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James Dreyfus's avatar

Excellent article. Quite frightening to think we came that close to Australia…

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C M Houston's avatar

When the Chinese take over Australia, they'll put an end to the nonsense.

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Gilgamech's avatar

There’s a more amusing variant of the legend that suggests Victoria exempted lesbians from criminalisation because she knew they DID exist.

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Dennis Noel Kavanagh's avatar

Ha! I like that one better :)

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Dusty Masterson's avatar

Thanks, Dennis. Lovely tribute to the lesbian interveners and great explanation of the significance for gays and lesbians.

I understand that gays and lesbians are not attracted to certificates 😂

Will cross post in due course.

Dusty

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Dusty Masterson's avatar

Thanks again, Dennis.

Have now cross posted.

https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/arise-go-forth-and-conquer-in-praise

This includes suggestions as to how the judgment might be enforced and any comments you might have on that would be gratefully received.

Dusty

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Rawan Al's avatar

As a lesbian, I can say that our rights were at stake, and we could have ended up with a judgment that would erase our identity and dignity.

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Victor Yanez's avatar

My husband and I are so happy that the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that men are men and women are women no matter how loud the trans Taliban screams otherwise. “Transwomen are women!!!” They/Them shriek. Ummm…NO! Now it’s our Supreme Court’s turn over here across the pond to put an end to this 112 gender bullshit and declare that BIOLOGICAL SEX is non negotiable - men are men and women are women. Period. End of discussion. It could a be 6-3 decision with our three liberals validating the trans delusions, OR, 8-1 as you’ll recall Justice Jackson couldn’t define what a woman was during her confirmation hearings a few years ago. She may still not be able to. All that said, why in the goddamn hell are we even having this discussion?? One answer: the trans Taliban/Nazis/Davidians. They pushed too hard EXPECTING EVERYONE to indulge in their absurd fantasies.

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Till Randolf Amelung's avatar

Hi Dennis Noel Kavanagh, I am a member of the board of the German organisation named Initiative Queer Nations e.V. an in behalf of my fellow board member Jan Feddersen I want to ask, if you would give us the permission to publish a German translation of your piece in our blog? It would help to bring a different view in the German public discourse. The media coverage of the judgment is a bit one-sided and focuses only the TRA perspective.

Here is the link to our organisations blog: https://queernations.de/de/blog/

For your answer, I thank you in advance.

All best,

Till

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Dennis Noel Kavanagh's avatar

Dear Till that's fine with me, please go ahead.

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Till Randolf Amelung's avatar

Thank You! Here is the link: https://queernations.de/grossbritannien-lesbischen-streithelferinnen/

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Susan Scheid's avatar

Magnificent essay, and so well-earned by the lesbian intervenors. I am a lesbian in the US, a contributor to the LGB Alliance UK, and have been enormously heartened by the work everyone involved has done to bring about this thrilling victory. The LGB Alliance gave us hope in our darkest hours, as when Biden feted Richard/Rachel Levine on the so-called “Lesbian Day of Visibility”: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/readout-white-house-roundtable-with-lesbian-leaders-celebrate-lesbian-day-visibility

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Kat Karena's avatar

Loved this Dennis. Excellent.

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barri's avatar

Love the sexuality flowchart. That would make a brilliant comedy sketch. There's comedy gold in they them there hills.

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Dennis Noel Kavanagh's avatar

I should say that comes as courtesy of Sex Matters - will add a note

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William A. Ferguson's avatar

God bless every last one of them! 🍻

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MJ Reid's avatar

Brilliant piece as always. It saddens me that my gay and lesbian friends who have fought long and hard to have their place recognised in society are still having to fight in this way. Fingers, toes and limbs crossed, hoping that commonsense prevails. The sense of relief was felt across Scotland,but it should never have had to come to this. Every government needs to remember it is there to serve the people, not the few who shout loudest, as shouting is never the answer as those of us who were told multiple times as children - investigate, form your argument, put it firmly and assertively, because the minute you shout, you deserve to be show the door. Whoever hears you might still disagree with you, but you will know that you made your point to the best of your ability. Time to go back to that premise.

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John P Reid's avatar

Good read

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Digital Canary 💪💪🇨🇦🇺🇦🗽's avatar

FYI, Noel, you’ve a “from” instead of “form”: “one from of the SSO PC”.

Beautiful job hammering home the significance of the judgement for the PC of same-sex attraction.

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Dennis Noel Kavanagh's avatar

Many thanks for picking that up!

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Sufeitzy's avatar

Excellent piece. Anyone who claims to be intelligent should absorb it. Lesbians were also a key fulcrum which leveraged same-sex marriage in the US into law.

There’s a powerful corollary for this misunderstanding of homosexuality in censorship of gay art, which is hard for people to grasp.

There are innumerable works of art with men who are friends, holding hands and so forth, affectionate. These works are not gay art. While Warhol and David Hockney are gay we don’t call what they make gay art.

Tom of Finland produced Gay art. It depicts same-sex sex, men with erections together, which is categorically gay. There are many major artists who produced Gay art but it has carefully censored out of their corpus for the simple reason that it depicted erections and was therefore not art, but pornography.

Lesbian art I’ve not studied, other than illustration, but it has not suffered the same censorship because as you noted many people couldn’t understand that two women in a picture, nude, intertwined, were not talking about the weather. When a man has an erection in an image with another male present, it’s suppressed. It’s pornography.

And it’s gay art. Were in 2025 and it’s still blocked in many context.

Thanks again for a great piece of writing.

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Tami's avatar

Let's not forget that the descent into the trans-gender mire can be traced back to the time when lesbians were able to self identify as "husbands", and male homosexuals were able to self identify as "wives".

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E. White's avatar

Are you seriously blaming us and making this ridiculous and offensive comparison? Here, at the end of this article? Today, while men everywhere are calling themselves lesbians and have taken over our dating apps? When gays and lesbians can't even have a Reddit space for ourselves without it being shut down for "hate"? Unbelievable.

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u.n. owen's avatar

Men were playing women in Shakespeare's day & 🎄 panto role-playing is generations-old tradition, Ian McKellan aka Serena McKellan to his friends has participated.

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u.n. owen's avatar

💩 We queers have played with gender & semantics for generations, just as individuals lived as opposite sex. Trans has been corrupted by becoming for-profit industry, mutilating, sterilizing elective surgeries & lifetime chemical regimes were not necessary to live as out queer, now @ risk youth are dying from their "gender-affirming care". Heretic Andrew Gold has several excellent interviews with detransitioners & trans survivors.

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