Please Vote YES, For Kids Like Me Who Can't

Most of us didn't start out political. My LGBTQI friends and I didn't walk into 2017 itching to campaign, or to march, or to kick or to scream. Really, most of us didn't want to get involved at all. But when you're young and queer, like me, you don't really get a choice in the matter. Except, if you're under 18, you don't actually get the choice to vote.

This year, I watched my friends get pushed to the frontline of this marriage equality debate. The inescapable ads, the leaflets stuffed into our home mailboxes, the never-ending shrieks of Lyle Shelton and Cory Bernardi. Their national campaign dragged us queer teens into the mud, into the trenches.

And there is no protection for us. Our relationships and our identities are targeted by them every single day. It's funny how the "No" Campaign talks about "protecting children," but they don't seem to care how its rhetoric directly affects me and my friends.

Friends like James, a 17-year-old student and graphic designer from Perth. He goes to school, he works, he's usually apathetic towards Australian political discourse. But the plebiscite has changed all that.

"I don't think it'll ever be easy. My relationship being voted on by the country, being put under a microscope and judged. Thousands of relationships just like mine are being put on the line by a bunch of people who've never met us," James says. "That's what gets me the most about this vote, that Australia is sitting down to vote on how worthy my relationship is."

James and I can't vote. We're both enrolled, but we're under 18. In short, our voices are not going to be heard in the final result of the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.

Katie can't vote either. She's yet another LGBTQI teenager who won't get the opportunity to turn their activism into electoral action this time around. Katie was 15 when her best friend committed suicide.

"He was gay," she explains. "In his goodbye letter he wrote about the effect his sexuality had on him.

A year on, Katie still worries about who she might lose to homophobia. About who could be next. "In his note, [my friend] wrote that he hopes one day kids won't even have to think that they're 'different,' and that they won't have to protest just to get their rights." Katie's 15-year-old friend is not alone—LGBTQI people are Australia's highest risk group for suicide.

Then there's Adam, a familiar face at Perth's rainbow marches, rallies, and parades. He's on the street twice a week handing out flyers urging a YES vote. Every LGBTQI Facebook event in Western Australia, Adam is marked "interested" or "going."

Adam was 14 when he had to cut off his father.

"Dad shamed queer people for being themselves. He told me how to behave, he told me it was wrong to be gay," Adam says. "He told me he considered it criminal. I never felt I could come out. I assumed Dad's views were the same across all of society."

One particularly tough experience sticks out for Adam, a family holiday to Victoria in 2014. This was what finally pushed him to sever ties with his dad.

"The radio was playing a discussion about same-sex marriage. He was attacking the idea, I was defending it. One thing lead to another and he questioned my sexuality," Adam recalls.

Adam tried to pull up his dad that day in the car. "I told him that was homophobic," Adam says. "He replied, 'I know, I am homophobic.' And that was it." Three years on, nothing has really changed.

"I reached out to him about three months ago, poured my heart out to him, told him I loved him, and all I ever wanted was for him to do the same," Adam says. "He told me I wasn't his son and that he would never want anything to do with me ever again."

The LGBTQI community is laced with experiences like these. Behind every march, every banner, every parade, there is a 14-year-old kid on a road trip staring out the window wondering if it ever gets better than this.

And at the end of every rainbow, there is a 15-year-old who didn't think it ever would.

But James, Katie, and Adam aren't crushed. And neither am I.

We all still believe, with an optimism that's almost unique to teenagers, that the world can change and evolve. You'll find us standing under the rainbow arch in Fremantle, weaving through the Perth Farmer's Markets and the crowds of Perth Station—handing out flyers, burying the years of subjugation under badges, stalls, and t-shirts.

And I know for a fact that there are teenagers just like us in every city across the country. Young people who are hoping the rest of Australia takes their love, and their lives, into account when they go to mark their ballot.

So when you open your mailbox in the next few days and find your copy of the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, please, vote yes for them. And for me. And for every LGBTQI teenager around Australia who can't.

Oscar Kaspi-Crutchett is a high school student from Perth and is founder of Students For Marriage Equality.