RESIDENTS of Beardy Street are making their views on marriage equality clear.
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Even if they couldn’t vote.
Chatting through their front window, Alex Evans and Ruby McDonall are too young to vote in the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.
So they plastered their window with a YES instead.
“It’s really important to show support – being someone who is a member of the community myself – I’m openly non-binary with my gender,” Ms McDonall said.
“Especially in a community like Armidale where on Facebook pages like Buy, Swap, Sell or Thumbs Up, Thumbs down it can get quite political.
“For me, it can be such a damaging thing seeing all of the debates online with the NO campaign, the brochures that were distributed in Armidale – for me to not be able to have a say by just a year – that sucked a lot.”
Ms McDonall is 17 years old, and Mr Evans missed the opportunity to vote by less than a week.
Both said not being able to contribute to the conversation was difficult.
“It was really upsetting actually, I just missed the local election by less than a week,” Mr Evans said.
“I was really cut up about it because I just wanted to be a part of that process.”
The pair said they were expecting a strong community response to the display, both positive and negative.
“I’m surprised we haven’t had our front window smashed yet,” Ms McDonall said.
“That’s what we were expecting.”
A block up the road, American citizen Christie Cooksey has decked out her mailbox in colour.
“I saw the Drag Mailbox movement on Facebook and I just wanted to show my support,” she said.
“I’m a resident but I couldn’t actually vote in the survey – so I thought I would make my views known with a big YES.”
A few houses down, another house has stuck multiple YES posters on their front verandah, but the residents were not home at the time.