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Dear Committee Secretary,
I want to get married.
I've met the love of my life, which I've got to say, is pretty awesome. From the moment we met, I had this feeling that we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. Watching TV, eating breakfast and doing all those little day to day things just feels right with her.
So, last Monday, I proposed. I'd been planning it for a few months. When I was on holiday in New York in January I went to Tiffany's on 5th avenue and bought a ring. Not one of the expensive ones, mind you, but a nice ring I could use to propose (when I told my father of my intentions, he immediately offered me heirloom jewels to make the final engagement rings).
After taking Karma (my then girlfriend) out for dinner, I made up some story about wanting to walk to Lygon Street for ice-cream, knowing that the walk would take us past the corner of Bourke and Swanston Street, which is where we first met. When we got to the corner I made a speech, not the speech that I had planned, because honestly I was so nervous I forgot some of it, but a speech that said how much I loved her, how I wanted to grow old with her and how that mundane street corner I passed nearly every day would always have special meaning for me.
Then I got down on one knee, pulled the ring out of my pocket, and asked her to marry me.
She said yes.
The next day we started excitedly telling our families, and they all asked "what next", and we realised that we have no idea. Because we both happen to be women, we can't get married in our home country. A country that has a separation of church and state won't let me get married due to the opposition leader's religious reasons, and because the Prime Minister is scared of offending the religious right.
I don't want to have to register my 'domestic partnership' the same way everyone else registers their pet. I don't want to have to take the money that I would spend on my wedding overseas, because frankly Australia's economy could use the millions of dollars that gay weddings would contribute.
I want to walk down the aisle in the garden of the house I grew up in, I want to stand up in front of my friends and family and say I do, and I want that to be legally binding.
Civil unions and domestic partnerships don't count, separate is not equal. And I'm tired of living in a country that treats me and my fiancé like second class citizens because we fell in love. Frankly it's not fair, and I'm shocked that the country of the fair go has found such state sanctioned homophobia acceptable for so long.
Thank you for reading, and thank you for your help in making everyone equal in the eyes of the law.
-Alice
I want to get married.
I've met the love of my life, which I've got to say, is pretty awesome. From the moment we met, I had this feeling that we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. Watching TV, eating breakfast and doing all those little day to day things just feels right with her.
So, last Monday, I proposed. I'd been planning it for a few months. When I was on holiday in New York in January I went to Tiffany's on 5th avenue and bought a ring. Not one of the expensive ones, mind you, but a nice ring I could use to propose (when I told my father of my intentions, he immediately offered me heirloom jewels to make the final engagement rings).
After taking Karma (my then girlfriend) out for dinner, I made up some story about wanting to walk to Lygon Street for ice-cream, knowing that the walk would take us past the corner of Bourke and Swanston Street, which is where we first met. When we got to the corner I made a speech, not the speech that I had planned, because honestly I was so nervous I forgot some of it, but a speech that said how much I loved her, how I wanted to grow old with her and how that mundane street corner I passed nearly every day would always have special meaning for me.
Then I got down on one knee, pulled the ring out of my pocket, and asked her to marry me.
She said yes.
The next day we started excitedly telling our families, and they all asked "what next", and we realised that we have no idea. Because we both happen to be women, we can't get married in our home country. A country that has a separation of church and state won't let me get married due to the opposition leader's religious reasons, and because the Prime Minister is scared of offending the religious right.
I don't want to have to register my 'domestic partnership' the same way everyone else registers their pet. I don't want to have to take the money that I would spend on my wedding overseas, because frankly Australia's economy could use the millions of dollars that gay weddings would contribute.
I want to walk down the aisle in the garden of the house I grew up in, I want to stand up in front of my friends and family and say I do, and I want that to be legally binding.
Civil unions and domestic partnerships don't count, separate is not equal. And I'm tired of living in a country that treats me and my fiancé like second class citizens because we fell in love. Frankly it's not fair, and I'm shocked that the country of the fair go has found such state sanctioned homophobia acceptable for so long.
Thank you for reading, and thank you for your help in making everyone equal in the eyes of the law.
-Alice
