New Zealand's Forstater case?

[TheKhakiQuail]

Not sure if others have seen this already - NZ is having a court case to test whether GC beliefs are protected as political beliefs!

"In March 2021 LAVA (Lesbian Action for Visibility in Aotearoa) booked a stall at the annual Out in the City (OITC) fair in Wellington, to display a map of Wellington sites of historical, political, and social significance to lesbians.
Initially the booking was accepted, but four days before the event the organisers, Wellington Pride, emailed to say that because of the “nature” of LAVA, the booking did not fit with OITC kaupapa (principles), and there would not be a space for LAVA.
Pride claimed that LAVA was “trans-exclusionary”. The Pride Board Chair stated in an email that OITC participants should be standing side by side with “the most marginalised of the marginalised including our transgender whanau [family] and the marginalisation they face on the daily” (sic)."

"LAVA members, Hilary Oxley and Margaret Curnow, have brought a claim in the New Zealand Human Rights Review Tribunal, claiming that in inviting applications for stalls, Pride was offering a service, and that they unlawfully discriminated against LAVA on the basis of LAVA’s political opinions about trans issues and women’s rights, and because of LAVA’s views that sex and sexual orientation exclude trans women from being women, and lesbians. Pride denies that LAVA’s opinions are “political opinions”, and claims that LAVA’s support for known “anti-trans activists” such as J K Rowling and Julie Bindel is evidence of “transphobia”. Pride suggests that LAVA’s presence with our map would have made the OITC event “unsafe” for trans people, and that the map was based on an idea developed by LGB Alliance Australia, “a known anti-trans group”.
LAVA is represented by senior legal counsel Nicolette Levy KC. Ms. Levy, instructed by Franks Ogilvie lawyers of Wellington, acted for Speak Up for Women (SUFW) in 2021, securing a judgment requiring Palmerston North City Council to allow SUFW to hold a meeting to discuss the proposed self-ID amendments to the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act.
Political philosopher Ramon Das of Victoria University of Wellington, has provided an expert opinion that LAVA’s views on trans issues are political opinions.
This case is important for everyone with gender critical or sex realist beliefs, because it has not been confirmed by a New Zealand Court that such opinions are a political belief protected under the Human Rights Act 1993. The debate over whether gender critical views such as LAVA's are "worthy of respect in a democratic society" has not been had yet in New Zealand.

Read more about the case and LAVA’s origins

They have a crowdfunder on their website - hard to raise funds in a country of 5 million

I personally would love to read more from international posters. This dangerous, anti-reality ideology has spread around many parts of the globe, after all.

Yes please to more news.
They might also benefit from updating their fundraising progress and setting intermediate goals - those who donate like to know what is happening and are happy to help promote gardening efforts

I'm sure they won't, there are a lot of very knowledgeable women, and battled scared veterans who post on here. I'm sure they'll be happy to share the benefit of their experience, you never know what might help you in your country. Good luck with the up coming case. 🤞😁🦖

Thanks for the post and info. I will donate as soon as I have the funds available.

Donated. Good luck LAVA

Donated. Good luck LAVA 💪🏻

Donated.

really great if NZ women are able to use Mumsnet as a safe space online @TheKhakiQuail ... we Brits are keen to know what is happening overseas, and help where we can... To me, nothing is more important than this issue.

Thank you everyone. I’ve asked LAVA why they don’t use one of the more well known crowd funding platforms - awaiting response. They are keen to engage more with Mumsnet and I am hoping to encourage more engagement here for NZ women who are still learning about the importance of the GC movement. Most women in NZ have been led to believe that GC ideas are right wing and bigoted so they are afraid to engage, even though many have already had to confront trans ideology in their lives, especially in education and with teenagers. Women here do smell that something is off with TI and self ID but they have been too keen to virtue signal or else just too busy and tired to really want to engage. That will eventually change but we have a long road ahead.

I’d be interested to hear how/whether the Supreme Court ruling in the UK has been reported/received?

I would definitely think this is a good forum for NZ women to use. I'm working in a captured sector and really enjoy being able to talk it all through with people is useful.

I also am less likely to look at random cases on various different sites all over the internet. But, here, I will see updates and then I'm reminded that I could donate again and again - as PP said, fundraise in stages and give updates and, as a donor, I'll keep going. Nothing I give is life-changing but I am happy to make fairly frequent small payments to help out where I can.

I care about women all over the world. NZ was inspiring as the first country to give women the vote (I expect you probably helped us to secure that right); it'd be good to get women's rights reinstated* there and even more amazing if I can help in some small way.

*You can't really have them at present if nobody 'knows' what a woman is.

Donated.

Donated — good luck LAVA!

I'll look into gardening next month. Would have been better to have a proper site but needs must I guess.

@Wetoldyousaurus@TheKhakiQuail

As you can see, the more posts you place on here the more donations LAVA get. We are on your side but LAVA could do so much better in terms of funding if they engaged here.

Sending love and a few more NZD..

It's great to see the support for LAVA - I hadn't heard of them until recently but these cases seem to be what makes the biggest difference to securing women's rights. I think if women in NZ and Aus have even heard of Mumsnet there is a perception that it is just a UK thing (and only for Mums). Our local parenting sites weren't really used for politics/organising last time I was on them, at most the odd debate. I hope LAVA pops on to update us.

I'll be back from sea at the end of the month and will be able to contribute then. Can you lot keep bumping the thread, so I can find it?

Thanks!

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Thanks for posting. I’m a Brit in NZ so have known (and used and lurked on) MN for years. However I hadn’t heard about this case so thanks for sharing.

I live in Nz - this is great. Have donated.
Thankyou.

Hi everyone, I am one of the plaintiffs in the NZ LAVA case which is taking Wellington Pride to the Human Rights Review Tribunal for banning our lesbian group from the Pride Fair. One of our NZ supporters told me about Mumsnet and the support here for our case. Many of you have suggested that this would be a great forum for us to spread the word and to raise money, and wondered why we didn't have a presence. To the woman who suggested it might be because we thought Mumsnet was essentially a UK group focused on parenting you are absolutely right! I had no idea how broad your interests are and am delighted to now know about you.
Another question has been "Why aren't we using a crowd funding platform to fundraise?" Well the answer is simple - we would love to but Givealittle which is NZ's main crowd fundraising platform, reserves the right to terminate any groups whose behaviour they consider to be unacceptable or whose activity they consider to be "detrimental to, or may cause harm to, any person." Given that one of the allegations Pride made when they cancelled our booking at the Fair, was that our very presence would cause harm to trans people and make them unsafe, we were not prepared to take the risk of having our Fundraiser terminated and of losing money our supporters are generously donating. We decided to use 'Stripe' for people to donate as there was uncertainty with PayPal at the time. Many people wanted to be able to avoid the 3% fee Stripe charge us, and have LAVA receive all the money they donate, so we are now also publicising our bank account number for direct donations.
We are working on having a visual showing our target and how much we have raised to date, but as it has to be manually created and updated, we haven't quite managed to do it yet! If you want to know more about us you can visit our website: www.lava.nz We publish an Update for our supporters at the beginning of every month which I will post here starting in June. You can also see the old Updates on our website.
Please feel free to ask me any questions you may have - and once again thank you all so much for you support - it means a great deal to us.

Bumping. Good luck @LAVAMarg

@LAVAMargThanks for coming on here and giving us the explanations. Much appreciated. Good luck with the funding and the case.

Donated - solidarity and much love

Donated. I am sorry you have to do this but I am glad you are.