When I began working with teachers and principals in Victorian schools back in 2010 none of us ever imagined the intense political and social division such a simple set of ideas have appeared to generate. I say “appeared” deliberately because to me the Safe Schools debate has never really been about the particular things we’ve been accused of saying or doing or the personal political beliefs of any of the people involved. Instead, the battle over Safe Schools is part of a broader power struggle led by a group of conservatives in the ruling elite who, together with their supporters, will stop at nothing to maintain and perpetuate a set of narrow and oppressive ideas about gender and sexuality.

Today, more than two years on from The Australian’s exclusive story that one author of one of the Safe Schools resources is a Marxist (that’s me!), the generally inaccurate and provocative commentary churns on. The Turnbull government’s terrible decision, after all other obstructions failed, to carry out an exclusionary and ridiculous postal survey on marriage equality has stoked up these divisions and put Safe Schools right back into the spotlight.

Those on the political and socially conservative right (and wherever Mark Latham now sits on the political spectrum) have accused me several times of plotting for the downfall of civilisation in what they predict will be some sort of “cultural Marxism”. Even my mum, who thinks I’m doing a pretty awesome job, knows that my powers of destruction are more limited. As much as certain rightwing commentators who have coalesced around the no campaign would like everyone to believe, I didn’t come up with idea for the Safe Schools Coalition in order to destroy the nuclear family.

Instead, Safe Schools set out to be one pretty simple contribution towards creating safer, happier, and more inclusive schools for a whole lot of children and young people who don’t feel good about their education. Ask any LGBTI person what their school experience was like (or ask yourself!). Did they feel happy and confident to be themselves? We have more than enough academic evidence (dare I say facts) that show how being attracted to people of the same gender, and/or not fitting neatly into a gender category that aligns with the sex you’ve been assigned at birth is likely to mean homophobic and/or transphobia abuse and discrimination. We then face all the subsequent negative health outcomes associated with those experiences of stigma and shame.

Children of all ages can be extremely perceptive. In the high volume furore over Safe Schools, the voices of young people have been very hard to hear, if they’re listened to at all. Younger people will be silenced again by this postal survey. Yet, children know very well what equality looks like, and feels like. In my experience of working with hundreds of teachers in schools across Victoria, the people who educate our children every day also know what equality looks like. When some people are able to get married and others can’t in a context where marriage is such a defining part of life in Australia (whether we like it or not), everyone in schools can see and feel that inequality as a daily reality. One amendment to the Marriage Act would remove one big structure of inequality overnight.

If, at the same time that same sex couples are allowed to marry, more children and young people started to feel like they can be themselves at school, or anywhere, that would be a fantastic outcome. It is OK by me if some people feel more comfortable and choose to wear a dress, shorts, or even culottes. Clothes are just pieces of material, after all. I also believe, again backed by solid research, that it would be a good outcome for everyone if all children and young people were given a chance to discuss in their classrooms what healthy, consenting, happy relationships, sexual or otherwise, can look like. So while I will be out campaigning for a huge yes vote in the equality survey, I will never give up fighting for a more free and joyful world.