By KATIE DE VERTEUIL
One drunken night at a university Halloween party, two young hearts met, exchanged numbers, and form a friendship which leads to something deeper.
Their love story reads like a Hollywood novel, yet the union of locals Karen and Dineke Nolan has drawn hatred, disgust and abuse from the wider community, purely because they are of the same gender.
Frequent attendees at Eumundi’s annual Pride Festival, held recently, the vivacious pair met in 2008 at Sunshine Coast University.
Karen was in her final year of social work at the time, Dineke working as security with the uni.
Now joined officially in civil union, the ladies are mothers to two children.
While the women are strong and proud about their sexuality, there has certainly been a long road to arrive at this point.
“I first came out at 14,” Karen said, “but my parents didn’t believe me.
“I came from quite a strict Catholic family and there was so much expectation on us as kids to live a certain way and to grow into a certain future where we would get married and have children.
“It was impossible for them to accept that I was different from the norm.”Living the way she was instructed was ‘right’, it was not until the age of 30 that Karen came out once again, this time staying true to herself.
“After the break-up of my second marriage I decided it was time to live my life properly,” Karen said.
“It’s getting easier for my family to accept, too, now that they can see that I am still the same person, still the same mum to my children.”
The first people Dineke told about her sexuality were her three sisters, a choice she made at the age of 15.
It was not then, until the age of 18 that she spoke to her mum.
“It was a little tense between me and my mum for a long time,” Dineke said. “You see, my mother’s generation saw my sexuality as her fault, as if it was something that she had done wrong to make me this way.
“I didn’t want to put that on her but then when my father passed away when I was 18 I decided that life is too short to live a life that’s not yours.”
While it took Dineke’s mum a few years to accept her daughter, she has come to love the Nolans children as her own.
“It took a while for my mum to realise it was nothing that she had done wrong and that it was not all of who I am either,” Dineke said.
The wider local community has, however, been less accepting.
“What’s wrong with the world?” Karen said incredulously.
“Families are all different.
“Some kids live with their grandparents, some with their aunts and uncles.“Same sex couples are just another variation.
“We are just two parents that love our children.”
Dineke agreed.
“Australia as a whole is possibly becoming more accepting but the Sunshine Coast is not moving forward at all,” she said.
“We are supposed to be forward thinking and yet there are Third World countries that are more accepting of homosexuality.
“We still get looks, all the time,” Karen continued.
“People will snigger as we pass by.
“’Oh those poor children’, they’ll say just loud enough for us to hear.
“Or there’ll be people who say to me “but you are wearing a dress, how could you be lesbian.
“We have even been attacked on a few occasions.”
It’s not all bad news for the mums, however, with a significant change in their children’s school recently being established.
“The biggest thing for us is that at schools we are now finally considered to be both the parents of the children,” Dineke said.
“It’s a step in the right direction but there is still a long way to go and we will keep fighting to show our kids and the world that we are not doing anything wrong by others, that we are just two people living our lives the only way we know how.”
