In Australia, Gays and Lesbians Lose The Right To Freedom Of Association And Assembly

When inclusion becomes exclusion, civil rights go backwards.

In Western democracies, there are generally rights we take for granted - such as freedom of speech, freedom of belief, and what I want to talk to you about today - the freedom of association and assembly. Western democracies currently face a crisis around the illiberal urge on the left to abrogate some of these rights in order to not be ‘offensive’, ‘harmful’, or ‘hateful’, including defunding people over speech that some disagree with, but freedom of association and assembly isn’t as much a focus beyond discussing the embrace of the illiberal heckler’s veto (also known as ‘health and safety concerns’) by local authorities.

Well, like freedom of speech, freedom of association and assembly is now offensive harmful, and hateful in a Western democracy. Particularly when a minority group that only very recently won equal civil rights wants to exercise it. Then it’s very hateful. Australia, supposedly a progressive democracy, has had several states declare that gay and lesbian people are not allowed to gather without straight people who pretend to be gay or lesbian around. That’s right, no lesbian events that exclude The Holy Penis™. This is forbidden because it violates anti-discrimination legislation.

If you’re wondering, this is how the Australian government defines ‘freedom of association’ and ‘freedom of assembly’.

“The right to peaceful assembly protects the right of individuals and groups to meet for a common purpose or in order to exchange ideas and information, to express their views publicly and to hold a peaceful protest. The right extends to all gatherings for peaceful purposes, regardless of the degree of public support for the purpose of the gathering. However, the right applies only to peaceful assemblies, not to those involving violence.

The right to freedom of association protects the right of all persons to group together voluntarily for a common goal and to form and join an association. Examples are political parties, professional or sporting clubs, non-governmental organisations and trade unions. The right to form and join trade unions is specifically protected in article 8 of the ICESCR. It is also protected in International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No 87 (referred to in article 22(3) of the ICCPR and article 8(3) of ICESCR). Australia is a party to ILO Convention No 87.”

And after Tasmanian lesbian Jessica Hoyle applied for an anti-discrimination exemption to a run a lesbian event, she found out this is what the Australian state of Tasmania thinks about gays and lesbians organizing our own events and spaces that exclude the opposite sex:

“In a ruling late last week circulated on Monday, the tribunal rejected Miss Hoyle’s appeal, finding the desire for female-only lesbian events was insufficient justification for an exemption [From Australia’s anti-discrimination legislation - any single sex event/club/organization must apply for an exemption, a quirk of Australian law].

“While the applicants may not wish to comply with the Act and find aspects of its application to transgender and transsexual women irksome, particularly in the context of the event they would like to hold, that is not a sufficient justification,” ruled tribunal member Kate Cuthbertson.

Ms Cuthbertson SC said arguments by Miss Hoyle claiming “patterns of criminality and nefarious motivations” for transwomen attending female-only events were “not supported by empirical research or compelling evidence”.

Miss Hoyle told The Australian she was disappointed in the decision and would fight on, if necessary all the way to the High Court, believing same-sex attracted females should be able to exclude “people with penises” from social events.

“This decision erases the rights of women and freedom of association for lesbians,” said Miss Hoyle. “It is harmful to everyday, average lesbian women and gay men, who just want to be able to meet one another in a safe environment, and not have members of the opposite sex harass us.

“I’m all for transgenders and transsexuals having their own events, their own spaces, but (they ought) not force themselves on to anybody else’s rights. We are seeing in this country the erasure of women’s rights.”

The presence of someone with a penis at a lesbian-only event is simply ‘irksome’ to lesbians who don’t want him there, and so we need to get over our discriminatory impulses and let people with penises into lesbian events! Our sexual orientation is simply just finding men irksome! Oh Lord, come to me in this time of need, my eyes have rolled out of my head so hard they’ve scored a three-hundred at the local bowling alley.

This seems to be quite the problem in Australia, with the Tasmania case not being an isolated incident. The Lesbian Action Group in Melbourne has recently applied for an exemption to Australian anti-discrimination laws to host a lesbian only event in the state of Victoria - you can find their application here, and in making their case to the public, have compiled an extensive list with the LGB Alliance Australia of repeated denials of lesbians seeking exemptions to host single-sex events. This includes two examples where people with penises - i.e., men - decided that they were being discriminated against for not being included in a lesbian event and therefore sued lesbians, such as this example all the way back in 2003!

