LGBT+ Humanists who have contributed to the world as a demonstration of their humanist values.
The tributes on this page have been researched and written by Geoff Allshorn unless otherwise indicated. Personal recollections are marked [GA].
Bob Brown
(Born 27 December 1944)
Bob Brown is a former Senator, leader of the Australian Greens, environmentalist, publicly avowed atheist, and one of the most courageous political voices for LGBT+ rights in Australian history. Named Australian Humanist of the Year in 2010 by Humanists Australia — in recognition of his outspoken advocacy for a secular, liberal democracy and his commitment to humanist values of fairness, justice and compassion — Brown’s life is a testament to the inseparability of environmental, human and LGBT+ rights.
Born in Oberon, NSW, and educated at Sydney University as a physician, he moved to Tasmania in 1972 and became deeply involved in the environmental movement — leading the campaign to save the Franklin River from flooding, which resulted in his arrest and 19 days in prison in 1983. That same year he was elected to the Tasmanian lower house, where he served for ten years, introducing private member’s bills on an extraordinary range of progressive causes — including gay law reform, freedom of information, dying with dignity, gun control, and a nuclear-free Tasmania — at a time when such positions were deeply unpopular.
Elected to the federal Senate in 1996 as a Greens Senator for Tasmania, Brown became one of the most distinctive and principled voices in Australian political history. He was suspended from Parliament for protesting while President George W. Bush addressed the chamber in 2003. He campaigned strongly for marriage equality in 2004, openly opposing Howard’s amendments to the Marriage Act. He introduced bills to protect forests, block radioactive waste dumping, and extend voluntary euthanasia rights to the Northern Territory.
Throughout all of this, Brown was openly gay — one of the first Australian politicians to be so — and he never separated his personal identity from his political convictions. As Humanists Australia noted in awarding him the 2010 prize, he exemplified “earnest commitment to the Humanist values of fairness, justice, common sense and compassion” and took “an enlightened stance on many controversial issues like voluntary euthanasia, same-sex rights and chaplaincies in schools.”
In the 1990s, at a local speaking engagement on the environment, I joined a queue of people seeking his autograph. When Bob saw that I had brought LGBT+ material rather than an environmental book, he looked momentarily startled — then smiled conspiratorially and signed anyway. It was a small moment, but it said everything about the man: principled, warm, and always ready to stand on the right side. [GA]
Bob Brown retired from the Senate in 2012 but has remained active in environmental causes. He is a living legend: still walking, still speaking, still caring.
Phil Carswell
Phillip James (Phil) Carswell OAM
(20 October 1953 – 17 March 2024)
Phil Carswell (left) with Rainbow Humanists founder Geoff Allshorn in 2019
From a national perspective, no history of HIV/AIDS in Australia would be complete without reference to the man whose remarkable community roles included Founding President of the Victorian AIDS Action Committee (later the Victorian AIDS Council, now known as Thorne Harbour Health); Co-Convenor of the Australian AIDS Action Committee (AAAC – later the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations, or AFAO); and membership of the AIDS Liaison Committee of Victoria. He also served on board the Australian Government’s National Advisory Committee on AIDS (NACAIDS); the Australian National Committee on AIDS (ANCA); and the Intergovernmental Committee on AIDS (IGCA).
And yet this only barely touches upon his wider life of activism. As a teacher and unionist, he was involved in a move to publish ‘Young, Gay and Proud’, possibly the first positive book in the world for young LGBT+ people. As a gay lib activist, he was involved in early LGBT+ conferences/protests in Australia. As a young member of the Communist Party, he learnt organisational skills. As a student, he became involved in activist causes ranging from anti-uranium protests and anti-Vietnam moratoria, to support for women’s liberation and Palestine. (Further details can be found here).
In 2024 Humanists Australia awarded its first Lifetime Achievement Award (LAA) posthumously to Phil. The LAA is awarded to an Australian who over their lifetime has made an outstanding contribution to public life, consistent with Humanist principles and values, and who passed away in the 12 months prior to the close of award nominations in that year.
