LEFT RIGHT CENTRE

LRC 90.9

1. The Australian Human Rights Commission has criticised Australia for its failure to regulate “normalising” intervention surgeries on Intersex children. As the ACT moves closer to ending these procedures, how does your party believe Australian legislature should proceed, and why? 2. The Manly Warringah Sea Eagles recently donned a historic pride jersey for their NRL game, which sparked a boycott from other players on the team. Queer children in particular experience high rates of violence in community sport. 3. Out of 56 Commonwealth member states, 35 still outlaw homosexuality and variously imprison or execute LGBT people. What are Australia’s responsibilities, if any, in protecting the rights of queer people beyond our borders?

Socialist Alternative | RAMON O’DONNELL & NIX HERRIOT

1. Intersex children are often subjected to non-consensual surgeries so their bodies conform to dominant ideas about what constitutes ‘male’ or ‘female’. In a society of strictly enforced gender and sex norms, so important is the act of assigning sex at birth that surgeons can brutally intervene to ensure that ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ can appear on a birth certificate. Assigning a fixed sex can amount to mutilation of healthy newborns, medically-sanctioned child abuse and a violation of bodily autonomy and rights. Bigots hypocritically concoct moral panics around gender reassignment while urging surgery on intersex children. Socialists reject non-consentual surgery on children and oppose discrimination against intersex people more broadly. Intersexuality should be accepted and embraced as the normal, physical reality it is. Australian legislation should enshrine the rights of any intersex person - not their parents, doctors, or anyone else - to make choices about their own body.

2. Boycotting the pride jersey is nothing but bigotry, plain and simple. There hasn’t been a singly openly gay rugby league player since Ian Roberts came out in 1995 and the Sea Eagles would have it stay that way. Players who oppose the pride rainbow are more than happy to play in jerseys and stadiums emblazoned with alcohol and gambling advertisements that actively harm society. The pride jersey itself, though, is a corporatised gesture that exposes the limits of top-down progressivism. Like most institutions, Australian sport has a problem with bigotry – the backlash towards trans athletes is just the latest example. Pinkwashing won’t stop this wider wave of queerphobia spearheaded by the Labor and Liberal parties. The public backlash to Manly’s decision is positive and demonstrates that bigots remain a minority in society and even within the NRL. 3. The Australian government couldn’t care less about queer rights. This is the same government that earlier this year attempted to pass a Religious Discrimination Bill allowing bigots to discriminate at will. Homophobia in the Commonwealth is a toxic legacy of British colonialism and won’t be solved by further interventions by a foreign state motivated squarely by its own imperialist interests. All of the rights that LGBT people enjoy in Australia and elsewhere have come about because people fought for them, from the international gay liberation movement in the 1960s and 1970s to the Australian equal marriage campaign in 2017. These struggles opened the closet for the oppressed to come out and make their demands. As socialists we support those struggles in other Commonwealth countries as a path to winning queer rights. If the Australian government truly wanted to help people facing discrimination it would open its borders and guarantee citizenship to refugees fleeing persecution, including those Labor currently imprisons in detention centres.

1. The Greens take a very common-sense approach to LGBTQIA+ rights with the belief that all people under the rainbow deserve to live their lives free of discrimination and that their rights should be actively upheld by any government worth its salt. The Greens explicitly state their view is that all people - including intersex and gender diverse people - have a right to their bodily autonomy, something that pre-emptive intervention surgeries rob intersex people of.

Greens Club | CASS CAVANAGH, CAMERCON COOK & LAZARAS PANAYIOTOU

2. We agree that the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles donning their pride jersey was a historic moment, and we see it as a positive step forward within a league that has had seemingly non-stop issues with homophobia. That several players ended up boycotting the game because of this historic win serves as an unfortunate reminder of how far we still need to go for LGBTIQA+ rights in sport, and particularly in the NRL where the need for queer rounds and jerseys is so evidently apparent.

South Australia is not immune. Around this time last year, we saw Josh Cavallo of Adelaide United come out as the first openly gay professional male footballer currently playing worldwide. Ever since, he has received a consistent barrage of homophobic attacks over social media and even from rival fans in the stands.

Pride jerseys and pride rounds are not just a novelty in sport. They are necessary to combat an incessantly unhealthy sub-culture that has so far gone for the most part unchecked in our ongoing and long fight for equality and LGBTIQA+ rights. We must do all that we can to make players and fans alike safe within their own communities and when among peers.

