A sheep farmer/marriage celebrant is providing MIA gay couples an alternative to waiting for what she calls the “ridiculous, laborious” process of legalising same sex marriage in Australia via a postal vote.
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Rebecca Bunyan, who lives on a farm in Booligal in the Hay shire, presides over wedding ceremonies in Griffith, Hay, Hillston and nearby remote communities.
She is “weeks away" from being trained in the Evermore Pledge, a legal arrangement providing gay couples with all the legal and financial benefits of being married.
“I’d love to be the celebrant for the MIA’s first gay wedding. This plebiscite process is so frustrating, so it’s good to have an alternative arrangement for gay couple until parliament finally gets round to legalising this”.
Australians will be sent ballot papers in early September for the opportunity to vote on whether same sex marriage should be legal. The papers will need to be mailed back by November 7.
Ms Bunyan is not convinced by the practicality of this arrangement – particularly for people like her who live 130km away from the nearest post office.
“The postman only visits us twice a week. I could see many people missing their window to vote,” she said.
Richard Brewer, the Griffith hairdresser planning the first MIA gay Bollywood wedding, agrees that a postal vote does not make much sense.
“Politicians could legalise same sex marriage in five minutes… this should be a human right, not something put to a plebicsite”.
“If you substitute the word ‘gay’ with ‘black’, ‘Asian’ or ‘Catholic’ people would be screaming on the streets”.
“This vote is just a way of distracting people from more important issues”.
But while Mr Brewer and Ms Bunyan disagree with the postal vote process, they advise against a boycott.
“People definitely need to get out and vote. If people don’t go out and vote yes, this whole thing will have been a big waste of money,” Mr Brewer said.
Gold Coast marriage celebrant Michelle Anderson says her Evermore Pledge draws on existing state and federal laws, mimicking the Marriage Act and therefore providing legal certainty until marriage equality is finally passed.
The first independent ‘marriage’, the ‘Evermore Pledge’, was held last month when lesbian couple, Carly Naughton and Alee Fogarty tied the knot at at Peppers Surfers Paradise on 1 July.
Ms Bunyan hopes to see something similar in the MIA soon.