A community expected to behave like a single voice
I am writing this from the 2025 National Settlement Conference, where LGBTQIA+ voices, especially trans voices, are being taken seriously in conversations that would not have occurred a decade ago. It is striking to watch the multicultural sector manage complexity with a steadiness our own queer institutions often struggle to match. The contrast is clear. Outside our bubble, difference is a reality to be worked with. Inside it, we continue to treat difference as a disruption.
The demand for unity hides the real issue
Whenever tensions rise, someone eventually asks why the LGBTQIA+ community cannot simply be united. The question is comforting but misleading. It imagines a tidy, coherent community that has never existed. We are a coalition shaped by class, race, disability, gender, migration and trauma. Coalition politics is difficult by nature. It is not meant to be smooth. It is meant to be supported by structures capable of carrying conflict.
The problem is not that we disagree. The problem is the culture we have built around disagreement.
Old wounds do not disappear inside queer institutions
People come into LGBTQIA+ spaces carrying histories that were never resolved. Racism, policing, disability exclusion, religious pressure, medical neglect, migration trauma, family rupture. These experiences do not stay outside the room. They sit under the surface of every conversation. So when a governance decision is made or a strategic call is imperfect, the reaction is rarely about the decision alone. Something older is activated. A simple difference in judgement feels like exclusion. A miscommunication feels like erasure. A shift in direction feels like a threat.
This is how hurt people end up hurting people. Not through malice but through institutions that are not built to absorb the emotional weight placed upon them.
When conflict becomes theatre, nobody is protected
Once unresolved history collides with weak structure, conflict becomes theatrical. Anger becomes performance. The substance disappears under the spectacle, and it doesn’t persuade anyone. The people most harmed are those with the least protection. Volunteers leave quietly. Trans and disabled community members withdraw for safety. Migrants cannot risk the fallout. Staff carry emotional burdens that should never have been theirs. The theatre feels like action, but nothing changes.
The structural reality we refuse to name
It is convenient to describe these cycles as ideological or generational divides. The reality is simpler. Many queer institutions, including Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, were built for a community that no longer exists. They were designed for a smaller, narrower demographic. Their governance frameworks have not been rebuilt to reflect who we are now. A structure built for a different era cannot contain the demands of the present.
When the framework is too weak, every disagreement feels destabilising. Every criticism feels existential. Complexity does not scare me. It scares institutions that were never built to hold us. Naming that truth matters, because it allows us to ask the real question: what should our institutions become?
Mardi Gras sits at a crossroads
Mardi Gras holds an influence no other queer organisation in Australia holds. It shapes public narratives. It carries history and expectation. But it is still operating inside a structure that does not reflect the size, diversity and complexity of the community it represents. This moment demands a decision. Mardi Gras can continue amplifying trauma until it becomes defined by it. Or it can evolve into the institution the community actually needs.
An amplifier of intelligence, not trauma
This shift is not symbolic. It is structural. Mardi Gras can design governance that treats disagreement as information rather than danger. It can create conditions where people speak openly without being punished. It can support participation without exposing people to harm. It can respond to complexity with capability rather than fear. It can lead with clarity instead of spectacle. This is what it looks like to amplify intelligence.
Unity is structural, not sentimental
The LGBTQIA+ community is not broken. It is expanding. What is broken is the belief that unity must be emotional rather than procedural. Real unity is not the absence of conflict. Real unity is the ability to move forward while telling the truth about who we are.
Everything I have written here is the work I am trying to progress inside Mardi Gras. I am standing for the board because I believe the organisation can evolve into a structure capable of holding the community as it truly is. I want a Mardi Gras that does not retreat from complexity, that refuses to amplify trauma, and that treats diversity as a responsibility rather than a slogan. If that vision resonates, I hope you will stand with me. An inclusive Mardi Gras. Many voices. One parade.
Because we are not equal until we are all equal.
