The battle fought for and by LGBTI couples is echoed in the struggles of former convicts and Indigenous people against state restrictions on marriage rights

Sarah and Lazarus desperately wanted to marry.

Born in Somerset in 1813, the English justice system transported the 22-year-old Sarah Copley to Van Diemen’s Land in 1835. For her crime of stealing a chicken (her sister Mary was transported too for cooking the chook) she was held in the Cascades Female Factory at the foot of Mount Wellington, Hobart, until reassigned to domestic servitude.

I am constantly surprised by how few white Australians recall that Aborigines were once denied the freedom to marry

Related: The little-known story of the Indigenous man at the heart of the Menzies government

Related: Victorians convicted of gay 'crimes' will get the respect they always deserved | Clem Newton-Brown

I would not hesitate ... to separate any half-caste from its Aboriginal mother ... They soon forget their offspring

In 2015 our people are now as diverse as any race or religion. First Nations do not support discrimination in any form

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