Stephen Rainbow: Homosexual Law Reform, Free Speech and 1986

In 1986 Stephen Rainbow marched with HUG, Heterosexuals Unafraid of Gays, while living as a married father who had not yet come out. Forty years after the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed, he joins Dane Giraud to argue that the reform was, above all, a free speech fight.

Rainbow describes a country in which living openly was, in his word, inconceivable. Consensual sex between men was a criminal offence. Men left for Sydney, San Francisco and London to find a life they could not have here. He recounts the campaign led by Dame Fran Wilde, and the 18 months of hate mail and threats she absorbed. Opposition came from social conservatives in both major parties of the day.

The conversation keeps returning to speech. Rainbow argues that democracy is what lets silenced groups be heard, and that the reform succeeded because people were willing to say in public what had been unsayable. Giraud puts the harder question back to him: whether today's speech restrictions, including those sought by minority communities themselves, risk silencing the dissenters within those same communities.

Free to Speak is the official podcast of the New Zealand Free Speech Union. Uncensored conversations on free speech, civil liberties, and the people defending them. Hosted by Dane Giraud.

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Welcome And Why This Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Free to Speak, the New Zealand Free Speech Union podcast. If you enjoy the show, subscribe for uncensored conversations and free speech news from New Zealand and beyond.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

I'm your host, Dane Giroud, a council member of the Free Speech Union, and joining us today is the Chief Human Rights Commissioner of New Zealand, Stephen Rainbow. Stephen, honored to have you with us today. Thanks, Dane. Pleased to be here. Fantastic. So we're going to talk today about uh homosexual law reform that happened in 1985, didn't it? 85 or 86, 85, was it? 86. 86. Well, I'm off to a cracker of a start. Um, I uh have wanted to talk about this period in museum history for quite a while to our supporters because um a few years ago I was commissioned to research a potential documentary on this uh on homosexual law reform. And I interviewed a hell of a lot of activists who are getting a bit long in the tooth now in in uh uh Auckland and in Wellington. Um some very moving interviews I had with people. Uh some people I visited three times and spoke for six hours, you know, it was uh quite amazing. But what really occurred to me thematically is it really was a free speech battle in many ways. Um and uh a lot of these men and women, uh men especially, I think, were speaking up and and unveiling themselves really for the first time. So uh yeah, I was quite moved by that. And I think it's a very key moment in New Zealand history, social history and social change. And uh I think it's also a really good reminder for supporters, too, that the the gay rights movement was very leaned very heavily into free speech.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

I think Dane, it was as um uh as much as anything, it was also a very strong endorsement of how lucky we are to live in a democratic society. Uh, because without democracy, you do not uh enable groups who are silenced or invisible to raise their concerns and to have those addressed as part of your political discourse. And if you look at what's happened in Asia, for example, it's interesting that in Taiwan, um, which is, I think, the first country in Asia to allow same-sex marriage, for example, that the gay

Law Reform As A Speech Fight

SPEAKER_02 2:40

movement was very much part of the democratization movement of what had previously been an undemocratic or more totalitarian regime. And so there's a very strong connection between the ability to progress and promote the rights of minorities, including in this case mainly homosexual men, because that's really uh the main beneficiaries of homosexual law reform and democracy and what that enables in terms of empowering uh people who would otherwise not have their uh their their desire for a better life uh uh um advanced.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Yeah, because a lot of people say free speech doesn't come without consequences. There were definitely consequences for um uh uh the men coming forward at the time. Uh one chap I spoke to said that he uh was part of a radio interview. It could have been with who's who's the woman that was almost our Mary Whitehouse? What was her name? Um um um Patricia Bartlett. Yes. Uh he he did a radio interview with her, wiped the floor with her, and then had to step out onto the street and literally had to look both ways to make sure that someone in the audience didn't get incensed and and and turn up at the station. This was a reality for a lot of people back then. It wasn't so easy just to make yourself known like that. And I guess in workplaces and everything, that get there, yeah, there could have been firings and all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

