At her office in Parliament House this week, Ms. Wong said Mr. Turnbull’s decision to pursue the referendum had unleashed a campaign of fear-mongering and hate that she would struggle to forgive.

“It is a hard thing to have others judge whether you deserve to be equal,” she said. “And it is an even harder thing to have your family and your children besmirched by those who want to perpetuate discrimination.”

Many other gay Australians said they had been hurt and frustrated by the referendum process.

“The conversation around marriage equality was being dominated by those who were against it,” said Tristan Meecham, the artistic director of the performance company All the Queens Men and the founder of the Coming Back Out Ball, meant to encourage older gay Australians not to return to the closet.

Left out of the discussion, he added, were issues that go beyond marriage, such as the way older men and women deal with earlier traumas tied to prejudice and gay bashing, or suicide among teenagers dealing with issues of gender and sexuality.

“People need to realize that marriage is a certain thing for a certain part of the community, but the real social mission behind all of this is equality,” Mr. Meecham said. “And there is a lot of work that still needs to be done.”

Still, he said, he could not deny the sense of validation that the process had delivered.

“There’s a breathing process,” he said, “a relief, a cleansing.”