The marriage issue preoccupied activists in 2017 but it’s unclear whether that campaigning power can be harnessed for issues such as trans and intersex rights

Easier gender changes on birth certificates. Preventing unnecessary surgery on intersex children. Gender education in schools and LGBTI acceptance in aged care.

These are just some of the LGBTI causes raised as priorities by Australian community leaders and activists keen to keep the ball rolling after the passage of marriage equality legislation.

A fact often lost in the postal survey debate is that marriage equality is not the be-all and end-all for queer people, for the simple reason that many are opposite-sex attracted and could already marry – particularly people who are bisexual, trans or intersex.

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But now one of the last forms of discrimination before the law of gay and lesbian Australians has been lifted it remains to be seen if there’s enough solidarity to bank the win and move on to the next fight.

Anna Brown, the Equality Campaign co-chair, played a pivotal role in the marriage equality campaign and says it’s now time to refocus on trans and intersex rights and gender diversity issues.

“It’s only appropriate given how much these groups were targeted by the no campaign,” she says. “As a movement we have a responsibility to stand by them and make sure they’re not left behind … to amplify their voices.”

Whether it was the Coalition for Marriage’s ads about gender education or Cory Bernardi criticising a charity day allowing boys to wear dresses, much of the opposition to marriage equality had little to do with homosexuality. Brown suggests trans and gender diverse people were “collateral damage” in the campaign.

The executive director of Transgender Victoria, Sally Goldner, says the no campaign displayed “gross prejudice by implying there is something wrong with gender diversity when, of course, it just is [diverse]”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alex Greenwich and Anna Brown face the media in September. Brown says it’s now time to refocus on trans and intersex rights. Photograph: James Ross/EPA

Brown, the director of advocacy at the Human Rights Law Centre, is on a mission to remove “every last stain of discrimination” from the statute books.

She cites overturning the ban on same-sex adoption in the Northern Territory and access to assisted reproductive technology in Western Australia and the NT as the next cabs off the rank.

One change that is directly related to marriage is forced trans divorce. All states and territories except South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory require trans people to get divorced before they can change their gender on their birth certificates.

For people including the Greens’ LGBTI spokeswoman, Janet Rice, and her wife, Penny, the laws create an agonising choice between preserving one’s marriage or officially changing gender.

Penny will wait for the law to change before changing her gender, but Rice says legislation of marriage equality is already having a normalising effect for them.

“Penny and I have gone from being one of the very few same-sex couples legally married to being joined by thousands of others who had overseas marriages,” she says.

Although marriage equality is a big step forward for gay and lesbian Australians in particular, many of the issues affecting the trans and intersex community have little to do with saying “I do”.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Victorian Greens senator Janet Rice with her wife, Penny. Photograph: Julian Meehan Photography

Goldner represents trans and bisexual communities and points to the urgent need to flatten out disparities in mental health for these groups.



She says trans people and bisexual women “are more likely to be homeless and on the receiving end of domestic violence”.

She adds the need to make it easier to change gender on birth certificates, noting that only the ACT and SA allow changes without gender reassignment surgery.

That means in six states and territories children can’t change their birth certificate, even with parental consent.

The family court has allowed children to undergo stage-two hormone treatment without going to court, with parental and doctors’ consent, but Goldner says adults still face “huge out-of-pocket costs” to transition gender.

“That’s often something that stops people living life as their authentic self,” she says.

The trans activist Kate Doak identifies the mental health needs of trans youth as the priority, citing the high rate of attempted suicide by trans children.

“Any form of program which responsibly prevents bullying, reduces instances of anxiety and depression needs to be the focus,” she says.

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Rice says the Greens will be particularly focused on “removing prejudice against trans people”, citing the need to ensure equality in spheres such as sport and education. She says initiatives such as the anti-bullying program Safe Schools are “exactly the sort of program to end a culture of bullying and discrimination”.

Morgan Carpenter, the executive co-director of Organisation Intersex International Australia, says the key demand for the intersex community is for a prohibition of deferrable medical interventions, including surgery and hormone treatments, that alter the sex characteristics of infants and children without their consent.

“Many of us have experienced medical interventions to make our bodies appear more typically female or male, without our informed consent,” Carpenter says. “We know that such practices remain routine in Australian hospitals.”

Labor’s LGBTI spokeswoman, Terri Butler, points to the party’s 2015 platform which includes key demands including greater training for healthcare workers, removing out-of-pocket health expenses for transgender people and preventing unnecessary surgery on intersex children.