That's right. There was also um little know-in facts, but um, for example, you you could be charged as a landlord for providing tenancies to homosexual uh tenants, for example, and so there were those elements as well. But um I think that the the the broader context for this day is that it's um very hard now to remember, and uh for those who weren't around at the time, uh there won't be the memories, but um it was and I'm gonna use the word inconceivable really to lead a uh an openly gay life or to be um openly homosexual at the time. Now that's not to say that there weren't the the clubs that that people gathered at that, but to um to live or openly as an openly gay man at that time um was uh extremely difficult um because of the the broader cultural context. So um if I look back particularly and I grew up in the regions, but if you if I look back to the experience there, it was it really was inconceivable to think about living an openly gay life. It was the um it was probably the most shameful thing that one could confess to. Um and you know, I thought I sort of I thought, okay, I grew up in the in in the 60s and 70s, but that was only effectively 20 years, 30 years after the Second World War. Really, it was it's less than a hundred years since significant European settlement started uh in New Zealand. And we were still in the regions of frontier society at that time, and the skills that were valued were very masculine skills, as in um, you know, the the the um uh taming of the land and the felling of the forest and those sorts of things. And I think that combined with the Second World War and its uh and the need to fight fascism, I think there was a very strong sense of the uh the fact that those masculine skills were indispensable to the future and that anything like homosexuality was a threat to that. And I mean, don't forget this is also the era Alan Turing, who basically helped to, um, as a result of his efforts with the Enigma Code, uh, probably reduced the um duration of the Second World War and saved thousands and thousands of lives in the process and was chemically castrated after the war because he was homosexual. So this is the era, and it's very hard to capture that now at a time when uh being gay is is so um is largely still um um acceptable now. But at that time it was really was a really significant um um uh uh issue to be gay and to be homosexual. And I think there's probably a story to be told, Dane, about the diaspora of New Zealand men who disappeared after Sydney, um, San Francisco, London, um, where they could find at least more of a tribe that they could relate to. But I think being gay here um uh and well beyond homosexual law reform was extremely difficult and challenging.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Yes, yes. Well, so um, okay, well, so what brought you to the cause initially? Because you were part of an activist group called uh well during homosexual law reform, I was a part of um heterosexuals,

Consequences Of Being Visible

SPEAKER_01 7:55

unafraid of gays, hug, uh we were called.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

And um um my uh girlfriend and I used to go on all the marches, and I still have a poster, I think, in a badge of theirs somewhere, but um there were a number of people involved in that movement who subsequently, like me, came out. But um again, if I if I sort of personalize this, Dane, I think um, again, the the um the sense of in the impossibility of leading an openly gay life, and particularly if you are family-oriented and I'd always wanted a family, and the idea you could be gay and have a family was just I mean, inc literally inconceivable. So um, yeah, that that was just one of the movements, but it was probably not unimportant in terms of of um uh enabling a group of people who didn't openly uh weren't uh weren't gay or openly gay at that time to support the campaign. Um and for me, all of this changed dramatically. Um I did what a number of uh gay men did, which was to get married and have children, and I'm now extremely lucky because I have three wonderful children who um uh are just uh um um the source of much uh joy and um and very life-affirming. So I'm very lucky in that regard, but they also paid an enormous paid an enormous price because um when I fell in love with a man in uh 1995, um the abstract concept of homosexuality became real in the form of the man who had gone to be my husband. Um, and that made uh the possibility of being gay and leading a gay life um feasible because it was no longer an abstract concept. It materialized in the form of a of a man who uh I then spent the next 12 years with before he died of cancer, unfortunately at a very young age. But um that was the turning point for me, but it was not unusual, or is not unusual for men of my generation to have married and had kids. Um, and unfortunately, um those kids and and not to mention those that we married um carried a great um burden as a result of the the situation that they were put in. Um and yeah, um that's that's a a source of great um well anyway, that's part of my that's part of my uh of my life story. But as a result of it, I'm very blessed to have kids.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Yeah, uh Bill Logan, who was um uh in Wellington and doing a lot of this strategy for for this, I had a a few um sit-downs with him and some really good, you know, long conversations. Initially, he was uh part of a call center. There was a call center that was running in Wellington, where uh almost like a lifeline type situation for for gay men. And he said you know, and and and he was married for for quite a while. Um he was taking a lot of calls from people and really got a sense that a lot of these men really really thought they were shit. You know, like they that they just felt so ashamed and degraded and all the stuff you're talking about, unable to really function or just be themselves in the world. This really inspired him to run a campaign where there was going to be quite a bit of visibility, at least in street protests and so forth. Now, Fran Wilde, she might remember this a bit differently, but um P and even a lot of uh gay activists in Auckland, who were the lawyers and the, you know, the the suits really, um, were nervous about that because their whole thing is don't, you know, don't flaunt it. Don't go out, you know. We we the the campaign should be uh very diplomatic, behind closed doors, uh not a whole lot of drawing attention and clashes with the Salvation Army, who were, I mean, they're considered the good guys in terms of um a lot of progressive causes today, the Salvation Army, but they were a little different back then, weren't they? That there was a quite a bit of argy bargy between a lot of protesters and them. So can can you speak to that strategy and why you think it was important for visibility, or do you have a another take on that?

