Margaret Coulter

This August, Australia clocked up 10 years of legislated marriage discrimination. Equal Love is one of the main groups fighting back against this homophobic law by holding mass demonstrations. We facilitate rallies out on the streets where supporters of marriage equality can come together to have their voices heard. Our rallies and the outpourings of public support and media coverage they receive help to make marriage equality one of the big headline issues in Australian society.  According to poll results released in June 2014, support for marriage equality has risen to 72% among the Australian population - this is up from 38% in June 2004 before this campaign began. All of this keeps up the pressure on the government to act on this issue, and we will not give up until we win marriage equality!

Our next Melbourne rally will be held in 2015 - please help us to fund this rally and also come along on the day if you can.

Our aim is to use Pozible to raise at least $2,000 towards our next rally. One rally alone costs far more than this, however your generous support will combine with other donations from our community to boost the success of our next rally. If we raise more than our target we can budget even more towards advertising the rally so that we can reach even more people and make a bigger impact.

Each rally costs thousands of dollars for Equal Love to put on. An example of some of the costs are:

$1,200 - stage and PA system hire and operation
$1,000 - printing thousands of posters to get the word out
Between $500-$2,000 - ordering new merchandise to sell to raise funds
$200 - Facebook advertising
$1,200 - professional bill posters
$500 - leaflet printing
If our crowd funding is successful we also hope to purchase our own megaphone for approximately $500 rather than having to borrow one every rally.

All of these costs are funded from donations from our supporters, merchandise sales, support from student unions and political parties.

The main challenge that we face in putting on our rallies is getting the word out - obviously people need to know about them in order to attend! The more money we raise the more effectively we can do this. We are a small group and can only do so much in terms of putting up posters and handing out leaflets ourselves, which is why we would like to be able to spend a bit more money on some giant posters to be professionally posted around train stations, and some more extensive Facebook advertising to make our next rally huge.

Winning marriage equality in Australia is a challenge, however one that we believe can and will be won if we keep up the pressure.