These people get to vote because Malcolm Turnbull is too weak to lead

There are only two outcomes of the three-ring goat circus Malcolm Turnbull is running on marriage equality.

The so-called vote (spoiler: it's not a vote) goes down and the punishers and straighteners use the result to deny a basic human right to hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens for a few more years.

Or it gets up and the same people go on denying a basic human right to hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens because it was a non-binding, non-compulsory postal survey with no more legal validity than a multiple choice Twitter poll on which Star Trek captain was the best. (Janeway, in case you were wondering).

If Turnbull was so weak that he couldn't stand up to the Abbott rump of his party before, where is he going to find the ticker to put them down when they defy him after a successful Yes campaign?

The last chapter has already been written. Sorry to blow the season finale for you, but it goes like this. A clear majority of punters tick the Yes box.

In the giddy rush of emotion and relief, Turnbull promises legislation and a vote by Christmas.

Before the day's news cycle is even finished at least half a dozen Club Jesus comrades threaten to blow up his government if he even thinks about moving forward.

He folds like a cheap Chinese umbrella in a Category 5 cyclone.

And all of this will have been for nothing.

A hundred and forty million dollars and two months of pretty unpleasant behaviour, almost entirely from the proponents of the No case.

Not everybody 'voting' No is a bigot. Just as the vast majority of people 'voting' Yes is not gay. But the campaign leaders on the No side have created a permission structure within which smaller, meaner and often crueller individuals have felt emboldened.

Structurally, the entire plebiscite is an exercise in prejudice. I'm looking forward to voting Yes because it's the right and decent thing to do. But seriously, why the hell do I even get a say?

Nobody got to vote on whether I married my wife and frankly if you insisted that you had the right to deny us that, there'd probably be violence, and it would not be rhetorical.

But the violence of this process has been both rhetorical and physical. The hashtag #TheyGetToVote has collected both.

Yeah. They do get to vote.

Because Malcolm Turnbull is too weak to lead.