I gasped a heavy sigh of relief, as did many LGBT Australians, when the yes victory was confirmed on Wednesday. While I was elated at the overall verdict, I couldn’t hide my profound disappointment in a more personal result: my home electorate was one of two Melbourne districts that voted no.

That district, Calwell, encompasses Melbourne’s northwest suburbs surrounding Tullamarine airport, stretching from Craigieburn to Taylors Lakes. It is a traditional Labor, working-class seat home to a large migrant population, many of whom from the Middle East. According to the 2016 census, nearly half of the district’s population were born overseas, with Iraq, India, Turkey, Italy and Lebanon rounding out the top five. Calwell has the highest percentage of Muslims in Victoria, as well as a large number of Catholics and Eastern Orthodox – migrants from the Middle East are both Muslim and Christian, and equally socially conservative.

Full results of Australia's vote for same-sex marriage, electorate by electorate – interactive Read more

Unemployment is also higher than the national average, while the number of tertiary educated constituents is well below the rest of the nation. Similar demographics are also found in the western Sydney suburbs where the no vote prevailed, such as Blaxland and Watson. Dissecting the same-sex marriage survey results reveals a wide gulf between the progressive inner suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney, and deeply conservative outer suburbs that remain disconnected from their cities.

Despite being victims of bigotry at a national level, most mosques in Australia are not promoting tolerance when it comes to LGBT. By campaigning and ostensibly voting no, a large portion of the Muslim community has shown it is more than willing to forget the Muslim-bashing of the hard right to try and halt equality for LGBT compatriots. It is regrettable that a community that has been repeatedly demonised on the public stage largely voted in favour of bigotry against another vulnerable minority.

The suburbs that make up Calwell (at least that’s what it was like when I grew up there), together reside as a self-contained country town oblivious to its geographical presence within the metropolitan boundaries of one of the most progressive cities in the world. Its compass is not the centre of Melbourne, but the satellite city of Broadmeadows, around which the surrounding suburbs hover. Growing up, we had little interaction outside of the northwest region, save for the weekend city trips to the footy. Otherwise, the local shopping centre served as the primary source of entertainment, and working-class jobs could be found in the area or other industrial outer suburbs. Importantly, religious institutions served as hubs for migrant communities, and are considerably influential in perpetuating highly conservative and intolerant views. If you didn’t go to university or gain employment in the city, you were rarely exposed to perspectives, attitudes or cultures beyond what’s available in the area.

This remains the case, as a friend who teaches at a school in the district explained to me after the same-sex survey result was announced. “We still reside in a bubble that separates us from the ‘real world.’ Most of my pupils’ contact with anything beyond Broadmeadows is very limited. They don’t visit the city.”

Homophobia is thus not a secretly held conviction that surprisingly reared its head during the survey. The religious conservatism – Muslim and Christian – that fuels the homophobia in places like Calwell, Blaxland, and Watson is the trend, and it’s overt.

While it is admirable that Labor MPs representing these districts are publicly defying their constituents on the same-sex marriage survey, more needs to be done to address the flawed fundamentalist views that run contrary to broader Australian attitudes.

One place to start is with the public schools in those areas. Playground racism and religious-based bigotry were largely tolerated at my two schools to avoid offending religious and cultural sensitivities of migrant communities. The problem with this approach, however, is that it failed to protect those of us from migrant communities that had to endure such intolerance. It was insufferable growing up as a gay Australian Lebanese kid at schools in these areas where support services weren’t available.

Homophobia was occasionally openly indulged. I recall vividly one incident as a year 7 student at Craigieburn Secondary College in the late 1990s. A regular substitute teacher leading a lesson on HIV/Aids asked the class why Tasmania had a lower rate than the rest of Australia. One pupil answered, “because there are no gay people there.” The teacher astonishingly answered, “that’s right.”

The daily homophobic taunts I experienced at Craigieburn and my subsequent school, Gladstone Park Secondary College, were dehumanizing and demoralizing. The “poof” and “faggot” slurs were inside the classroom and outside on the schoolyard. I can’t forget the moment in class at Gladstone Park when a fellow student, who like me seemed gay but was too afraid to openly admit it, was asked by the teacher to read a text out loud. Several in the class laughed and mocked his voice in a homophobic manner as he read, and the teacher did nothing. I knew exactly how small, humiliated and hurt he felt, but was too afraid to say anything.

The taunts targeted any male or female pupil who failed to conform to the tight gender stereotypes defined by the religious-based traditions of our migrant communities. If your hairstyle stood out, or the type of music you listened to didn’t conform to the accepted trends, you were considered “gay.” And gay doesn’t carry the simple definition of “homosexual” in these areas – gay means a vile human that should be outcast, and we were.

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I graduated in 2002, and today neither Craigieburn Secondary College nor Gladstone Park Secondary College have signed up to the state government-funded Safe Schools program, which is designed to promote an “inclusive and safe environment” for LGBT pupils.

The no responses from these outer Melbourne and Sydney electorates show it’s time for public schools in these areas to cease accommodating intolerance shrouded in multiculturalism. Respecting cultural diversity and tackling bigotry are not mutually exclusive, and LGBT Australians from these migrant communities need help. With religious institutions in these areas so entrenched, public schools and local MPs are the frontline in combating such intolerance, and they need to do a better job.