The gloves are off. The simmering divisions in Australia’s gay and transgender communities have boiled over on the eve of a court case that will define the rights of women to gather with other women.
Nothing has brought this into focus more than the Tickle v Giggle case, where the sparring factions have thrown moral, legal and often financial support behind their proxy warriors, as transwoman Roxanne Tickle pursues her sex discrimination lawsuit against Giggle app founder Sall Grover.
The case has laid bare fault lines that were already becoming stark. One-time allies are now fierce enemies: trans-supporting Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody and Equality Australia CEO Anna Brown are pitted against long-established community organisations like the Lesbian Action Group and the LBG Alliance Australia, representing lesbians, homosexuals and bisexuals.
And now caught in the widening schism is Governor-General Sam Mostyn, patron of Equality Australia, the powerful advocacy group that has just lobbed a politically charged grenade into the already fraught equation.
Tickle v Giggle may be the platform Ms Brown was looking for, but it may not be a fight Ms Mostyn was looking for, the conditions for all Governor-General patronage being very clear that it should “pose no reputational risk to the Office of Governor-General”.
That risk ratcheted up several notches on Thursday when LGB Alliance Australia, a respected lesbian, gay men and bisexual group which has previously kept out of the fray, publicly attacked Equality Australia for taking part in “the institutional erasure of homosexuality”.
The alliance accuses Equality Australia of betraying gay men and lesbians, saying its focus has shifted from same-sex marriage to gender ideology, with biological sex sidelined in favour of taxpayer-funded gender campaigns under the guise of LGB advocacy.
“Under the rainbow flag, organisations once dedicated to protecting the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people have shifted focus. Many now promote an ideology that denies biological sex and demands that same-sex attracted people redefine their identities to include members of the opposite sex.
Equality Australia proudly proclaims that “Anna Brown’s fingerprints are on nearly every major reform for LGBTIQ+ people in recent years,” pointing to her critical role in the campaign for marriage equality co-chairing the Equality Campaign.
But while most in the gay community would agree with that, many view Equality Australia’s recent interventions not as reform but treachery. And some want to ditch the LGBTIQ+ tag entirely.
Just how personal the battle has become was evident in the Giggle case this week when Ms Tickle’s lawyers demanded the Lesbian Action Group retract what it suggested might be a slur against their client.
The group had stated in a submission that “it is now commonplace for lesbians to be pressured into having sex with transwomen, and to face risk of social isolation if they do not agree with that.”
The appeal will run for four days before a Full Bench of the Federal Court, starting on Monday. However, it may be several months before the three judges hand down their verdict.
“it is now commonplace for lesbians to be pressured into having sex with transwomen, and to face risk of social isolation if they do not agree with that.”
It’s all quite sureal isn’t it?
Once biological sex gets taken out of the equation and replaced by a mixture of an ideology grown in the petri dishes of ‘progressive’ universities and a surgical abomination developed in a Dr. Frankensteinian laboratory we really do end up in a very strange place.
As a heterosexual man I’ve yet to have it put to me that I must have sex with a man who identifies as a woman. But I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. Probably the ‘man who identifies as a woman’ will also say she (sic) identifies as my ‘wife’ too, just to amp up the pressure.
By the way, I’m still trying to figure out how we got to this point…