SPEAKER_02 12:31

I thought I I just think it goes back to the issue that I raised earlier, which was the the um the profundity of revealing uh one's homosexuality um and just how um uh prof you know how deeply uh challenging that was even at that time. I have to say, even in subsequent years. Um, I mean, I can I could tell a number of stories about it, but I interviewed um uh an elderly gay guy a couple of years ago, and he and his partner um had um two adjoining townhouses. So they had separate addresses for all intents and purposes, um, so that when family visited, for example, they um you know they could go to one or other of these adjoining properties, but they did not in 40 years spend a night apart, and yet for 40 years they had all intents and purposes separate addresses and and living alone. Um, and that was, you know, that that um again was was one of the ways, I guess, in which people dealt with this this shame. And so when people of our generation, and including this gentleman that I just referred to, suddenly had to take a stand um uh when the campaign came around, then that was quite challenging for some of those people. Um, and I think understandably, in terms of everything, you know, including uh family relationships but also careers. So there was a different there were different tactics and strategies, and and interestingly, within what might be described now as the rainbow movement, um, those those same um divisions are still evident now. There's very um radical groups who want to um uh challenge uh prevailing social norms at every level, and there are those who simply want to be accepted for who they are and to work effectively within it you know within existing society. So those divisions still exist. They were evident at that time, but I think having a common cause like um homosexual law reform certainly helped to mobilize and unite the movement. There was possibly less of that when it came to same-sex marriage uh in 2013, another campaign that I was involved with, because even then there were sections of what I'll describe as the the rainbow community who were opposed to same-sex marriage as mimicking um uh heterosexual norms. Um, but you know, my take on that uh was that my um my partner um was um diagnosed with cancer in 2005 and

Stephen’s Activism And Personal Turning Point

SPEAKER_02 15:20

2007 he was told he only had a very short time to live. He was always adamantly opposed to marriage as a heteronormative assumption. We walked out of the oncologist's office, he turned to me and said, I want us to get married, and we got married shortly before he died. So when the when the chips were down, even um even someone who'd been um strongly opposed to uh marriage um was wanted us to get married, although of course we had a civil union because marriage was not possible at that point. So what's the point? The point is there's been divisions within that the rainbow movement that still exists now, uh which is why at Auckland you have now essentially two uh gay umbrella organizations, um, and there is a a lack of um unity across the rainbow community here, which is um I think most unfortunate because um, Dane, the other sort of contextual thing that's happening now is there's probably um um, well, if you look at the stats out of the US and Europe now, support for same-sex marriage is declining, for example. And so there is a pushback now on these rights, along with a pushback on many of the um rights that arose out of the sexual revolution in the 60s, of which the gay um the gay component was but one part. And so we've got, you know, there's always cycles going on. I guess the other thing in terms of those cycles is that we forget that um homosexual law reform in 86, and you mentioned 85 before, but it which is really, I guess, when the campaign uh got underway, um, was a result of the change of government in 84, which brought in a whole range of liberalizing measures, um, including um in the economy, including in foreign policy, with the nuclear-free policy, including Ministry of Women's Affairs. Um, and there it it was it was quite a uh well, actually, I think it was quite a revolutionary time um uh with the election of that government. And as Fran has said on several occasions, a much younger group of MPs came in at 84. So you had a a change in the political context then of which homosexual law reform was one beneficiary, but it didn't just impact on this issue. There were many other issues that um that we took a significantly different uh approach on after the election of that Labour government, after I think nine years of of um of Muldoon being in power. So it was a it was quite a tumultuous time of which homosexual law reform but was but one part.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Talking about Labour and Fran, uh I had a coffee with her with another researcher, and the researcher was a bit younger than me, probably probably about maybe a decade younger than me, something like that, seven years or something. Um, and and not from my neighborhood, not from South Auckland, right? So I think he might have been a Wellingtonian. So very different experience growing up, very different experience of the of the of the left in the late 70s and early 80s. Fran started talking about the challenge and the risk of losing their constituency through this, which was very real. A lot of people today would probably think, well, it's labor. They're on the left, everyone would have been down with it. But that's not really the way it worked in 1983, four, five, six. Like the working class was uh still very and a lot of it is today, but still very socially conservative, and they really were the backbone of the labor vote back then. So this wasn't necessarily a slam dunk. It did come with risks for those younger politicians, didn't it?

