As we celebrate marriage equality let’s not forget those whose names may never be in the history books but whose contributions were critical to achieving the reform.

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These people’s stories remind us there was a decade-old marriage equality movement before the postal survey. If it had not been for that movement’s astounding success in changing hearts and minds the survey would have failed miserably, MPs might still be quibbling and we might still not have marriage equality.

The pioneer

As an early convener of Australian Marriage Equality, Peter Furness raised the profile of the issue when too few people wanted to talk about it.

He established Australia’s first municipal relationship register in south Sydney but he really hit the news when he took the Bureau of Statistics to task.

Peter was outraged the bureau wouldn’t recognise his Canadian marriage to his husband, Theo, in the census. The ABS said the Marriage Act forbade such recognition so Peter sought the advice of legal experts who said there was no legal impediment to recognition. The ABS was unmoved so Peter and Theo staged a sit-in at its Sydney office, refusing to leave and risking arrest until the ABS chiefs did the right thing. This brave act of civil disobedience caught the media’s attention, the ABS gave in and same-sex couples were subsequently able to indicate they are married on the census.

From this small gain flowed the recognition of overseas same-sex marriages by other federal agencies, then by state law, and finally now by the federal law.

The local champion

As a regional mayor west of Melbourne, Sharyn Faulkner made a lot of contacts and she wasn’t afraid to use them in her campaign to have her local Liberal, Sarah Henderson, support marriage equality for the sake of Sharyn’s son Ned.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sharyn Faulkner with her committee from Geelong for Marriage Equality. Photograph: Geelong for Marriage Equality

Sharyn organised large town hall meetings bringing together local health experts, clergy, LGBTI community reps, business leaders, aldermen and women, sports groups ... whoever had a stake in the reform. Thanks to Sharyn’s tireless lobbying many of Geelong’s key institutions came out for marriage equality well before their counterparts around the nation. This included the Geelong and Surf Coast councils, as well as the Geelong football club, the first ALF team to publicly support marriage equality, prompting the entire league to follow suit not long after.

When your children ask you how marriage equality was won, remember the unremembered and quietly thank them

In Geelong, Sarah’s office was flooded with thousands of marriage equality postcards and dozens of constituents wanting her to back the reform, again thanks to Sharyn.

I helped out on one of Sharyn’s postcard signing stalls in a market in one of Geelong’s blue-collar suburbs.

We all noticed the surprise on Sarah’s face when she popped by to say hi and encountered a queue of tradies, young mothers and grandparents keen to sign marriage equality postcards.

Not long after that, Sarah became one of the first Liberals to declare her support for the reform.

Sharyn’s campaign set a benchmark for other local champions who emulated her success in convincing their local member to back marriage equality.

The researcher

It’s hard to imagine a social scientist who takes her vocation more seriously than Dr Sharon Dane.

Sharon was the lead researcher on a groundbreaking University of Queensland study, Not So Private Lives, the first Australian study to examine whether LGBTI people preferred to have their relationships recognised through de facto laws, civil unions or marriage. It found that LGBTI people did not see de facto status or civil unions as adequate substitutes for equality in marriage, especially those who were actually in these legally recognised relationships.

Sharon’s research came at precisely the moment when federal MPs were responding to growing demand for marriage equality by declaring de facto recognition was enough or by proposing civil unions as a compromise. Her findings were critical to scotching both these excuses for inaction and establishing once and for all that LGBTI people would never settle for anything less than full equality.

Sharon later went on to design and carry out independent research showing LGBTI people opposed both a plebiscite and marriage exemptions allowing new forms of discrimination in the name of “religious freedom”. Her impeccable methodology made it impossible for these studies to be ignored by lawmakers. Her findings were critical when it came to convincing the Senate to block the plebiscite in 2016 and convincing parliament to vote down unnecessary and damaging “religious freedom” amendments last week.

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The bereaved partner

The circumstances that propelled Ben Jago into the national spotlight were heartbreaking. He returned to his Hobart home one evening to find his partner dead. Still dealing with that trauma, Ben discovered the police and coroner had not recognised him as next of kin, but had given that legal right to his deceased partner’s estranged mother. The authorities’ mistake was that they assumed Ben and his partner were not in a relationship because they didn’t have a Tasmanian civil union certificate. In fact they had lived together for five years and had the same rights as other couples, but the damage was done.

Ben was refused permission to see his partner’s body in hospital. He was only allowed to attend the funeral after negotiations between the two families and on condition he sit down the back with the other friends and say nothing. Ben launched an anti-discrimination case which is still being heard.

But at least the officials have since admitted their error, with one government official I spoke to acknowledging this would not have happened if Ben and his partner had been able to marry. “A marriage certificate is magic,” he said ruefully as it dawned on him what trauma Ben had experienced.

When Ben’s story was told nationally it exploded the myth that marriage equality is just about symbolism. It showed there are real and sometimes awful consequences to being denied a marriage certificate. Never again would a serious politician or commentator declare that marriage for same-sex couples was just about cake and confetti.

The clergyman

The myth that all people of faith are against marriage equality is particularly unjust to those clergy who were among the reform’s strongest advocates, such as the Rev Mike Hercock.

Mike became as a marriage equality supporter when he encountered same-sex couples raising children in Sydney. What transformed him into an advocate was his Christian principle of not walking past injustice, the same principle he applies in his work with Indigenous people.

I was proud to stand by Mike during our meetings with MPs and during media conferences. But his church’s leaders felt very differently, despite Mike’s congregation giving him permission to speak out. That congregation was taken away from him, as was his stipend and his family house, just before Christmas. As difficult as that was for Mike and his family it helped galvanise Christians across Australia, who were outraged this could be done in the name of a loving, merciful God.

The mistreatment of clergy like Mike led in part to the formation of faith groups that were pivotal in achieving marriage equality, groups including Equal Voices, Christians for Marriage Equality and Catholics for Equality.

The dissenter

“Compromise” was a word we heard a lot during the final parliamentary debate on marriage equality. The bill proposed by Dean Smith contained “religious freedom” provisions allowing discrimination by existing civil celebrants and businesses that define themselves as “religious”. That irked many LGBTI people including Alastair Lawrie, who has fought for years to end anti-LGBTI discrimination inflicted in the name of God.

Alastair wrote forensically and compellingly about the flaws in the Smith bill, as well as the even bigger problems posed by the other religious exemptions on the table.

His words struck a chord with politicians, contributing to the Greens’ move to introduce amendments to improve the Smith bill, prodding some Labor members to acknowledge that the bill could have been better, and helping to ensure Labor voted as a block against anything worse than the Smith exemptions.

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What made this achievement all the greater was that the political tide was running against Alastair. The Equality Campaign and the nation’s political leaders wanted marriage equality done quickly, with the least fuss. They held out the incentive of lots of wonderful summer weddings. Compromise won out, but still the point was emphatically made that the once noble concept of “religious freedom” is being abused as a cover for discrimination. Thanks to people like Alastair, a new movement was born at the very moment marriage discrimination died, a movement against religious privilege.

The marriage equality movement was always a movement from below, a movement made up of ordinary people called on by history to do extraordinary things.

Long before politicians and other high-flyers noticed or cared, thousands of people like the ones I’ve described built the stage upon which those leaders have lately strode and strutted.

When your children ask you how marriage equality was won, remember the unremembered and quietly thank them for the better nation we live in.

• Rodney Croome is a longtime marriage equality advocate