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Issue Ninety-Sixthe Registrar himself stating the process wasnow complete and final. Finally.Tracie advised me to keep quiet about it for alittle while, since the certificate arrived the daybefore the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Grasparade, and there would little room for any newsin the mainstream media for anything else thatwas “queer”. I duly kept my counsel but smiledparticularly radiantly as I marched in thatparade. One month later, the story was on thefront cover of the Sydney Morning Herald. Oneworking day later, there was aphone call from the Registrar toadvise it had all been a mistake.File notes later revealed therewere public queries, and a legalopinion obtained by the SolicitorGeneral (effectively further upthe hierarchy than the Registrarof Births, Deaths and Marriages)stated that the certificate issuedhad not in fact been issued,because it could not have been.Lawyer David Shoebridge tookmy case as his last one beforetaking up his seat in the StateParliament as a Greens Memberof the Legislative Council. He helped me appealto the Administrative Decisions Tribunal, whichbounced the case along for a couple of yearsand two appeals, I can’t tell you why, it was tooconvoluted for me to follow. While that washappening, Kevin Rudd as Minister forImmigration and Citizenship, changed thepassport rules so that one only neededsupporting medical evidence to get X as the sex.I already had the doctors’ letters, so I got an Xon my passport in 2011.Yay, Kevin Eleven!Meanwhile, back at the AdministrativeDecisions Tribunal hearing, when I tried to makemy submission orally, they scrambled and saidthey wanted copies of my notes, rather thanlistening to the speech the notes had beenprepared to support.The Crown Solicitor’s team representing therespondent (the Registrar of BDM) had thoughtI was a garden variety transsexual, covered byclause A which was about changing to “thePolare page 10July-September 2013opposite sex”, and panicked when I cited clauseB, which applied to people who have surgeryto correct or eliminate ambiguity.The Crown team asked for proceedings to stopwhile they consulted a man in a grey suit sittingat the back of the court.The Administrative Decisions Tribunal insistedsex could only be male or female, so with thepro bono assistance of law firm DLA Piper,advice from barristers Alister Abadee andGeoffrey Watson SC(who was unable torepresent me in courtbecause he becametoo busy prosecutingthe shenanigans of theState ALP at ICAC),and court representationby JohnHoward’s SolicitorGeneral, barristerDavid Bennett QC,we took the case tothe Supreme Court ofNSW in November2012.After a long wait of six months, we wentback to the court for the issuing of the Judgment.“The appeal is allowed, the decision of thetribunal is set aside, the matter is referred backto the tribunal, the respondent pays the costs ofthe appellant.”It took me a few moments to work out that thisprobably meant we had won. And now, it’s allover bar the shouting. The barrier to legal nonbinaryidentity has been seen as the legal fictionit always was.Thank you to all who helped make this happen,in particular DLA Piper’s Emily Christie,Samantha Butt and Nicholas Patrick, barristersAlister Abadee, Geoffrey Watson and DavidBennett, activists/lobbyists Tracie O’Keefe,Aidy Griffin, and Nadine Stransen, past andpresent Members of Parliament Clover Moore,Ian Cohen, Andrew Refshauge and DavidShoebridge, and all my friends who supportedand inspired me and put up with my varyingmoods through this trial.