The 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award was awarded to Phil Carswell OAM, in recognition of his lifetime of activism and achievement, working alongside diverse cohorts of people to promote human rights, equality, natural justice and the empowerment of those who are victims of discrimination, powerlessness and stigma.
Uncle Jack Charles
(5 September 1943 – 13 September 2022)
Uncle Jack Charles was a Bunurong, Dja Dja Wurrung, Woiwurrung, Palawa and Yorta Yorta man — actor, musician, potter, activist, proud gay man, and one of the most beloved Aboriginal elders in Australian history. He never identified as a humanist in any formal sense. His spirituality was rooted in his Aboriginality, not in Western secular philosophy. Yet his life embodied humanist values more completely than most: a fierce commitment to human dignity, justice, and the power of compassion to transform lives, his own included.
His beginnings were brutal. A member of the Stolen Generations, he was forcibly removed from his mother Blanche Charles at just four months old and assigned a criminal record as a ward of the state. As he later reflected: “My first offence was as an Aboriginal boy, four months old, child in need of care and attention. That was the offence.” Raised at the Salvation Army Boys’ Home in Box Hill, he was the only Aboriginal child there, subjected to abuse, and did not meet his mother until he was 19. He was not even told he was Aboriginal. “I had to discover that for myself,” he said. “I knew nothing, was told nothing, and had to assimilate. I was whitewashed by the system.”
Theatre saved him. He entered the acting profession in 1970 and in 1971 co-founded Nindethana — meaning “place of corroboree” — with fellow activist and actor Bob Maza at Melbourne’s Pram Factory, establishing Australia’s first Indigenous theatre company. Their first production was called Jack Charles is Up and Fighting — a title that would define his entire life. He went on to appear in landmark Australian films including The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), and later Cleverman, Mystery Road, and Preppers. His award-winning autobiographical show Jack Charles V The Crown (2010) drew on his own experience of the Stolen Generations and the criminal justice system, demanding rights for Indigenous people and the expungement of past criminal records.
His rejection of organised religion was clear and characteristically poetic. “I’ve employed my Aboriginality as my religion now,” he said. “Instead of God, I’ve found that the Godhead is within me.” This was not atheism as a philosophical position, it was something richer: a reclamation of identity and self-determination from institutions, including religious ones, that had sought to erase him.
As a proud gay man, he was a role model and icon for LGBTQI+ Indigenous youth across Australia. “I have no problems being a gay and old arty bloke,” he said in 2021, “because I’ve been a gay and young arty bloke for many years and everyone’s accepted it.” He was “tickled pink” when marriage equality passed, having thought Australia was “too much of a bastard country to get it through.” One of his most cherished duties in later life was giving the Welcome to Country at Melbourne’s Midsumma LGBT+ festival.
In April 2022, just months before his death, he became the first Indigenous Elder to appear before the Yoorrook Justice Commission — Victoria’s truth-telling inquiry into injustices against First Peoples — a forum he had been instrumental in establishing. In a painful final indignity, he had earlier been asked by the Victorian government’s Stolen Generations Reparations Scheme to prove his Aboriginality. Public outrage led to the request being rescinded.
His memoir Jack Charles: Born-Again Blakfella was published by Penguin in 2020. Among his many honours were Victorian Senior Australian of the Year (2015), the Red Ochre Award (2019), and Male Elder of the Year at the 2022 NAIDOC Awards — awarded just weeks before he died.
Uncle Jack Charles never ticked a box labelled “humanist.” But in his insistence on human dignity over dogma, his refusal to be defined by the worst that was done to him, and his lifelong commitment to justice for the marginalised — Aboriginal people, prisoners, LGBT+ youth — he lived these values more fully than most who do.
Don Dunstan
Donald Allan Dunstan AC QC
(21 September 1926 – 6 February 1999)
Don Dunstan is most famous for decriminalising homosexuality in South Australia in 1975, the first state in Australia to do so — but closer observation reveals he was a civil libertarian and humanist across the board. Born in Fiji and raised in South Australia, he was also bisexual, living his personal and political life in deliberate rejection of religious and social convention.
