Should The Practice Of R V Toonen Equality Under Human Rights

As an ongoing process, law experienced reform in response to many cases that happened in real world. After challenging and expanding the limitation of law as a protection for most people, law reform can be seen as an effective way of accepting differences that emerging in real world in different period of time. Something that was used to be regarded as crime like homosexual behaviors has been accepted by most parts of the Western countries. In relation to same-sex marriage and the case of R v Toone people who insist heteronormativity argued that it is inappropriate for state to decriminalize the homosexuality. Therefore, homosexual relations should be regarded as illegitimate. However, other people believe that the practice of same-sex marriage

Tasmania Criminal Code section 122 and 123 somehow criminalized homosexual acts (Morgan 1993-4, 740-757). Therefore, Toonen contacted the UN to fight for equality in terms of human rights. People should be treated equally under the law and are entitled without any discrimination, however, the Code violated the concept of equality since the state should ensure that all rights that are under ICCPR apply to everyone without distinction on the basis of sexuality (Morgan 1993-4, 740-757). Moreover, human rights as a way of protecting people from discrimination and expectation should help to establish the form of equality in society. The basic tasks of human rights law is to create that kind of conditions for people, articulate rights and also identify violations since human rights law is shaped by governments and suits their interests (Morgan 2001, 208-225). Human rights law therefore gives legitimacy to treat people equally in other words, no matter what his/her sexual orientation is, as a ‘citizen’, he/she has the basic rights of equality and protection. The case of R v Toonen can be seen as an example of seeking equality as a citizen. Since the Code is against human rights law to some extent, the desire of being treated equally under the human rights law influenced the state as a government to determine homosexual relations as