Labor wasted no time after marriage equality legislation passed, announcing a $53m package to combat HIV, including adding preventive medicine, PrEP, to the pharmaceutical benefits scheme.

Both Butler and Rice cite treatment of LGBTI people in aged care as a priority, noting that the government has reviewed the sector but more needs to be done to train staff and make aged care inclusive.

While marriage has been the exclusive focus for the Equality Campaign, the long list of causes to fight for raises the question: can it turn its guns on other sources of inequality? Who is going to do the work?

Carpenter’s answer is simple: the same activists and organisations that have always campaigned separately or together on lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex rights, which he says are not “new or newly significant” after marriage equality.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A marriage equality march in Sydney attended by 30,000 people. The Equality Campaign has a massive database and social media following. Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian

He disputes the idea there is an “LGBTI rights movement” in Australia, characterising it more as “different people and organisations involved in different campaigns and movements”.

Although the Equality Campaign was built for the marriage fight in Australia it would be an invaluable resource for further campaigns, with a massive database and social media following.



Brown says it engaged “a new generation of activists and campaigners”. She foreshadows consultation in the new year to determine if they are “motivated only by a particular cause” or have the “appetite to mobilise around broader LGBTI issues”.

She says she will be “disappointed” if the movement loses the goodwill, support and membership database built by the campaign.

Australian Marriage Equality’s co-chair, Alex Greenwich, said the campaign had been about “empowering people and I’d like to see that continue”.

That could be through “supporting other LGBTI causes, [or] supporting international campaigns for marriage equality and we have an immediate task at hand with the the Ruddock [religious freedom] inquiry to make sure that has no perverse impacts on the historic marriage equality vote,” he said.

Advocates want to avoid the re-emergence of proposed amendments to refuse weddings that were defeated in the same-sex marriage bill debate and Greenwich wants the review to reflect that religious freedom should not be seen as competing with LGBTI equality.

“We will work hard to protect the gains we’ve made, to work for new gains and to support the international effort.”

Greenwich, the independent state MP for Sydney, says he is working to remove forced trans divorce provisions and wants a review of discrimination laws which still allow schools to discriminate based on sexuality.

Another local cause is to address the high no vote in western Sydney. Greenwich says the campaign should be “supporting the LGBTI communities there and resourcing the multicultural communities to have important conversations … about how LGBTI people are part of every community”.

Greenwich is already back at work, spending the week after Australia became the 25th country in the world to legislate marriage equality at a conference for gay and lesbian legislators in the US.

“We’ve had a lot of setbacks and many lessons to learn throughout this campaign,” he says. “I am keen to support other marriage equality campaigns including in Japan, Vietnam, China, in South America including Peru and a few European jurisdictions like Italy.”

We’re all the same in the sense that we’ve all faced the same marginalisation Jason Tuazon-McCheyne, Better Together conference

Another international project, mentioned by Brown, is the treatment of LGBTI asylum seekers, particularly pressing given that Australia sends gay male asylum seekers to Papua New Guinea, which has criminal laws against homosexuality.

Goldner says some bisexual and trans people felt left out by the marriage equality campaign, as some volunteers had talked about the need for equality specifically for “gay and lesbian” Australians.

She suggests “some sort of major roundtable to thrash this out privately” to allow LGBTI Australians to talk in a “safe process” and to remind everyone about the need for equality for all.

The LGBTI rights movement should be more like a powerboard, Goldner says, with the shared value of equality like the wall socket “that charges us all” but is able to power up to “five plugs at once”.

One innovation in this space is the Better Together conference organised by the Equality Project (unrelated to the same-sex marriage Equality Campaign), which aspires to be the new voice for LGBTI Australians.

The conference will be structured around caucuses for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, people of colour and queer Indigenous people to discuss their priorities.

The executive director of the project, Jason Tuazon-McCheyne, says the time is right to restart “a national gathering of LGBTI organisations and people” in the vein of homosexual conferences that occurred in the 1970s and 80s.

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Tuazon-McCheyne says the LGBTI community must “celebrate” their achievements and diversity but constantly strive to “champion the causes of those who suffer”.

“We’re all the same in the sense that we’ve all faced the same marginalisation,” he says.

In his emotional speech to the Senate in the marriage debate the then attorney general, George Brandis, said passage of the bill “will demolish the last significant bastion of legal discrimination against people on the grounds of their sexuality”.

While the list of demands to achieve queer equality is still long, Brandis is correct that the instances of discrimination before the law of gay and lesbian people are now few.

Whether and how gay and lesbian Australians respond to calls for solidarity from the rest of the queer community could be the difference in whether LGBTI progress ends at the first two letters.