Having taken Eurovision by storm, Irish pop star twins Jedward have now lent their support to this weekend’s marriage equality rallies taking place across Australia.
Here for a series of three concerts that started in Perth last night, the twins were earlier snapped in Sydney’s inner-west showing their support for Saturday’s National Day of Action for Marriage Equality.
Rallies will be held in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Canberra tomorrow starting from 1pm local time in each city in protest against the Federal Government’s attempts to block the ACT’s recently-enacted same-sex marriage laws. The High Court will begin to hear the case early next month.
Community Action Against Homophobia co-convenor Cat Rose said the protests came almost two years to the day of Australia’s largest ever rally for equal marriage laws.
“December 3 will mark two years to the day that Australia received the biggest protest for gay rights in its history – when 10,000 people marched to the ALP’s national conference as they debated the definition of marriage in 2011,” she said.
“Now that the question has been handed to the High Court we will be making our voices clear once again. We will call on the High Court to uphold the civil rights of same-sex couples in the ACT with a day of protest that will span capital cities across the country on November 23.”
Since being discovered on the UK’s X Factor in 2009, Jedward have represented Ireland twice on Eurovision in 2011 and 2012.
Their choreographed moves and camp outfits had previously led to media speculation the 21-year-old brothers the twins (real names: John and Edward Grimes) were gay – a tag they say they don’t mind despite being heterosexual.
“Some people ask us about that but we don’t really care what people think. We like lots of girls,” John told an Irish newspaper in 2011.
“We have a lot of gay fans. We don’t mind what people say. It’s no big deal – we are always just ourselves. We don’t get annoyed with people. We don’t care what people think,” Edward added during the interview.
INFO: Protests commence at 1pm (local time) at all locations on Saturday, November 23 at:
Sydney Town Hall
Melbourne’s State Library
Brisbane’s King George Square
Perth’s Sterling Gardens
Canberra’s Petrie Plaza
Author: Serkan Ozturk
Publication: starobserver
Date: 22 november 2013
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