Dunstan came to humanism through honest reflection, abandoning the Christian faith of his upbringing because he could no longer maintain belief in its theology. More than any other political leader in Australian history, Dunstan championed the rights of homosexual citizens at a time when they were treated as criminals, classified as insane, and regarded as outcasts. He won cabinet backing for homosexual law reform in the mid-1960s, and as Premier was instrumental in enabling Australia’s first homosexual law reform in 1972 following the alleged police murder of university lecturer George Duncan. In 1975 he brought in groundbreaking amendments securing equal rights, including age of consent, for South Australian gay men — equality not achieved elsewhere in Australia until the early 2000s.
During the Dunstan Decade, South Australia was socially transformed. Among his many reforms were those concerned with Aboriginal land rights, equal opportunities, consumer protection, town planning and the environment, and the restructuring of electoral law. Many of his reforms in sex discrimination, Aboriginal land rights, and consumer protection were the first of their kind in Australia. He also worked to transform the conservative “city of churches” into what he called the “Athens of the south”, a vision that left a lasting cultural imprint on Adelaide.
In 1976, when a religious prophet declared that Adelaide would be destroyed by a tsunami in divine punishment for decriminalising homosexuality, Dunstan famously went to Glenelg beach and waved theatrically at the waves as the deadline passed without incident. It was a small but perfect expression of his secular humanism: rational, courageous, and touched with wit.
Read the full tribute, including a personal account by Geoff Allshorn →
Kendall (Ken) Lovett
(6 October 1922 – 21 October 2020)
Kendall (Ken) Lovett was born in Tasmania and lived to the remarkable age of 98, remaining politically active until the very end of his life. I have heard Ken described as being “humanistic” in values, embodying the humanist conviction that every human being deserves dignity, justice, and compassion — and he spent over five decades proving it through action. The Order of Perpetual Indulgence, who blessed the trees at every SPAIDS planting, affectionately called him “Saint Kendall the Constant”, a title that perfectly captured his lifelong dedication.
Ken’s activism began in the mid-1960s when, living and working in London, he joined the Albany Trust, a pioneering counselling and advocacy organisation founded to complement the Homosexual Law Reform Society, whose efforts helped bring about partial law reform in the UK in 1967. Returning to Australia, he threw himself into the emerging LGBT+ liberation movement, participating in the 1972 gay liberation demonstration outside St Clement’s Anglican Church at Mosman in support of Peter Bonsall-Boone, who had been dismissed after coming out on national television.
It was at a Gay Solidarity meeting that Ken first encountered Mannie De Saxe, who would become his partner of 27 years. As Ken later recalled: “I had this memory of Mannie coming through the door with somebody else at a Gay Solidarity meeting. He walked in and I thought, Oh, at last, somebody in my own age group.” Together, Ken and Mannie became one of the most dedicated activist couples in Australian LGBT+ history.
Ken was one of the 78ers (those who participated in the historic first Mardi Gras in Sydney in 1978) and was arrested in the August demonstration at Taylor Square. This may help (in part) to explain his lifelong passion for helping those facing injustice and persecution. His contribution to the LGBT+ movement was both physical and creative: every demonstration from the late 1970s onwards featured his distinctive handmade placards, banners, and slogan vests, rendered in his unmistakable calligraphy.
Ken’s activism extended far beyond LGBT+ rights. He marched against Aboriginal deaths in custody, joined anti-apartheid rallies, supported refugee rights, and campaigned as part of the LGBTI+ Enola Gay group against nuclear weapons. He maintained a long correspondence with Tseko Simon Nkoli, the Black, gay, South African anti-apartheid activist who was diagnosed with HIV while facing treason charges. This breadth of solidarity was not incidental — it was central to who Ken was.