SPEAKER_02 19:17

Well, it wasn't just homosexual law reform. Um if you think about that era in 1981 with the um anti-springbot movement, for example, there was a pretty commonly held view that by uh that that had lost Labour the 81 election. Uh in fact, I think from memory, anyway, um the the the it was a very narrow victory, I think, um uh for the National Party in 81. And there was a sense within the Labour Party that they had lost it because of the Springback Tour. And again, there was a there was an element there of um having lost their core constituents, uh particularly in regional seats. So that was the context within which um they uh there was concern in in 80 85-86, which was this um um the an awareness of the political consequences of what was emerging as a describe it as a liberal ascendancy post the Springbot tour. But I don't think uh we should um overlook the fact that uh while the um antagonists were um people like Norm Jones, that there were also um strong um opposition to homosexual law reform within the Labour Party. So Jeff Braybrooke, who I knew incidentally and was um one of the old-style um uh working class MPs from Napier in this case, um, uh Alan Woolbank from Gisbon Um and others were and Jerry Wall from Putirua um were very strong opponents of homosexual law reform. So at that stage uh there was still a significant constituency within the Labour Party of Social Conservatives, and um um and and so they were some of them were active parts of this of the of the anti-umosexual law reform movement. Um and um so yeah, so so there was a concern within the Labour Party that this would be politically damaging to them in terms of the support of their core cons of their core constituents uh at the at that time, yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Well, I guess it would have been uncharted waters. I mean uh there were were there who are the other countries that had legalized, like the UK had by then, hadn't they? We were relatively late to this one, weren't we?

SPEAKER_02 21:43

Yeah, and places like South Australia had already legalised um some years prior as well. So um, but then Australia, um, same sex marriage, what not until 2017, I think it was, that they had the campaign. So um uh Yeah, i it it it was an enormously significant issue here. And if you think about the fact, Dane, that this was taking place at the same time as Roger Nomics was being rolled out, and you think about the energy which went into homosexual law reform, um, compared to the analysis of what was happening economically, it would be interesting to see, for example, things like media coverage at the time, because my sense is this probably generated more heat. But I might be wrong, but I suspect this had probably generated more heat and more engagement than a lot of the pretty radical economic transformation that was occurring at the same time uh was exposed to.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Yeah, which I I think which is still pretty entrenched and um could account for some of the problems we have today. I mean, I uh it's what really drove me away from Labour, to be honest with you. I'm a politically homeless individual, really, and it's got to do with uh a lot of that neoliberal politics and um policy and uh you know the closure of the meatworks, which my father worked at. Um I I saw my uh hometown go pretty dark overnight, really. Um so that was that was more of a concern for for me, I think, at the time.

Visibility Versus Quiet Diplomacy

SPEAKER_01 23:20

But um, yeah, so Norm Jones, right, is interesting.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

And can I just can I just pick up on that point? Sure. Because I think the the one of the things that I've I I feel New Zealanders need to do more of is telling our own stories. And I think um, and it's interesting, you know, you only need to hop across the ditch and just see how many Australian leaders and politicians and people involved in movements write uh and commentate on New Zeal uh on Australian history and politics. We don't do a lot of that here, and that period in the 80s was argue arguably a very revolutionary period in New Zealand that I do wish that we'd tell more stories about it. I went to the documentary recently about Jim Anderton, who was a key player at that time and who I had some involvement with, um, and um it was fascinating to see how many people turned up to see that. I think we really need to tell many more of our own stories. We need to talk about those experiences uh that occurred in the 80s, and it all helps to put all of these issues into context because um I feel so often when we deal with issues here that we that we um we lose that. We actually don't have access to enough of that context and the stories of the people who are involved at the time in these movements. Um and it's a it's it's something that we're a tiny country, we don't put a lot of resource into the arts, culture, and storytelling, but Voyager we need to do a lot more of it.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Yeah, well, I I mean I've had a bit of a bugbear for years um about the how limited South Auckland stories uh in in terms of the the like the stut the story of me, you know. I mean, I went off the rails a bit, my dad ended up leaving and it was at the pub every night, all that kind of stuff. I'm I get into petty crime, I do all but but we were a village like a Danny Virk or something like that before, or Tahu was like that. It was a strong Regulague town, a lot of old, well-established Farno in that town. Yeah. Um, but you know, when all the work went, uh, it got really, really bleak. Things, things got really bleak. And uh, and a lot of people will say, you know, even your David Seymour's and everyone that all this had to happen. Um well try selling it to someone living through it in in the middle of it with no job. And in in Otahu in '86, it's like, did it did it have to happen? Did I have to be sacrificed in this way? It's it's a tough sell. So, no, you're right. Um, I I would love for there to be more access um to um you know funding so stories like this can get told because there is a whole constituency, I think. There's um, you know, it's that working class voice that just doesn't get a lot of airtime, you know.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

