Marriage equality rally, Darling Harbour

On Saturday 1 August 2009 there were rallies in support of marriage equality around Australia and, with a friend, I was at the one held in Sydney. It started in the CBD at Town Hall but we joined it in Darling Harbour, where the Labor Party’s national conference was on. The Sydney Morning Herald ran a story from Australian Associated Press which included this:

In Sydney's CBD Aretha Franklin's R.E.S.P.E.C.T. blared from the speakers and placards saying "Legalise gay marriage" were waved in the air, as protesters assembled outside Town Hall. The crowd of 1,500 then marched to Darling Harbour, where Labor's National Conference was being held. 

There they attended a wedding ceremony for 150 gay, lesbian and transgender couples. Nicholas Tyson, 32, and his partner Darryn Skelly, 35, were among the couples married at Darling Harbour by Pastor Karl Hand from the Metropolitan Community Church. 

"We're not asking for more than straight couples. We just want the same," Tyson said.

On that day I took the following 34 photos. Others were not included in this selection. The file definitions of these photos show that they were taken between 2.41pm and 2.54pm.

There were all sorts of people there and a couple of police. Some people had brought banners protesting against the Iranian government but most people, including the cops, looked relaxed and some attendees were dancing. One woman, wearing a white veil on her head, white gloves on her hands, and with heart-shaped earrings hanging from her earlobes, was laughing while looking at something on her mobile phone. Some people wore outlandish clothes in order to signal to others around them that the event was a bit of a joke. Two men in matching mid-blue suits, light-blue shirts, and yellow ties stood next to each other on the stage that had been set up in front of the shopping centre with its food court and shops selling tourist tat.

If gays and lesbians were allowed to marry, people seemed to be saying, there would be nothing – absolutely nothing – for anyone to worry about. For the people congregated next to the water on the western side of the CBD it was all a bit of a lark but some political parties were there too, capitalising on support for what turned out to be a broadly-backed social issue. There were signs bearing the Australian Greens’ logo. A Labor staffer attended to some sound gear. Most people were young but not all of them. At the end of the celebration, in the winter sunshine, people sauntered away on the plaza.

Labor was in power in 2009 but the law was changed eight years later after the (conservative) Coalition government conducted a postal plebiscite which allowed ordinary people to voice their opinions on the question. Over 62 percent of eligible people voted “Yes”. In the lead-up to the poll, on 10 September 2017 there was a rally at Town Hall.

This rally, which I happened to pass through while walking home from Kings Cross, was much larger than the one held in August 2009 and people were less ebullient. For a start there was hardly any room to breathe, let alone move, on George Street or Park Street in the CBD. But apart from that constraint by late 2017 things were different because the political situation was coming to a head. People were more serious as the finish line began to emerge after what had been, for many people, decades of gloom and doom. The following is a photo taken from the TV broadcast showing the federal Parliament on 7 December 2017. The photo was taken at 6.03pm.

In August 2009 I had already relocated to southeast Queensland and on my trip south was busy packing into boxes the belongings that filled my unit in southwest Sydney.