Equal Love the group that campaigned for marriage equality for over a decade has rebranded and relaunched as Rainbow Rebellion.
The rebadged organisation will now focus on advocating for LGBTIQ+ rights across a wide range of issues.
Rainbow Rebellion member Lena Van Hale spoke to OUTinPerth and explained why the group was changing its name and setting a new focus.
“As Equal Love, we campaigned tirelessly until the major victory for equality in 2017 when Australia won the fight for equal marriage. The fight for equality continues now.
“In recognition of the attacks on our community from the Liberal party and a far right Christian fringe, who want to make it easier for bigots to discriminate against the LGBTI community, we are proud to announce our new focus and new label as Rainbow Rebellion.
“We want our whole community to know that as Rainbow Rebellion, we will continue to fight for the equality of all of us beyond marriage, and we will proudly continue to fight to protect LGBTI people against injustice and bigotry.” Van Hale said.
The group is not alone in setting new goals and taking on a name change. The Equality Campaign, the national organisation that spearheaded the marriage equality push has transformed into Equality Australia, while the Coalition for Marriage – who were the voice of the ‘No’ campaign, have morphed into anti-transgender organisation Binary.
Rainbow Rebellion members Jade and Petrina dropped by RTRFM’s All Things Queer program earlier in the week and spoke about the plans the group have for upcoming protests and political actions.
Petrina said the group had decided to rename themselves because many people associated Equal Love with the single issue of marriage equality.
At the top of the group’s agenda is raising awareness about the proposed religious discrimination legislation.
“At the moment our campaigning is largely focussed around the religious discrimination bill which is set to grant religious organisations thew right to refuse services to queer people.” Jade said.
While the group has taken inspiration from the environmental group Rainbow Rebellion, the spokespeople said there was no form al affiliation between the two groups, unlike the British branch of Rainbow Rebellion. Jade said there was a cross over of membership between the two groups.
First up the group is holding a rally against the religious discrimination bill in the Murray Street Mall in the city at 1pm today.
“Our position on the bill is that we don’t think it is a necessary bill, it’s entirely a reaction to the passing of gay marriage last year. There is room to look into what safety, especially minority religions, should have in Australia – but I don’t think we’re going to see this under our current government.” Jade said.
Up next on the group’s agenda is a town hall meeting to discuss LGBTI politics, with Safe Schools founder Roz Ward joining the event via Skype. Following that the group will be taking part in Pride Parade in late November.
The group dismissed concerns that Equal Love’s membership had been dominated in the past by members of one political group, and it had been difficult for people of different political beliefs to engage with the organisation.
“Rainbow Rebellion is a coming together of activists of all different stripes, there are members from at least three different parties in the organisation, and even non-aligned people.” Jade said. “We are all fighting the same battle and we all have the same interests in mind.”
The group have a new logo, designed by member Jaqueline Blackburn, which features the pink triangle – the symbol used by the Nazi party to label people during the holocaust. The symbol was a commonly used queer symbol but has faded in popularity since the 1990s.
Petrina Harley said the choice to use the pink triangle was to show the connection to historical LGBTIQ+ battles from the era of Stonewall and earlier.
“We want to bring the protest back to Pride.” Petrina said. “I went to Pride last year and they had three police floats, and the commercial banks floats. I think the pink triangle takes us back to the origins of Pride, the roots of Stonewall, and the roots of the Pride movement.”
Find out more about Rainbow Rebellion on Facebook.
OIP Staff