They do it better in Australia. They do, they do it much better in Australia. So I was I was door knocking one uh one evening in Christchurch where I went to after I left um home and um came across a guy with his arm in a sling and um said to him, you know, mate, do you need me help? Yep, would you mind coming and mowing my lawn on the weekend? I think it was. Um, I do remember he had a Mark IV Ford Zephyr because um uh it had a bonnet the size of an aircraft carrier, and um I had to drive this thing to get a water to fitness and um, you know, three-litre V6 and a um four-speed manual, and uh my goodness, that was quite an experience for a for a young man. But um anyway, um uh I went and helped this guy out. Uh he would have been probably, I say, early 30s, and he told me he had he was a railway worker on the Christchurch railway yards. He told me he'd OD'd, and I was so naive at that stage, I had no idea what that meant. I thought it he owed money, but in fact, he'd OD'd and been lying on his arm for such a period that the um the nerves had died. So hence the arm was gonna sling. Well, I helped him out for a while anyway. I had a knock on the door one night saying I wasn't to see him anymore, and I can't even remember the language that was used, but it was clear that he was homosexual. Um, and um and so uh I wasn't uh I was forbidden to go and see him anymore, so I didn't, and I must have had to convey that to him in some way. I remember going to Citizens Advice to try and get some support from. Anyway, a couple of weeks after that, another knock on the door to say that he killed. And um that, you know, that that again when you were a young man who I I'm not even sure I knew I was gay, I'm not even sure I would have known what it meant at that age, but that was one of my early experiences of someone who was gay. I mean, it was tragic, basically. That the impression I was left with as a result of my experiences with uh with that guy. And recently I interviewed an uh a well-known artist in uh in Nelson um about the um gay support group that he had set up there in the pre-homosexual law reform era, I think late 70s, early 80s, and he told me the story of a family uh where the mother had died there in the countryside. There was a father and I think four sons. This was the youngest of the four sons, he'd looked after the family after the mother had died. He did all the home, um, all the home care, all the cooking, all the um all looking after his three brothers and his father, and um he turned up at this support group that had been set up to say that he'd told his father that he was gay or whatever the language that was used then. And his father, so this is late 70s or early 80s, uh, and his father said, Oh, that's okay, my gun from the second door door is hanging on the wall on the shed. Um and I mean that's oh I mean, I heard that, I wasn't shocked, I wasn't surprised because I knew that's how homosexuality was regarded. But um I I do wonder if there is an an understanding, particularly among young people campaigning in this space, about just how I mean it always really was a matter of life and death, and that's of course, without getting into AIDS in the whole story about um New Zealanders and their experience with AIDS and what happened here and the creation of the um the AIDS Foundation by people like Warren Lindbergh, another hero of New Zealand whose story has not adequately been told. So yeah, it really was um a matter of life and death and very hard to convey, just what a a sheer horror it was to discover that in spite of one's best intent, um, that um I couldn't disguise the fact that it was men that I was drawn to.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

I think the I think we should touch on the AIDS story. Well, I I'll I want to just um talk about Norm Jones first, but I think I think the impact of AIDS on even this law, I think is something we do need to sort of look at. But uh so Norm Jones was the a the Southland national MP in Vercargle. In Vacagle, in Vacagle. He was, and I've read his book. I read his book, the uh a book he wrote as part of um the research that I was doing. Now, this man was um put it this way when you talk about harmful speech,

