The Honourable Michael Donald Kirby was Australia's longest serving judge, and twice its Acting Chief Justice, when he retired from the Bench in 2009. In addition, he has served in several different roles for the United Nations, including within the Commission of Inquiry on North Korea and currently on the High Level Panel on Access to Medicines. He was the first Justice of a national Supreme Court to be open about his sexuality. He lives in Sydney with his partner of 47 years, Johan van Vloten.

Increasingly, he has been engaged in global efforts to address the injustices to, and discrimination against, LGBTIQ people, particularly in Commonwealth countries. They all inherited--as the United States did--the British colonial laws on ‘’unnatural offences ‘’. In this talk he will describe those efforts and urge an increasing engagement of US lawyers, straight and gay, with the challenge to universal human rights of the ongoing oppression of people because of their sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.