3. Australia does not exist in a vacuum, nor can we morally hide behind the social construct of our artificial borders, especially as a rich, exploitative country. The Commonwealth of Nations, an imperialist creation, is yet another social construct that creates barriers between humanity, and it should not be where we primarily mobilise on fighting for universal human rights, as human rights are rights inherent to all human beings. Nevertheless, if ever politically popular at any time, which would no doubt be highly unlikely when it comes to the Commonwealth considering the declining support for monarchies, our priority should always be to advocate for a higher universal standard of living. The Greens movement organises globally through an international network called the Global Greens. This network is governed by a charter that outlines our principles of ecological wisdom, social justice, participatory democracy, nonviolence, sustainability, and respect for diversity before outlining ten indivisible areas of political action. Within our human rights political action commitments, our global movement agrees to call for LGBTIQA+ decriminalisation, legal recognition, protection of the right to bodily autonomy, and equal rights as well as both the implementation of the Yogyakarta principles and LGBTIQA+ mainstreaming at every level of government. Labor Club | ELLIE VENNING

1. In 2021, the Human Rights Commission issued the following proposals to protect Intersex peoples’ rights to bodily and mental integrity:

- End unnecessary deferrable medical procedures without personal consent - Establish a human-rights based independent body of Intersex people to oversee decision-making - Fund and provide access to information and peer support

All Australian jurisdictions should engage these reforms. They should go hand-in-hand with moves to make trans gender-affirming healthcare more accessible, emphasising the role of consent in healthcare. Doctors often pressure parents into choosing normalising surgery when their intersex children are too young to consent. They know that intersex people face discrimination, are more likely to leave school early, and experience high rates of poverty. But rather than address society’s dogmatic gender binarism, they impose harmful surgeries as a panacea for anti-intersex hate. The ACT’s proposed law allows individuals and families to develop their own treatment plans with assistance from medical, ethical, and Intersex experts–a welcome reform.

2. Just 32% of LGBTQ+ youth participate in community sport and 18% of these players have heard their coach say negative things about the LGBTQ+ community. This is something society urgently needs to change and something Labor should address as part of being “much more consultative” than the previous Liberal government. I believe that while the jersey was intended to show the club’s support for LGBTQ+ people, as players were not consulted on the jersey, it came as a surprise for them. The fact that seven players boycotted the game got a lot of media attention. But the media did not focus much on the dozens of fans that descended on the game with LGBTQ+ flags and signs, and that the community effectively voted with their wallets; with the pride jersey and other LGBTQ+ merchandise being sold out on the night within just half an hour. Personally, I find it ridiculous that so much outrage was sparked by some rainbow stripes – never mind the predominant gambling company ‘POINTSBET’ advertisement logo on the jersey…

3. The maximum penalty for homosexuality in seven countries is life imprisonment, and in two countries, it’s death. Internationally, 40% of countries still outlaw homosexuality, but 54% of them are Commonwealth countries. Through our bilateral and multilateral relationships, Australia is committed to advancing human rights, working with other countries to advance their human rights protections through humanitarian support and sanction countries accused of violating LGBTQ+ people’s human rights. I firmly believe that Penny Wong will use her position to advocate for LGBTQ+ protections internationally, and this is something we commend her for championing. Domestically, the Albanese Labor Government is committed to providing funding for LGBTQ+ community organisations to directly employ specialist domestic violence workers, to count LGBTQ+ people in the next national census and to amend anti-discrimination laws so that students and teachers cannot be discriminated against for their sexuality – because everyone deserves to feel safe at work and to be accepted at school. These steps are a massive improvement from the Morrison Liberal Government where military personnel were banned from wearing rainbow clothing.

1. The Australian legislature should enforce the right of children to NOT be subjected to normalising surgeries until the child is of the age that they can make a decision. I believe in self liberty, young children do not have the ability to make decision around what happens to their bodies.

2. I support pride rounds and pride Jerseys, I think that anyone who doesn’t support this is just immature.

3. Australia and western countries must enforce human rights, I believe that Australia needs to enforce rights for queer people abroad, and if needed create diplomatic sanctions for countries who do not enforce these rights.

Liberal Club | JAYDEN SQUIRE