The story of Marco and David Bulmer-Rizzi is one that shows just how important marriage equality is. The two married in the UK in mid-2015, and went to Australia for their honeymoon. David died in an accident while here. Given the state of our backward laws, the consequences were predictable.
Last Saturday, while on honeymoon in Adelaide, South Australia, his new husband, David Bulmer-Rizzi, 32, died suddenly after falling down a staircase and cracking his skull at the home of the friends they were visiting. Both were British citizens, but because same-sex marriage is not recognised in Australia, and in the state of South Australia even same-sex marriages from overseas are not legally recognised, Bulmer-Rizzi, 38, was told his husband’s death certificate would state two words under the deceased’s marital status: “never married”.
And because Bulmer-Rizzi is therefore not recognised as the next of kin, all the decisions surrounding his husband’s death have had to be approved by his father-in-law, Nigel Bulmer. Also speaking to BuzzFeed News, Bulmer, 60, said: “It’s degrading. It demeans my son’s memory and denies their relationship. It’s cast them as second-class citizens. No one should ever have to go through what we’ve gone through. We’re at the bottom and somebody has dug a deeper pit.”
Grieving for his husband but determined to speak out about what has happened, Bulmer-Rizzi called on the British government to intervene, because, he said, in the eyes of the Australian government, “I’m nothing.”
The news is awful, but there is some good in it. South Australia’s premier Jay Weatherill has apologized to Bulmer-Rizzi and pledged to enact legislation recognizing out-of-state same-sex marriages, and then to reissue the death certificate. And there’s also the question of how this will allow us to argue in favor of it when it comes up again.