Australian law is now set in stone

Ok well that’s insane.

The High Court has refused Giggle for Girls app founder Sall Grover special leave to appeal the case brought against her by transwoman Roxanne Tickle, meaning that without new legislation, Australian law is now set in stone: men can become women, and sex is not purely biological.

Except, the law can’t do that. It can force people to say it, but it can’t make it true.

It’s an odd kind of law then. You have to say things that are not true if you discuss this subject, but they remain untrue even though we require you to say them. Sorry, but that’s the law!

Ms Grover had been seeking to overturn a finding by the Federal Court that she directly discriminated against Ms Tickle on the basis of her “gender identity” when she barred the transwoman from the female-only networking Giggle app. However the High Court announced on Thursday that it was refusing special leave to appeal, with costs awarded against Ms Grover.

The court had been expected to accept the case, which raised fundamental questions about the legal rights of women and transgender people. In a two-sentence explanation of its decision, the High Court said: “There is no reason to doubt the Full Court’s construction of s. 7D (1) and (2) of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth). Any appeal dependent on the demonstration of error in the Full Court’s construction of those provisions has insufficient prospects of success to warrant a grant of special leave to appeal.”

So lies win and truth loses.

Ms Grover told The Australian she was “absolutely devastated” by the decision.

“We now have confirmation that the High Court is captured by an ideology, as is the Federal Court, and so we need politicians to fix this. We have a government that won’t, but we have rising opposition to this kind of ideology being imposed upon people.

“Everybody is now at the mercy of Australian Human Rights Commission Complaints if you don’t go along with this – no one is safe because if you are deemed to have discriminated against a man who claims to be a woman, you have no legal recourse.”

It doesn’t make one want to up sticks and move to Australia, does it.