in the Bourke Street Mall)
I want my children to be whoever they are, loved and secure in knowing that they can just be themselves. Having people marry whomever they want was important for me. I hope that a lot of people felt that same feeling of joy that I did that day.
I held my breath and shed a few tears when I watched the result and a text message from my best friend came through saying, ‘I knew that people would do the right thing!’
I tried to explain my feelings that day to a friend. It was like being a support person at a funeral. It was like I was there to support a grieving friend and although I knew the person who had died, it was not like they did. I felt their pain but I could never understand it fully. The tears were for my LGBTIQ friends. The tears were for their relief, their victory, their losses, their acceptance. For them. But boy, was I honoured to be able to watch that and support them.
I was cross at the cost of the plebiscite. So many other things that $22 million dollars could have helped. Not to mention the cost to people that I love. Having them feel like they were ‘less than’ because people who’s business it isn’t, got to say if their relationship was acceptable. (Now that’s something for a totally different blog or rant)
As a celebrant, I thought that it would take longer to make it happen. I thought that even once it was passed through the parliament, we would have to wait a long time for amendments to the Marriage Act. I felt all that new paperwork to figure out, training etc would take forever before we could conduct a same sex marriage. I was so pleasantly surprised and excited to get my ‘celebrant nerd’ on and sit and check out all of the new paperwork when it was released. I was lucky enough to be doing my ‘Ongoing Professional Development’ after the law changed so we could ask a lot of questions to the trainers and find out any queries that our colleagues may have thought also.
I’m really excited to be stating the new monitum in a few days time. But that is another blog all together.
Deb Scherger Marriage Celebrant 