Culture

Ben & Jerry’s Has Launched A Marriage Equality Campaign That Has People Divided

by Chris Woods  25 May 2017

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Marriage equality is beyond overdue in Australia. It’s been nearly four years since New Zealand got it, two years since the US Supreme Court brought it to all the hold-out states, and a whopping sixteen years since Netherlands became the first country to entrench it in law. Just today Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage.

To help encourage our government to finally take some action, ice cream chain Ben & Jerry’s has announced a unique form of protest: no double-scoops of the same flavour until Australia gets marriage equality.

Rather than show some leadership on the issue, and reflect the views of the Australian public, the Coalition government is refusing to budge from its pointless, expensive and damaging plebiscite policy, with $170 million allocated in the recent budget despite the proposal being decisively knocked back by the Senate last year.

Basically, something’s gotta give, and Ben & Jerry’s are trying to give it a bit of a nudge.

Yep, in bad news for ice-cream lovers everywhere (or at least the weirdos who get double-scoops of the same flavour), Ben & Jerry’s announced their “I Dough, I Dough” Australian campaign earlier this week.

The company is also pushing the Equality Campaign’s marriage-equality petition on social media and has added post boxes in their 26 Australian stores for customers to send letters of support to their local MPs.

The campaign follows similar examples of activism from the company in the past, such as publicly endorsing the Black Lives Matter campaign and highlighting climate change with its, urgh, “Save our Swirled” ice-cream.

Now, while social change at a national level needs consistent pressure and any attention should be good attention, some people are a bit more cynical.

Others aren’t so keen on having their sexuality used by an ice-cream company in this way.

Still, the decision has garnered plenty of online support as well, and any activist worth their salt will tell you that even small stunts like this can sometimes contribute to broader campaigns.

But Ben & Jerry’s does, as always, have another, much better option: free ice-cream for LGBTIQ Australians.

Note to Ben and/or Jerry: do not listen to Bec, send the ice-cream to me, Australia’s 152,000th favourite bisexual!