A qualitative exploration of the impact of the marriage equality debate on same‐sex attracted Australians and their allies

Abstract

Objective

In 2017, the Australian Government announced that a voluntary postal survey would be used to quantify the views of the Australian public on marriage equality. This non‐binding, voluntary postal survey—and the associated public debate—can be viewed as a discriminatory event for same‐sex attracted Australians. The exacerbation of minority stress likely imposed by this unexpected event has resulted in an unprecedented demand for psychological services by members of this community. Despite this surge of use, relatively little is known about the specifics of the impact of this discriminatory event.

Method

In this article, we present the findings of a thematic analysis of semi‐structured interviews that qualitatively examined the impact of the marriage equality debate among a sample of 14 Australians (eight sexual minority and six affected ‘allies’).

Results

Two themes were identified from the interviews, each with four subthemes: (a) personal impacts (emotional wellbeing, empathic concern, devaluation, and connection to religion), and (b) social impacts (activism, avoidant behaviour, social connections, and societal perceptions).

Conclusions

Overall, the findings of the current study reveal a range of intra‐ and inter‐personal negative impacts of public debate about the equal rights of same‐sex attracted people to marry. Moreover, the results suggest that the impact is not only on this minority and at‐risk group but also on their heterosexual allies. These results can help inform future policy with the aim of decreasing minority stress experienced by same‐sex attracted people.

Key words:

• gay
• lesbian
• LGBTIQ
• marriage
• marriage equality
• minority stress

This research was supported by an internal grant from the Faculty of Health Sciences at Australian Catholic University.

This research was supported by an internal grant from the Faculty of Health Sciences at Australian Catholic University.

Notes

This research was supported by an internal grant from the Faculty of Health Sciences at Australian Catholic University.

¹ Text presented in italics was added to the existing legislation in order to prevent non‐heterosexual matrimonial unions.

² We acknowledge that there are transgender, intersex, and queer individuals who are heterosexual, and that they would also have been impacted by the postal survey and the associated debate. Our data do not reflect the experiences of these individuals, and so we have focused our article only on same‐sex attracted Australians.