User:Queering History/sandbox

Jamie Gardiner is a leading advocate of LGBT rights in Australia.

A graduate of the University of Melbourne, where he studied for degrees in science and law, Gardiner first became involved in gay politics in the early 1970s when he studied for a PhD in Applied Mathematics at University College London. At UCL he set up and became the first president of the University's first GaySoc, which played a key role in the National Union of Students' gay rights campaign in the early 1970s. During his time in London, Gardiner also attended meetings of the newly formed Gay Liberation Front and the Campaign for Homosexual Equality. In 1973 he proposed and received support from the NUS to organise UCL's first Homosexuals in Education Conference.

When Gardiner returned to Australia in 1974, he spearheaded the Homosexual Law Reform Coalition, a campaign to decriminalise consensual homosexual sex in the state of Victoria. In August 1975 Gardiner landed a lecturing job at the Bendigo Institute of Technology. In the same year he contributed to the first National Homosexual Conference in Melbourne and went on to host meetings of the Central Victoria Gay Group. In 1977 Gardiner wrote a brief seeking expungement of homosexual convictions in Victoria, a goal that was finally achieved in 2014.

Following Homosexual Law Reform Coalition's campaign against offending laws in the late 1970s, Victoria decriminalised some aspects of homosexual behaviour in December 1980. Subsequently Gardiner became involved in anti-discrimination legal reform and AIDS politics. This included co-founding the Victorian AIDS Council in the early 1980s. To date he has made more than four decades' worth of contributions to LGBT and human rights campaigning.

"I'm most proud that I have played a useful role in advancing human rights in general in this state, and to some extent in this country, and particularly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex rights. That role has occupied me now on and off for 40 years. I'm proud of being able to contribute to an important social change that benefits so many people."

Between 2000 and 2009 Gardiner was a member of the Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission in Victoria. In 2006 he contributed to the establishment of the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities. Gardiner is vice-president of the human rights organisation Liberty Victoria and has been a member of Victoria's LGBTI Task Force since January 2018.