Australians Vote Yes in National Poll to Legalize Same Sex Marriage

After a two-month national postal survey, celebration broke out across Australia when the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced that an overwhelming 61.6 percentage of voters agree that the law should be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry.

The majority is an indication that the law should be changed, but the debate is far from over. Now that the national poll is closed, the nation’s attention will shift to parliament, where law makers will begin to explore a bill to make same-sex marriage law.

Citizens who participated in this national survey spent the last two months taking the initiative to campaign for their side. It has been noted by many Australians that each side has foreseen difficult times during this survey.  One ‘no’ voter told BBC World News that he was, “abused regularly by passers-by and experienced incidents when his banners and flyers were ripped up in front of him.” Similarly, ‘yes’ voter Anne Fitzsimons told BBC World News that, “going through this whole exercise, putting the people in our community through this abuse, and the online commentary and just the hatred that’s been around, that has been so unnecessary.” (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-41992692)

All Australian states and territories recorded a majority Yes response to the survey. With 7,817,247 (61.6%) responding Yes and 4,873,987 (38.4%) responding No. Nearly 8 out of 10 eligible Australians (79.5%) expressed their view (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017).

Knowing that further discussion from law makers is still required, many ‘yes’ voters have expressed that they do not want compromises to be made. This fear may be a result of ‘no’ voters already spreading rhetoric of lobbying for religious protections.