Labour Politics And Real Electoral Risk

SPEAKER_01 30:55

uh you'd be hard to go past what he was capable of saying in some of these public meetings. Like it was all on the table, wasn't it? Like some of the most horrendous stuff you were ever likely to hear attached to a gay slur or anything like that would have come out of his mouth at some point during this. There was some horrendous um speech. There was an activist in um Auckland. I think I know who it is, but I don't want to say the name in case I get it wrong. But he was at a public meeting and all this stuff was going on. I think Norm was there. It was really intense. It was some of the most vilus stuff you could imagine. And he turned to his partner and said, if only the cameras were here. He was convinced that if New Zealanders could hear the depth of this hatred, Kiwis being, you know, we're not we're not a fan of bullies. We we are, we do play fair for the for the most part, it would have really swung the pendulum towards the gay side. That was his belief.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

But then they were there, and they did um capture um the comments from people like Norm Jones and Jeff Braybrook, I have to say. Um, and combined with the um the parade of the petitions on the front steps of parliament, which was basically, as I understand it, orchestrated by off-shore um uh influencers, um, which looked something like a Nuremberg rally, I think that actually um Jones' rhetoric and the um antics of the petition organizers, not to mention then the subsequent um uh the subsequent um uh discrediting of many of the petitions and the signatures, etc. Uh I think it actually did, it did contribute to New Zealanders' approach to this. Um and and to your point, I think many New Zealanders were repelled by this. Not to mention the fact that, and and I know um it's it's not entirely straightforward, but when you obsess about um um the if we can describe it as the sexual act, um, which is what um Jones did, um, it's it completely negates the fact that actually um uh for most homosexual men, perhaps I shouldn't generalize. Look, it's actually about it's about a couple of blokes who love each other, actually. So sex is a part of that, but um the obsession with sex is is really uh quite um um uh presents a completely unbalanced view of what it really was, which is that a couple of blokes actually happen to love each other, they want to move in together, they want to live together, they want to live together like like any other uh couple, and that should be entirely kosher. So that's really what it was about at the end of the day. But um this obsession with the with the um uh the the the sex act associated with homosexuality, I think probably was quite re repelling to a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

Yeah, yeah, that Newenberg rally thing. Um some of the images that came came out of it, it just didn't look great. And there was a um pastor, an American pastor who was who came here and was doing some talk back and everything. And I think that Especially, especially the Kiwis of that era, you know, they probably wouldn't have wouldn't have taken kindly to an American coming in and and and bullying it was, you know.

SPEAKER_02 34:40

Well, I I remember hearing the evidence that there was an I think it was a Gillette advert at one stage when television was was new with an American accent, and it actually impacted negatively on their sales. So to your point, so yeah, that's right. I think they would have been a part of that. And um yeah, anyway, I mean the the the significant thing around what happened at '84 really is that unlike the previous MPs who had said they were prepared to promote um uh let's describe it as homosexual law reform. So you had um Warren Freer, for example, you had Ven Young, um, who had all said they were prepared to put forward such a resolution, but Fran realised that she would need to campaign and basically campaigned for 18 months, um, took a significant personal toll on her. Her office was inundated with some of the most vile um communications, and so uh she realized that this was actually going to be hard graft, and she went out and did the Mahi to make sure um that she spoke to as many people and audiences as possible, and um, that was the critical turning point, unlike previous attempts at homosexual law reform in New Zealand. Um, and that's to her great uh credit, of course, to this day.

SPEAKER_01 35:58

I think she had to flee her house once or twice because of threats.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

Right. It wouldn't surprise me. We live very nearby, and in fact, I babysat her children when she was off uh uh doing um some of the campaign events, but she really wasn't at home for much of that 18-month period, and she was backed very strongly by some of her colleagues, uh including people like Ruth Dyson, who went on to be a Labour MP, and Judy Keel, who was already a Labour MP. So she was supported in that, but including by um uh a um group of Wellington gay activists and lesbians, um, who played a not insignificant role as well. But um, yeah, it was really her willingness to actually take this on and campaign for it that led to its success in a way that previous attempts had not. I think Trevor Mallard was very helpful too.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Was that correct? Yep. Yep. Um you said earlier that, and this is something that, you know, thematically I pulled out of all the research that I was doing too, that um this was quite a fractured community. It wasn't even really a community, you know, that's possibly an overused term when speaking about a lot of different, you know, uh communities, if we don't have a better word. Um, but uh but they did come together when it mattered uh at this moment.

