I am an ardent supporter of the Marriage Equality campaign that the impressive and pioneering grassroots-level national organisation GetUp has run. I have made financial contributions to GetUp campaigns in the past as well as consistently spreading the word and trying to raise consciousness in my social environment and in communities I’m a part of.
However I find their current Valentine’s Day campaign more than a little on the nose: sending roses to MPs and the PM? Send stems and thorns instead!
Whilst I understand the concept behind this (terribly misguided) idea, I feel that a huge part of the community will agree – our parliamentarians by and large have done absolutely nothing to merit floral tributes to them, on Valentine’s Day or any other.
And knowing what hyper-inflated egos that the vast majority of these self-centred, grossly overpaid, hypocritical opportunists do have, any subtlety in the message of roses delivered by a disenfranchised and marginalised segment of the community will be completely lost upon them. In fact they will deliberately choose to manipulate the symbolism en masse, and spin it to aggrandise themselves.
In terms of both the cost as well as making a statement with a clear meaning, about what the calculatedly backward-looking Australian parliament has failed to do for these many years for the gay community – and hence for the whole community of Australia, for we are inextricable one from the other – what should actually be delivered to parliamentarians and PM are the thorns and stems of roses (without blossoms). And of course this would signify exactly what the political process so far has delivered to the gay community: no blooming roses!
Committed to prickly love,
Ajit Gunasekera
Melbourne
