Think of The Children

Throughout most of the "No" campaign’s horribly offensive and deceitful advertisements they have routinely called adoption of children by non heterosexual couples “child abuse” and have used similar terms to describe the Safe Schools program.

As three LGBTQ+ teenagers, (one a lesbian and two bisexual) with many close friends who are also LGBTQ+ we would like for someone to think of the children, to think of the LGBTQ+ children who have suffered massively from this brutal and hateful campaign.

We reached out to all the LGBTQ+ teens in our area to ask how their mental health has suffered from the No campaign and the plebiscite in general, the results were incredibly saddening but not surprising. Here are two excerpts from the letters that were sent to us.

“So at first with the plebiscite I didn’t really have many feelings except “oh boy I hope everyone votes yes” kinda trying to give myself false hope. Then when all the “vote no” people started protesting in places around me it made me feel really invalidated and like a lower classed citizen in a country I was used to being accepted in. It really diminished my mental health and self esteem to the point where I would stop arguing back to the no voters.”

“I felt like my opinion was worthless and I couldn’t make my own decisions in life.”

We've been talking to the community that we've developed over the course of this project and although we've come to terms with our feelings regarding the plebiscite, it is heart breaking to see our friends feeling the same way. Although this plebiscite will always been remembered, we hope to someday be in a place where we don't have to relive it. If there is anyone struggling with similar issues we highly recommend that see a mental health professional and you should ALWAYS feel free to talk to us.