“2003: Sally Goldner, the co-founder of Transgender Victoria, took the organisers of Lesbian Festival 2004 to the Equal Opportunity Commission of Victoria for advertising that the forthcoming festival was for Lesbians Born Female only. The women managed to get an exemption from the Victorian CAT Tribunal, but it was later overturned and faced with the possibility of litigation by the transgender community, LesFest 2004 was officially cancelled, and a private party was held instead.”

They list multiple examples of men-only clubs, including gay-men only clubs being allowed to continue operating with no legal threats (but I doubt this will last for much longer, given the precedent. It’ll only take one woman making a complaint.), but lesbians cannot gather on their own legally if it excludes The Holy Penis™. That’s hateful, you see.

Through the malicious misuse of legislation supposed to protect them, lesbians in Australia have lost their civil rights. No longer can Australian lesbians gather among themselves without a barrage of legal threats or without going through the government for a legal exemption, a government that has decided civil rights don’t apply to lesbians when they want something to themselves for five minutes.

With the lesbians cowed, now straight women are facing legal threats and harassment in Australia for trying to exclude someone with a penis from single-sex spaces, like the Australian-based Sall Grover, who was sued by ‘Roxxane Tickle’¹ for denying him access to her female-only app, Giggle.

This isn’t an issue exclusive to Australia. New Zealand, next door, recently was an incredibly poor host to controversial gender critical firebrand Posie Parker (a.k.a Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull), who showed that the New Zealand government does not think gender critical people have the right to freedom of assembly - or even the right to freedom from violence, because Parker’s event was attended and disrupted by a lynch mob of a thousand trans activists who physically assaulted her and advertised they would do so for an entire week, and weren’t prevented from doing so.

I despair to think about what would happen if a single-sex lesbian event was attempted in that country. Would there be gay bashings live on New Zealand television, celebrated in their press? It’s like Australasia has decided to return to the seventies again, and in a bad way. It’s not just the Southern Hemisphere. France saw one of its few remaining lesbian bars close down after a vandalism and death threats from the bepenised who thought it was discrimination to not include them. In England, a lesbian speed dating event was accused of being ‘transphobic’ for refusing biologically male people entry, and said biologically male people immediately went after their venue for daring to host a single-sex event.

All of this is a portent of a very dark future. Gay and lesbian people were supposed to be protected by anti-discrimination laws in the west. We were supposed to enjoying our civil rights on an equal level to straight people for the first time, after fighting for basic human rights in our respective nations. Instead, the Australian example shows that increasingly we are being told that we don’t have equal civil rights if straight people want to invade our spaces. That the human rights legislation protects them, not us. No longer are homosexuals are a protected class, worthy of anti-discrimination legislation. Here in the United States, red states will prevent this insanity happening in their jurisdictions, but this is going to come to the blue states. Then we’ll have the hilarious irony of Republicans allowing gay and lesbian people to have freedom of association, and not Democrats. My, how the tables turn.

In situations like these, inclusion becomes exclusion. Same-sex spaces for homosexuals have very practical reasons for existing (we wish to find romantic/sexual partners, organize among ourselves and advocate for our rights), and being forced to include the opposite sex in them means they’re no longer homosexual spaces any more. Homosexuals, especially lesbians, are the only minority group who are being told they cannot have homosexual-only clubs, events, spaces, apps, even brain cells, lest we be hateful, offensive, harmful and discriminatory. . How soon will we have police raids on illegal same-sex gatherings of homosexuals for being ‘discriminatory’ or ‘hateful’? How soon will we return to coded languages and vetting the membership of secret clubs to avoid being sued into oblivion under anti-discrimination legislation that was meant to protect us?

Jessica Hoyle, the lesbian in Tasmania who wanted to host female-only events, had to give up pursuing her case in Australian federal court because of a lack of funds. This is a well-funded movement content to sue us into oblivion, drain of us our funds, and call us bigots when we stand up for ourselves. Because we’re homosexual and we want something to ourselves without straight people watching everything we do.

Welcome to the new homophobia, it’s the same as the old, we just have gay marriage on the books now.

1. (That’s his real name. What is it with the fucking porn star names? Every single fucking time!)