Malcolm Turnbull’s Valentine’s Day Message Got Hijacked By People Who Still Can’t Marry Their Partners

Despite having fewer valid reasons to exist than the banana slicer, left-handed scissors and Mark Latham combined, the ongoing exercise in pointless, conservative-pandering policy fuckery that is the proposed plebiscite on marriage equality refuses to die. More than six months after the plebiscite became official government policy, there’s still no word on when the vote will be, what the question to be put to the public will look like, or why we’re bothering to take the public’s temperature given multiple government MPs have openly admitted they’ll ignore the result if they don’t like it.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has come in for particular criticism from marriage equality advocates over the government’s position, especially since he reversed his long-held position that Parliament should hold a free vote on the issue shortly after he became PM. Since then Turnbull’s maintained that a non-binding nationwide vote on the issue is still going ahead, even though his justifications for having one have been frequently and convincingly undercut, not least by an 11-year-old girl on national TV than any explanation Turnbull’s ever given to justify having one.

The steadily rising dissatisfaction with Turnbull’s position came to a head yesterday when he posted an old photo of a younger him with Lucy, his wife of more than 35 years. He accompanied the Valentine’s Day photo with a candid and touching anecdote of the time he asked Lucy to marry him, and a meditation on how more than three decades of marriage has shaped his identity to the point where he identifies more as being part of an “us” than as a distinctive “me”

All very well and good — except for the people who, through Turnbull’s continued inaction, still can’t marry their long-term partners. Quite a number of those people showed up in the comments to gently remind Turnbull that they’re still waiting for equal rights and might be kept waiting for years still, despite the fact that marriage equality might finally have the numbers to pass Parliament if a bill were introduced.

The irony wasn’t lost on Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, who posted a Valentine’s message of his own shortly after Turnbull did and pledging to legalise marriage equality. He was met with a rather more positive reception.