Posts

Showing posts from November, 2017

Hooray Fuck for the Yes Vote - an Open Letter from Members of the Disability Community

Image
Dear LGBTIQ+ Community I would like to extend our love, support and solidarity today, the day after a decision where sixty one percent of our nation voted for you to have the same rights as other Australians. I am fifty. The year I was born, 1967, was the last time that the rights of a group of Australians were voted on.  But on that occasion, it was a referendum, not a plebiscite, which is effectively an opinion poll - which government are not obliged to act upon.  The referendum asked whether Aboriginal people should be included in the census and whether the Commonwealth government should make laws for First Nations people.  That included the 'right to marry freely'.  Three states voted against that right, and the Territories were excluded.  But that was fifty years ago, and this is 2017.   I can't help but wonder how it must have felt for those Aboriginal people to know that about 10% of the population did not regard them as human