Dear members & friends,

This year we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the founding of Uniting Network Australia – there will be a one-day Daring national gathering on Zoom, 10.00 am – 4.00 pm, (AEST) Saturday 6 July.

I do hope you will be able to join us as we celebrate the achievements of the past 30 years, and also share dreams and practical steps in the future. The Biennial General Meeting of the Network will take place at 3.00 pm on the same Zoom link.

At the gathering founding members will reflect on what we were trying to achieve in 1994. There will be reports on current activities, including with the Uniting Church Assembly. And we will think about the future.

Please mark your diaries now. You can register at https://events.humanitix.com/daring-to-hope-30-years-of-queering-the-uniting-church

If you can’t attend for the whole day, please register anyway and come for the time you can. Looking forward to seeing many of you there.

With best thoughts,

Amanda Nicholas (Revd)
Co-Convenor

The full program can be viewed here.

Anna will be giving an opening address at the Daring 24 gathering on the topic of “The hopes for LGBTIQA+ equality in Australia.

Anna Brown OAM is a lawyer, advocate and founding CEO of Equality Australia, a national organisation dedicated to equality for LGBTIQ+ people. She played a critical role in the campaign for marriage equality, co-chairing the Equality Campaign and running the challenge to the postal plebiscite in the High Court, as Legal Director at the Human Rights Law Centre where she led the Centre’s LGBTIQ rights work.

In these roles Anna has been instrumental in hard fought battles to fend off regressive religious discrimination laws, as well as successful campaigns to secure federal LGBTI discrimination protections, remove discriminatory laws across the country, right historical wrongs by establishing schemes to erase historical homosexual offences, prohibit conversion practices and remove barriers to accessing birth certificates. Anna’s legal work has helped to ensure that young trans people can access vital hormone treatment without the cost and delay of going to court, advanced marriage equality and furthered recognition of sex and gender diversity.

The Uniting Network community is excited to hear from Anna this year and look forward to what Anna has to share with us about the future hopes for LGBTIQA+ equality in Australia.

We are delighted that both of our founding Co-Convenors, Coralie Ling and Simon Moglia, will be joining the conference for a Panel discussion on “What were we hoping for in 1994?”. The third panelist is Dr Des Perry. 

Judge Simon Moglia, then Pastoral Worker, Unity, SA; Uniting Network founding national Co-Convenor, 1994-96; now judge of the County Court of Victoria. Simon Moglia, a founding Co-Convenor of Uniting Network Australia, is a County Court Judge in Victoria. Simon was a youth worker with the Pilgrim Uniting Church, and employed as a pastoral worker with Uniting and Friends, SA. Admitted to the Victorian Bar in 2006, Simon had practised primarily in the criminal jurisdiction in the County and Supreme Courts.

Revd Dr Coralie Ling, then Minister, Fitzroy Uniting Church; Uniting Network founding national Co-Convenor, 1994-96; now retired. The Revd Dr Coralie Ling, a founding national Co-Convenor of Uniting Network Australia, is a retired Uniting Church Minister. Coralie was ordained in the Methodist Church in 1969, becoming the first ordained woman in the Methodist Church in Victoria, and the second in Australia. Coralie served in a number of local churches and was appointed to the Fitzroy Uniting Church in 1991, working with its members to develop a centre for feminist spirituality drawing on feminist theologies and biblical scholarship, and using feminist and inclusive language.

Dr Des Perry, then a HIV/AIDS researcher at Macquarie University; co-founder of Uniting Friends WA; now retired. 

The Panel will be facilitated by the Revd Dr Avril Hannah-Jones, historian and Uniting Church Minister.

We look forward to having you join us!

Please find our Biennial General Meeting document here.