“Think of the children” is a phrase I’ve been hearing a lot lately from those against marriage equality. I heard it from a guy on the street yesterday and have seen it shared in Facebook posts: messages about how traditional family values will be eroded, fears about the way in which kids will be taught about LGBTQI+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning & Intersex) issues in schools, that lines between genders will be blurred. And although these fears are overblown, it’s true; with the upcoming postal survey on marriage equality, we need to think of the children — those children who belong to the LGBTQI+ community.

I KNEW I WAS GAY WHEN I WAS 12.

I knew then that I didn’t feel the same way about girls as I did about guys, and I knew there was a word to describe people like me. But because of what I had learnt in school, at home, on TV, in church, I thought that it was wrong, and that I was wrong for feeling that way, so I tried to bury those feelings. I shut those feelings in a box and hid them away from the world and from myself. I figured that if I didn’t address them, they wouldn’t be real and would go away.

But during those six years I wasn’t happy. The world and people around me told me that I wasn’t meant to feel the way I did — no one told me directly, but they didn’t need to. I spent my days pretending to be someone I wasn’t, and my nights watching Youtube videos of brave people who had come out in different circumstances, talking to people online who felt similar to me, or watching coming out storylines on TV shows.

It took me six years from that first realisation to the day that I accepted my sexuality at the age of 18, and more than a year more to tell someone else for the first time. Now, I’m proud of who I am and know that there’s nothing I can do to change my identity, even if I wanted to.

But the process of getting here was rough. Years of self-hatred, of low self-esteem, of feeling lost and guilty and ashamed of who I was, because of the homophobia I heard around me. Because of people who said that people like me weren’t natural, weren’t safe to be around, didn’t deserve to have the same rights. I would spend nights crying to myself, wondering why I was like this or why I couldn’t change. At that time, as I looked into the future I could only see my life being miserable: either continuing to hide my sexuality but feeling like part of me was trapped, as I had felt the past few years, or coming out and potentially facing backlash and people turning their backs on me and my identity.

1 in 6 LGBTQI+ youth have attempted suicide (5x the national average), and LGBTQI+ youth are 6 times as likely to be suffering from depression and twice as likely to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. The statistics are alarming, but research shows that after marriage equality was legalised in the USA, suicide rates in the LGBTQI+ population dropped dramatically. The legalisation of marriage equality showed that society as a whole accepted LGBTQI+ people, and they were finally granted equal rights and status in society, leading to improved mental health.

Programs like Safe Schools will also help with this. The program doesn’t ask kids to role-play being in a same-sex relationship as sensationalised videos claim — rather, it asks kids to imagine being in one, which teaches empathy, which will help lower bullying towards LGBTQI+ children in schools. Even if role-playing was involved, I played both Macbeth (a murderer) and Iago (a traitor and murderer) when we studied Shakespeare in English classes in high school, and I haven’t had any murderous streaks, so why would teaching kids to try and understand how discriminated people feel lead to them ‘becoming’ gay?

Marriage equality isn’t going to change everything. Hatred will still exist, and there are still other prejudices in society that need to be overcome to reach true equality between LGBTQI+ people and our neighbours. But with marriage equality, we can create a less hateful country, a society where everyone has equal opportunity to express who they are, without fear of being shamed or ridiculed — an opportunity which we all deserve, no matter who we are.

My hope is that LGBTQI+ kids growing up won’t have to face the same struggles I did to accept who they are. These are the children we need to be thinking about.

The marriage equality postal survey will be sent out from Tuesday 12th September 2017. Tick the ‘Yes’ box and return it in the Reply Paid envelope as soon as possible to play your part in making a change.