Australian-born singer Kylie Minogue and her fiancé, actor Joshua Sasse, are taking a stand in support of same-sex marriage.
Minogue, 48, and Sasse, 28, got engaged in February. The couple say they won’t walk down the aisle until Australia’s government recognizes same-sex marriage.
“There are chances of a Melbourne wedding,” Sasse said. “But me and Kylie have talked about it and… until this law has passed in Australia, we will not be getting married.”
They might not be tying the knot any time soon. Australia’s main opposition party has vowed to oppose Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s suggested national referendum on the issue.
“I simply can’t fathom on any level whether it’s moral, religious, or anything, that I have the right to get married and to marry the person I love, and that somebody else doesn’t just because of their own sexual orientation,” Sasse said Thursday in an interview with CNN affiliate the Seven Network.
“That is not what equality is all about.”
Sasse has launched a campaign, “Say I Do Down Under,” selling T-shirts that promote same-sex marriage in Australia.
The shirts benefit Australians for Equality, a coalition of organizations advocating for legalization through a “free vote of parliament,” rather than a referendum.
The movement is attracting high profile supporters including Australian singer Sia, actress Margot Robbie, American TV host Kelly Ripa, and country music icon Dolly Parton, with whom Sasse and Minogue are shown in a photo posted on Sasse’s Instagram account earlier this week.
Robbie even wore her “Say I Do Down Under” shirt on television this past weekend as she hosted the 42nd season premiere of NBC’s Saturday Night Live in New York.
The country’s conservative Liberal government had planned to hold a national plebiscite, similar to a referendum, on whether or not to allow gay couples to marry in February 2017.
But the opposition Labor Party said the government should simply make same sex marriage legal without a national vote, avoiding a vicious debate over LGBT rights and savings millions of dollars in election funding.
