In 2015, Thornton was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia for "her significant service to the community as an advocate for women, and Indigenous rights, and to the arts as a writer and director", as part of the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours.
[2] Thornton was involved in feminist activism beginning in the mid-1960s, including the notable Regatta Hotel protest in March 1965 that challenged women's exclusion from being served drinks in public bars in Queensland.
[4] As President of the association, Thornton led a successful campaign for the removal of the marriage bar in the Commonwealth Public Service of Australia.
[2] From 1960 to 1980, Thornton worked as an academic in a variety of positions within Philosophy, Government, Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Queensland (UQ).
[2] In March 1965, Thornton and Rosalie Bogner chained themselves to the bar rail of the Regatta Hotel in Toowong, Brisbane as a protest to the ban on serving women drinks in pubs in Queensland.
[1] In Archiving the feminist self: reflections on the personal papers of Merle Thornton, Margaret Henderson notes that the protest “occurred four years before the first women’s liberation group met in Australia.”[4] The protest marked the beginning of second wave feminist action in Brisbane and gained significant media coverage.
Thornton received hate-mail letters accusing her of being a communist, questioning her mothering capabilities, and casting doubts on her morality.