Australian Marriage Equality: The marriage equality fight isn’t over yet

Australians may have voiced their support for marriage equality during last year’s postal survey on the issue, and politicians may have changed the laws on a federal level, but for many transgender Australians who were already married barriers still remain.

Australian Marriage Equality has just launched a new campaign encouraging state governments to change laws which force people who are transgender to get a divorce before they can apply for gender recognition.

In a new video Anna Brown from the Human Rights Law Centre, and members of the transgender community highlight that some state governments, including Western Australia, still require people to be unmarried to apply to gender recognition processes.

In Western Australia people wishing to have their gender changed officially must apply to the state’s Gender Recognition Board. At the Labor party’s state conference in 2017 the party voted to abolish the board completely.

Western Australia’s Attorney General has referred the issue of the marriage laws and the entire process of gender recognition to state’s Law Reform Commission. John Quigley referred the matter to the commission back in January.

At the time Dr David Cox, the head of the Law Reform Commission, said a discussion paper on the issue would be released in due course, but eight months later nothing has appeared on the commission’s website.

A spokesperson for the commission has previously told OUTinPerth that people do not need to wait for the discussion paper to put submissions in to the commission’s review.

OIP Staff