When Australian couple Nick and Sarah Jensen stated in the Canberra City News that they would be forced to divorce if the Australian parliament voted to legalize same-sex marriage on a federal level, they turned into an international news spectacle.
“Our view is that marriage is a fundamental order of creation. Part of God’s human history. Marriage is the union of a man and a woman before a community in the sight of God…But if this is no longer the case, then we no longer wish to be associated with this new definition. Marriage is sacred and what is truly ‘marriage’ will only ever be what it has always been,” Jensen wrote.
Most people were outraged by the Jensens’ op-ed, which quickly went viral. But the best responses to the Jensens’ anti-marriage equality protest can be found on a single Facebook event page.
On the page “Celebrating Nick and Sarah Jensen’s Divorce,” more than 164,000 people have signed up so far to attend the upcoming “event.” Most of the posts on the page are messages to the Jensens from devoted same-sex couples that have been together for years, as well as from straight couples showing their support for marriage equality.
Celebrating Nick & Sarah Jensen’s Divorce/Facebook
One Billingham, UK-based woman posted a wedding photo of two lovely brides in white dresses laughing over a shared bouquet of roses. “After 20 years of being together we got married in 2014. How many straight marriages last that long. Rest my case,” she wrote.
A straight married couple from Sale, Australia posted a photo with their two kids, adding: “We are about as boringly average as you can get: husband, wife, boy, girl. And yet there is nothing wrong with that. Just as there is nothing wrong with my childrens’ [sic] uncle being married to a man… we all want to be given the same rights under law.”
But the funniest posts are from those who employed biting sarcasm to mock the Jensen couple’s outdated beliefs.
Facebook users aren’t the only ones speaking out against the Jensens. One friend of the couple turned to Australia’s News.com last week to formally un-invite them from attending her wedding—even though she’d already sent the invitation in the mail.
Another cheeky Internet denizen has also made Jensen a Grindr profile to help him, er, get off on the right foot once he’s single.
https://twitter.com/matwhi/status/609871047152697344
Thank you, Internet.
Photo via Johan Larsson/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Fernando Alfonso III