How To Make Your Vote Meaningful In A Meaningless Postal Survey

On the weekend I was honored to witness two dear friends marry each other; to see them turn to each other and say "I do". Of course they’ve been saying "I do" to each other for a long time now, in a myriad ways - but this time they did it in front of friends and family and a marriage celebrant, and they signed a piece of paper, and their "I do"s made something happen. It made them husband and wife.

In speech acts theory, marriage vows are a perfect example of a performative utterance, which is when you say something that doesn’t just describe the world, but changes it as well.

The Australian government is holding a plebiscite postal survey about marriage equality, and it’s dumb and offensive and the result of the plebiscite  postal survey isn’t legally binding. Moreover, the Paradox of Voting means that you are very, very, very unlikely to cast the vote that will change the result from 'no' to 'yes', or 'yes' to 'no' - it essentially makes no mathematical difference if you vote or not. So, in a sense, neither the plebisicite postal survey in general nor your vote in particular are performative utterances. They are not designed to change the world. Should you boycott the plebiscite postal survey?

No.

Also:

No.

[*edit: thank you to a friend who pointed out that it isn't even a plebiscite, it's a postal survey, which makes it even more ridiculous.]

To the people who are disgusted by the idea of voting for marriage equality: I take your point, it is disgusting, but - and I will never stop saying this - if this is the most disgusting, humiliating, or undignified thing that you have faced for LGBTQI rights, then you’re doing okay, honey.

But also consider - performative utterances are performative under a certain set of conditions. They’re not just words - they’re words in context. Marriage vows change the world when they’re uttered in the presence of a celebrant, accompanied by signatures. Likewise, a ‘yes’ vote can be made to be performative by changing the conditions of it.

In fact it’s really, really easy to make your ‘Yes’ vote performative: you tell people that you’re going to vote Yes.

(You don’t even have to actually vote to do this, but after you've told people that you'll vote, you may as well do it - it’ll take all of a cumulative two minutes to make an honest person of yourself.) 

One private vote may be pointless, but one public expression of ‘Yes’ has the power to make something happen.

We haven’t even started voting in this plebiscite postal survey yet and I can’t stop crying over how many groups on my Facebook feed - groups that ostensibly have nothing to do with LGBTQI rights, like the WA Youth Jazz Orchestra and the UWA Postgraduates Student Association - have shared 'how to enrol' information to their followers and said that they will be voting 'Yes' to marriage equality. Acquaintances put banners and frames on their profile pics to say the same. In real life, the City of Vincent recently declared its commitment to marriage equality, and will raise a rainbow flag outside its admin building.

Thing is, it hasn’t always been like this.

In the early 2000s - not even 15 years ago, really - I never heard any of my friends or classmates talking about gay stuff (although looking back, I’m pretty sure some of them were a lot gayer than I gave them credit for). If support for LGBTQI rights had been more obviously visible back then, we would all have saved ourselves a lot of trouble. I also grew up bisexual in a church that I was pretty sure couldn’t accept me.  Now, I’m still bisexual, and I’m still a Christian, and I go to a church with people whose support I don’t even have to ask for because they're just vocal about it.

You guys. This is not a small deal. Christians are supposed to be the ones against marriage equality and yet Australian Christians for Marriage Equality have just declared their campaign for Christians who will be voting Yes. We didn’t have this kind of visibility for queer little church kids fifteen years ago; we didn’t know who to ask if we would still be okay.

When you start the long, sometimes lifelong process of coming out, the first person who accepts you becomes a tiny island of security in an ocean of confusion and aloneness. If you're lucky, you think, you might find one other person who is okay with you, and you can swim between islands. The more people who accept you, the more islands you have, until one day you realise some of your islands have joined up and formed whole peninsulas, countries, continents of solid land and you don't have to swim any more. Declaring that you will be voting Yes makes you another safe place to tread.

There are lots and lots of ways you can support LGBTQI people generally; and lots of ways you can support marriage equality specifically. This isn't the final word on equality, not by a long shot, but this is a moment we're leaning in to, and we promise, if you cast this tiny, meaningless vote, we will hold it to your credit as meaningful. Your private vote is not performative, it’s not pivotal, but when you vote for marriage equality and then declare your intention to vote for marriage equality (how easy is that!), you change the world for someone you know.