A former marriage equality campaigner and Sex Party candidate has been elected to the South Australian Parliament as a One Nation MP.
Despite a landslide Labor win in the South Australian election on March 21, all eyes were on One Nation’s record result.
The ultra-conservative party outpolled the SA Liberals and won four lower house seats and elected three MPs to the upper house, including state leader Cory Bernardi.
One Nation’s Jason Virgo (above right) won his tight race in the seat of MacKillop against Liberal Rebekah Rosser. Rosser conceded defeat earlier this week.
The 35-year-old joined the Australian Labor Party at age 16, and ran twice as a candidate for the progressive Australian Sex Party in 2010 and 2013, per ABC News.
Virgo was also a one-time secretary of the ALP’s Mount Gambier branch.
In 2011, Virgo was a prominent leader in the campaign for marriage equality, serving as an organiser and spokesperson for his state’s branch of activist group Equal Love.
On IDAHOBIT that year, Virgo and Equal Love organised a mass same-sex wedding in central Adelaide.
At that time, One Nation’s South Australian leader Cory Bernardi was lobbying against same-sex marriage. In 2012, the Liberal MP infamously conflated the reform with bestiality.
He doubled down on those comments ahead of the state election, claiming Australia had undergone a “degenerative cultural decline” since a majority of Aussies voted in favour of the reform.
Jason Virgo is ‘great mates’ with Cory Bernardi
Asked about his political history earlier this week, Jason Virgo said he joined the two political parties when he was “16 and 19”.
“I was a teenager. Every person when they were 16 and 19 were doing crazier things than joining a political party,” he told a press conference.
“I was a kid, basically. We grow up, we learn new things, we change our views as we age and that’s just a reality.
“I’m focused on the things that matter. I’m worried about MacKillop — it’s been taken for granted for too long.”
Virgo added he and his leader Cory Bernardi are “great mates” and One Nation are “completely united”.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and her party have an appalling track record on LGBTQIA+ rights, including repeated attacks on trans folk.
But Jason Virgo’s history of LGBTQIA+ activism has scandalised Family First party leader Lyle Shelton.
In a statement, Shelton demanded to know “whether One Nation is drifting” on the issues of “marriage, family and children’s gender”.
Former Australian Sex Party leader and former Victorian MP Fiona Patten wished Virgo well, but told ABC News his switch to One Nation was surprising.
“The Australian Sex Party was all for equality,” she said.
“We were at that time still fighting for marriage equality, we were fighting for drug law reform, we were fighting for medicinal cannabis.
“We were fighting against censorship and fighting to keep religion out of politics, taxing the church and freedom of religion and freedom of speech.”
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