Together with Mannie, Ken co-founded the Sydney Park AIDS Memorial Groves Project (SPAIDS), a living memorial to those lost to HIV/AIDS. The first planting took place on 15 May 1994, and what began as a single community event grew into something extraordinary — by 2008, SPAIDS had held 33 plantings, planted over 8,000 trees, and commemorated over 1,200 people. The grove expanded beyond its original purpose to also honour LGBT+ people who died as a result of violence, and victims of the Nazis. A permanent Reflection Area with a sandstone sculpture was unveiled in 2001, with Mannie named as inaugural convenor of SPAIDS on the plaque. Ken and Mannie were also tireless contributors to the Australian Queer Archives, helping ensure that LGBT+ history would not be lost.
I recall visiting this Sydney Park early in the 2000s, and was struck by its peaceful atmosphere, especially given its memorial nature – also given that I had been told it was built on top of reclaimed unwanted (garbage) land – which encapsulated, for me, Ken’s skill at taking what the world rejected and finding beauty. [GA]
After relocating to Melbourne in 2001, Ken continued his activism into old age, attending queer history conferences with characteristic gentleness and enthusiasm, always eager to connect with others who shared his passion for justice. He was a familiar and beloved presence at community events — warm, curious, and still writing letters and sharing political news by email well into his nineties. Ken and Mannie’s website overflowed with documents and information promoting their social justice concerns to the wider world. Their enthusiastic attendance at LGBT+ history conferences was always warm and welcoming, humble and friendly. [GA]
Facing terminal cancer in 2020, Ken made sure to post his voting papers before he died; a final, characteristic act of commitment. He passed away peacefully at home in Melbourne on 21 October 2020, just weeks after turning 98.
Ken Lovett was a legend not because of titles or awards, but because of the extraordinary consistency of his care for others across more than half a century of struggle.
Georgie Stone OAM
(Born 20 May 2000)
Georgie Stone is an Australian actress, writer, and transgender rights advocate who has done something remarkable: she changed Australian law, twice, before she was old enough to vote. Awarded the Young Australian Humanist of the Year in 2021 by Humanists Australia, her life exemplifies the humanist conviction that reason, compassion and human dignity must guide law and policy.
Georgie knew she was a girl from the age of two. By the time she was ten, she and her mother Rebekah Robertson had taken their case to the Family Court of Australia to access puberty blockers, a process Rebekah described as “extremely stressful and a very pathologising experience.” Their case, known as Re Jamie, established that medical professionals rather than courts could authorise stage one treatment for transgender youth, fundamentally changing how trans children across Australia accessed healthcare. Georgie became the youngest person in Australia to receive hormone blockers, and the legal precedent her case set removed the requirement for thousands of other families to endure the same ordeal.
She was not finished. In 2017, Georgie launched a Change.org petition that gathered nearly 16,000 signatures, presented in person to the Attorney-General and Shadow Attorney-General, who indicated bipartisan support for further reform. That same year, the law requiring court approval for stage two treatment — cross-sex hormones — was also changed. As she later said of the court process: “The involvement of the Family Court in the medical decisions of transgender teens is actually harming those children it is supposed to protect.”
In 2018 she pitched an idea to the producers of long-running Australian soap Neighbours to include a transgender character — and was cast in the role herself, becoming the first trans actor to play a trans character in the show’s history. The character of Mackenzie Hargreaves gave trans young people across Australia and the UK a face they could recognise on screen. Her 2022 documentary The Dreamlife of Georgie Stone, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival before streaming on Netflix, brought her story to a global audience.
In April 2023, at just 22 years old, she became the youngest woman to address the National Press Club in Canberra, calling out media complicity in what she described as an “insidious culture war” against trans people, and warning that “mass hysteria” about gender-affirming care was having “devastating real-world consequences.” She said: “I hope trans young people who have felt isolated before, who have lost hope, watch the show and know they’re being represented. I hope they feel seen.”
Among her many honours are the Medal of the Order of Australia (2020 — the youngest recipient that year), Victorian Young Australian of the Year (2018), GLBTI Person of the Year, the Young People’s Human Rights Medal, and the Young Voltaire Award. She is an ambassador for the Royal Melbourne Children’s Hospital Gender Service, Wear It Purple, and the AFL Pride Game.
