Roz Ward: Coordinator, Safe Schools Coalition Victoria; Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University; Member of Socialist Alternative, Melbourne; Contributor and Participant, Marxism Conference 2015.

“LBGTI oppression and hetronormativity are woven into the fabric of capitalism […] This push to fit people into these physical and social gender constructs that promote heterosexuality is still incredibly strong and reinforced through the judicial system, through the medical, you know, all of medicine, the media and all social institutions […] Only Marxism provides both the theory and the practice of genuine human liberation […] The left historically and practically has been the key driver for the struggles for LGBTI rights […] Marxism offers the hope and the strategy needed to create a world where human sexuality, gender and how we relate to our bodies can blossom in extraordinarily new and amazing ways that we can only try to imagine today […] Alongside sexism, homophobia and transphobia both serve to break the spirits of ordinary people, to consume our thoughts, to make us accept the status quo and for us to keep living or aspiring to live, or feel like we should live, in small social units and families, where we must reproduce and take responsibility for those people in those units.’’

▪ Roz Ward, “The Role of the Left in the Struggle for LGBTI Rights” Address to the 2015 Marxism Conference (24-27 March 2015).

SydneyTrads is the web page of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum: an association of young professionals who form part of the Australian independent right (also known as “non-aligned right”).