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Wednesday, 22 February 2012

SUBMISSION ON THE MARRIAGE EQUALITY AMENDMENT BILL 2010

SUBMISSION ON THE MARRIAGE EQUALITY AMENDMENT BILL 2010

Dear Committee Secretary,

I'm already in a legal same-sex marriage. We celebrated our 31st anniversary yesterday.

We married in 1981. In 1985 I was diagnosed at a Fertility Clinic as Intersex - thought to be male. My birth certificate says "boy", and I was legally male when married.

In 2005, after my body changed, I was re-diagnosed more accurately with "severe androgenisation of a non-pregnant woman". I am now legally female.

I have a letter from the former Attorney General, the Hon. Peter Ruddock, confirming that as our marriage was valid when contracted, subsequent changes of circumstances do not affect its validity.

While such natural changes are rare - less than 100 in Australia - they happen. More common are Transsexual transitions, which require medical intervention.

Some of us are married. A few of the stronger marriages survive, despite the enormous societal, social and personal pressures to end them.

Same-sex marriages exist, and have existed for decades. Society has not collapsed. Children of those marriages continue to grow up, indistinguishable from other children their age.

Marriage equality will be made available to all, sooner or later. So please, in the name of sheer human decency and common humanity, let it be sooner.


To make your own submission - for or against - please fill in the http://www.australianmarriageequality.com/senate-inquiry-submission-form/.
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3 comments:

  1. Nikola KovacsWednesday, February 22, 2012 9:35:00 pm

    That's a good letter Zoe, well done for your support for marriage equality.

    Surprisingly a while back a prominent Sydney Trans person asked me why I bothered to take part in a marriage equality protest march when I am already legally able to marry.

    It seems that some people among our communities don't see any value in supporting a wider campaign for human rights.

    ... and btw ... I'm sure it'll upset some in opposition, but make others chuckle that you've renamed the former, very forgettable Attorney General Phillip Ruddock.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownThursday, February 23, 2012 12:45:00 am

    Yay!

    You go Girl! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Zoe BrainThursday, February 23, 2012 1:19:00 am

    Oops - well, it began with P.

    If I don't ask for equal rights for others, how can I ask them for myself?

    ReplyDelete

Anonymous commenters - please add a signature (doesn't have to be your real name) on each post of yours. Anne O'Namus, Norm D. Ploom, Angry from Kent, Demosthenes, or even your real initials, it doesn't matter.

Commenters are expected to be polite to each other, but the same standard doesn't apply to comments regarding me.

Australian commenters are very very strongly advised to publish anonymously. Sydney alone has more defamation actions than the entire USA and UK. Nearly double that of the UK in fact.

As Google does not reliably inform me that a comment has been posted, and I have no control over first publication, I assert that all comments are innocently disseminated under the NSW DEFAMATION ACT 2005 - SECT 32 and similar acts.