Georgie Stone has not only been visible, but effective. In a movement often measured by marches and speeches, she changed the law.
Lex Watson
Alexander “Lex” Watson AM
(29 January 1943 – 6 May 2014)
For many of his generation and beyond, Lex Watson was the face of gay activism in Sydney. A historian, political scientist, and lifelong advocate, he helped build the Australian LGBT+ rights movement almost from scratch — and his journey began, appropriately, in a humanist meeting room.
Born in Perth in 1943 and educated at the University of Western Australia and the University of Sydney, Watson spent his academic career teaching Australian politics, a subject he also lived. Watson first encountered gay politics as a member of the Humanist Society of NSW in the late 1960s, when he was involved in its attempt to form a homosexual law reform society. That meeting, organised by the Humanist Society, planted the seed of a lifetime of activism. When CAMP — the Campaign Against Moral Persecution — was founded in September 1970 as Australia’s first openly homosexual organisation, Watson was a foundation member. In early 1972, alongside Sue Wills, he became its co-president. CAMP’s founder John Ware credited Watson with making the organisation political. Wikipedia.
Lex wrote on homosexual law reform for the Australian Humanist magazine around 1970; part of what was, remarkably, the earliest organised campaign for homosexual law reform in Australia. The Humanist Society’s subcommittee predated every known LGBT group in the country, for the simple reason that such groups were still illegal. It fell to humanists — people committed to reason, human dignity, and the separation of law from religious morality — to first raise the cause publicly and formally. Lex Watson was part of that pioneering moment, and carried its spirit with him for the rest of his life.
It was Watson who organised the first gay rights demonstration in Australia, held outside Liberal Party headquarters in Ash Street, Sydney in October 1971. As co-president, he and Wills challenged the psychiatric profession’s use of aversion therapy and psychosurgery against gay people, well before homosexuality was removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual in 1973. His willingness to confront hostile public opinion was legendary: in 1976 he appeared on the ABC’s Monday Conference program in Mount Isa, where one audience member poured a bottle of sewage over his head. Watson maintained his composure throughout, and won the audience over.
In 1980, with fellow activist Craig Johnston, he co-founded the Gay Rights Lobby (later the NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby) launching a sustained campaign for homosexual law reform in New South Wales. When HIV/AIDS began devastating the community in the early 1980s, Watson responded again: in 1983 he co-founded the AIDS Action Committee, later known as the AIDS Council of NSW (ACON), and served as its founding president. He was a regular contributor to the gay press, including the Sydney Star, throughout his activist life. Along with Phil Carswell, Lex became the token gay male representation (Lex representing Sydney, Phil representing Melbourne, the two metropolitan centres most impacted by the epidemic) in NACAIDS, the organisation that financed the infamous ‘Grim Reaper‘ campaign, advertising which proceeded despite his and Phil’s objections.
In his later years Watson turned his considerable intellect to preserving the history he had helped make, serving as president of the Sydney Pride History Group from 2010 until his death. He was also a long-standing member of the Australian Queer Archives.
I recall attending one of their queer history conferences in Sydney, where Lex took me and others out for a coffee, and sat delightfully regaling us with memories of how he single-handedly convinced the Premier of New South Wales to include equal age of consent laws for homosexuals alongside heterosexuals. I last saw him at another queer history conference in Melbourne, sitting alongside Phil Carswell – and being aware of their shared history in AIDS activism, I resisted the impulse to take a photo of the two of them together. I still regret that hesitation. Lex passed away shortly afterwards. [GA]
A month after his death in May 2014, he was posthumously appointed a Member of the Order of Australia, an honour he had been informed of before he died.
Lex Watson’s path from the Humanist Society’s law reform subcommittee to the founding of ACON traces the arc of a movement; and of a man who believed, with characteristic rationalism, that justice was not a matter of faith but of action.