A 69-year-old civil marriage celebrant from Wollongong is leading a float in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade this weekend.
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Robyn Foster, of Celebrations by Robyn, wants marriage equality for all and is being supported by other civil celebrants from NSW, Queensland and the ACT.
Mrs Foster has 25 celebrants joining her on Sunday and there is a waiting list of others who want to take part.
The float is called Celebrants for Marriage Equality and includes Illawarra’s own Elvis tribute artist, marriage celebrant John Elvis Collins, and his civil celebrant wife Alison Collins who regularly help couples “Follow That Dream”.
Mrs Foster had long wondered why there can’t be legal unions for same sex couples. She has a daughter who has been in a relationship with another woman for 20 years, the same length of time her son and his wife have been married.
“It is not about whether they will,’’ she said. ‘’It is about whether they want to.’’
The issue hit home again two years ago when Mrs Foster conducted a reaffirmation ceremony for two women who had married in Canada. When the Australian wanted to come home, her partner had to apply to come as a single white female American woman. In the middle of it all that she got breast cancer and Mrs Foster could see the additional stress she was under.
“That really became the final highlight for me. I thought ‘this is just not right’,” she said.
In the past six months Mrs Foster has performed two life commitments ceremonies for female couples who didn’t want to wait any longer to marry.
“My offer to them is when it does become legal I will marry them for nothing,’’ she said. ‘’In both cases they really were as wrapped in each other as any other couple I have married. And the guests who came along showed they were accepted in both families.”
Mrs Foster, a representative for the Australian Marriage Celebrant Association, believes many people support the idea of marriage equality.
When she asked if anyone was interested in joining her at Mardi Gras, she had a flood of interest and decided to register the float in December.
“There are 12,500 people in this parade. It is the biggest one they have ever had. There were 176 applications and 30 of those were new applications. So I feel privileged. This 69-year-old nanna from Wollongong is leading a float. It is an interesting excitement.”
