Flat-Earthers Come Round to the Ordinary Family Lives of Sexual Outsiders.
DCI-Australia Secretary Mr. Danny Sandor presented this paper to the March 2002 Family Law Section Conference of the Law Council of Australia. It surveys domestic legislation and law reform
proposals concerning relationship recognition with a focus on lesbians, gay men and transgender, transexual and intersex persons. The paper also considers the issue of access to
assisted reproductive services such as donor insemination and IVF where arguments based on unfitness to parent, bad outcomes for children and the rhetoric of children's rights are mustered in the
attempt to exclude sexual outsiders. Single would-be mothers are also targeted and the Commonwealth Government's Sex Discrimination Amendment Bill is examined as a case in point. The
purported rationale for the Bill is shown to be based on false assumptions and supported by neither empirical evidence nor legal principle. The paper finishes with some suggestions as to
how Australia should harmonise its diverse range of relationship and "child" definitions and legally advance with an accurate, properly informed understanding of children's rights.
