LGB Alliance Australia tells us:

Victoria’s new Pride Centre in St. Kilda has rejected an application to hold a lesbian-only event at the Centre.  The Lesbian Action Group, a group of lesbians from Melbourne and Central Victoria, have applied for an exemption from the Australian Human Rights Commission to hold a female-only lesbian event. They wanted to celebrate International Lesbian Day in October at the Pride Centre. The exemption, if granted, would legally exclude males, heterosexuals and males who identify as women. 

…

It must be noted that the Pride Centre has held trans-only events.

Some animals are more equal than others.

The Pride Centre is the first of its kind built in Australia, specifically purpose-built for members of the LGBTQ community’s use. That the Victorian Pride Centre has rejected the Lesbian Action Group’s application for a lesbian-only event shows how they are unfairly discriminating against lesbians – a group who should supposedly be able to access the centre – and favouring some letters in LGBTQ over others.

It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with misogyny could it?

The Pride Centre told the Lesbian Action Group:

On this occasion the Victorian Pride Centre must reject your booking request. 

Your initial booking request, which resulted in a quote for services, did not indicate the nature of your event or the subsequent identification that you would be seeking an exemption from the Australian Human Rights Commission and naming the Pride Centre in your submission. 

The Pride Centre exists to support the LGBTIQ+ community.  Inclusion, diversity, acceptance and belonging are essential to the organisation’s values. The VPC’s purpose is to connect, support and amplify LGBTIQ+ voices, resources, services, and groups so that our communities are cohesive, resilient and thrive.    

Well, you can’t do all those things at once. Some of them fight with each other. You can’t support inclusion and diversity at the same moment, because sometimes the diverse want to hold an event just for their own diverse selves. Just one event, just for them, in their diversity. What the Pride Centre is doing here is celebrating inclusion at the expense of diversity.

Our Constitution provides that the Pride Centre’s object is to promote the reconciliation, mutual respect and acceptance between groups and individuals in Australia and the promotion and protection of human rights. The VPC achieves this in part through facilitating within the Pride Centre events in support of equality, diversity and inclusion for the LGBTIQ+ community.

But so then it’s not in support of inclusion for people who aren’t part of the “LGBTIQ+ community”, right? It excludes straight “cis” people who aren’t “Queer” (whatever that means)? You can’t both have a “community” for a particular kind, or set of kinds, of person, and have generalized “inclusion.” You have to pick one.

“The centre is a beacon of hope, a welcoming and inclusive space for all LGBTIQ+ community members and their allies.”

But not non-LGBTIQ+ community members.

So it’s inclusive but exclusive; exclusive but inclusive.

Your request to hold an event that excludes and seeks to legally discriminate against people on the bases of their sex, sexuality and gender is inconsistent with the Pride Centre’s purpose. 

And yet the Pride Centre is for people who are not straight or “cis” so it discriminates against people on the basis of their sexuality and gender idenniny.

It’s called having it both ways.