By: Sall Grover
Published: Apr 16, 2026
The Australian Human Rights Commission finally has received a long-overdue reality check: it cannot automatically default to gender identity at the expense of actual women and lesbians.
This should not feel like breaking news in 2026, yet here we are.
For years the AHRC has treated sex as a suggestion and gender ideology as gospel.
A course correction towards biological reality is not just welcome, it is necessary if the commission is to serve all Australians rather than a vocal subset wedded to a fading ideology.
On Wednesday, the Federal Court finally delivered some long-overdue common sense.
In the Lesbian Action Group appeal, Justice Mark Moshinsky allowed the appeal and set aside the AHRC’s repeated refusals to grant a five-year exemption under the Sex Discrimination Act. It now must go back to the Administrative Review Tribunal.
The LAG simply wanted to hold public events only for lesbians born female. The AHRC said no, twice, once in 2023 and again in 2025 when the tribunal backed it up. The reasoning? That letting lesbians meet without men who identified as women would discriminate against those men on the grounds of gender identity.
Thankfully, the court has now made it clear: gender identity doesn’t automatically override the rights of same-sex attracted women. When interpreting the law, sex actually matters and should be part of the argument.
Let’s state the obvious: a man who identifies as a woman and calls himself a lesbian is, quite simply, a heterosexual man. Once that basic biological fact is accepted, everything snaps into focus. Heterosexual men have zero place at a lesbian event. Excluding them is not discrimination, it is basic pattern recognition and the defence of same-sex attraction. No man is a lesbian. Full stop. Any man who insists on forcing his way into lesbian spaces is waving a massive red flag.
The AHRC’s ideological approach has been consistent and troubling. We saw it clearly in Giggle v Tickle, where the commission backed the idea that a man could simply declare himself a woman and demand access to a woman-only app.
That first-instance decision is now under appeal to the Full Federal Court. As the founder of Giggle, I have lived this fight for years, watching the AHRC and courts twist the plain meaning of “woman” and “sex” in ways that erode biological reality, women’s rights and the integrity of same-sex attraction.
Women and lesbians should never have to beg the government for exemptions just to associate on the basis of their sex and sexual orientation.
Until the AHRC began reinterpreting the Sex Discrimination Act through the lens of gender ideology, single-sex spaces and lesbian-only events were normal and uncontroversial. Instead of protecting those rights, the commission has too often acted as one of the biggest obstacles in the way.
The tide is turning globally. In April 2025 the UK Supreme Court ruled that “sex” in equality law means biological sex – clear, binary and impossible to change. In the US, courts have repeatedly defended sex-based rights in sport, prisons and bathrooms. Australia should not be left behind.
Of course, the Sex Discrimination Act was never intended to erase sex and replace it with subjective feelings.
When “gender identity” was added in 2013, parliament did not legislate that males could become females or that lesbians must accept the opposite sex into their spaces. Women make up half the population. We are not a disposable subgroup whose boundaries can be steamrolled to validate someone else’s identity.
The AHRC’s job is to protect human rights for all Australians, not to function as the enforcement arm of one contested ideology. Lesbians are women attracted to other women, full stop. Their orientation is rooted in biology, not the latest trends in self-declared gender. Forcing them to include heterosexual men does not promote equality, it destroys the meaning of same-sex attraction.
Humans cannot change sex. Same-sex attraction is real and biologically based. Women and lesbians deserve the same freedom of association long afforded to other groups, without having to litigate endlessly for basic boundaries.
Wednesday’s decision is a step in the right direction. The AHRC now has an opportunity – and a duty – to remember it exists for all Australians, including those who never accepted the claim that men can be women or lesbians. Australian women and lesbians have waited long enough.
No man is a lesbian. It really is that simple.
[ Via: https://archive.today/yZj5j ]