SPEAKER_02 37:18

Yeah, because they had a they had a clear focus. And um same um uh although to a lesser extent when same-sex marriage came campaign was rundane. And I think there's a lesson here for all of those of us who've been involved in in change that it's much easier to focus on a specific goal and a specific target uh than to um pursue more much more nebulous ends. Uh and so that was certainly the case with homosexual law reform where a wide range of of people with a diversity of views, um uh, including you know, conservative clergy people, uh, right through to radical uh activists were able to coalesce because there was a clear objective. And um I think there's a lesson there, as I say, for all of us who are involved in in change, that having a specific objective to focus on, including, say, same-sex marriage, would be another example, does mobilize people rather than more generalized campaigns for whatever it might be that we want to achieve.

SPEAKER_01 38:25

Yeah, because I guess that, you know, it's it's it's it's important that people understand the diversity within these communities. And and my fear for a long time with um, you know, hate speech laws or that kind of thing is that it can be the minorities within minority groups that end up getting silenced.

Hate Speech Fears And Diversity Within Rainbow

SPEAKER_01 38:45

I think some of the gender-critical feminists and people like that have felt many are lesbian, not all of them, but but there are there is a lesbian faction and they feel quite sidelined and silenced. Um it's important that we do uh understand that a group like a group, because as you say, at the end of the day, what's it about? It's about two people wanting to be in love. If we apply that to the heterosexual community, we're never gonna look at them as a blob. We're not gonna do that. We're gonna, we're gonna understand there's diversity within it, as we should with the gay community. So that's part of it. Having that common cause is is great, as you say, and and very specific goals to achieve. But we still, yeah, there is gonna be diversity there. And I think that's that's a really important aspect of it. And when we when we cannot, you know, when when there are speech restrictions, even even ones that, you know, minority communities could be calling for, there's a good chance that not everyone's on the same page with that.

SPEAKER_02 39:52

And it was epitomized when the um the gay publication Your Ex and Ollie, the editor, and I've discussed this with them, so I'm not being um uh duplicitous, but uh they wrote that uh Peter Thiel, um, who of course is invested now in Central Otago, um, and probably one of the wealthiest men in the world and who backed Trump uh could not be gay because he had backed Trump. Um and um, regardless of your views on on Trump, or indeed Peter Thiel, um, the idea that if you are gay, you have to have a certain set of views and values. Um, even if you thought that was desirable, you only need to go to any gathering of of um of rainbow people to know that it's nonsensical and there's as many diverse views within uh the rainbow community as there is within the general community. So we tend to impose these um expectations in terms of views and values on on groups, um, but often um even even if that were the aspiration, the reality is that those um uh those um views are often uh very diverse within those groups. I remember sitting with Brownlee once, Jerry Brownlee, during the um same-sex marriage um debate, for example, and saying to him uh, you know, that Jerry, you need to realise that same-sex marriage is actually a conservative measure. It's a measure that basically uh provides to same-sex attracted people the same um measure of things like property rights and property protections as non-gay people have. Um and it's essentially a conservative measure. And he turned to me and said, I wish that you'd told me this when the debate started, because it would have changed my whole attitude towards it. But um the assumption is that uh that that yeah, that the anything that the rainbow community promotes is a radical measure, and uh, and yet, of course, experience suggests that that is not the case, not to mention the fact that, as I say, rainbow people are just as

AIDS Stories And Public Health Argument

SPEAKER_02 42:05

diverse in their views and values as any other part of the community.

SPEAKER_01 42:09

So we'll wrap up in a minute, but I I do want to touch on the the AIDS aspect to it, because for me this was the most um when I say moving, I I'd say harrowing part of the research. Um I was speaking to people that were um that had um just back up a bit. There was a story about a nine he would have been in his early 20s. So this is a young young person, my son's age, and he's come back home from Australia, and he's got AIDS, and he's one of our first patients, basically. And this is very much in the early days. So he comes home with a death sentence, and he knows exactly what it means, and his parents disown him, so he can't go home, he's dying, and his parents don't want to have anything to do with him. So he ends up in a flat in Wellington completely alone, with uh some people in the community bringing him groceries to keep him going because he's not really going out very much, and and a family that doesn't want to have anything to do with him. I think there was a sister that was calling him every now and again from overseas. I could I could have that wrong. I mean, I'm getting emotional talking about it because like hearing that story and putting myself in well, I can't put myself in the shoes of the parents. I just cannot fathom how you could do that to your own child.

SPEAKER_02 43:50

Um Well, probably the chances are that not only was um uh the the situation um the truth. Tragic situation with AIDS, but probably it's the first time his parents knew that he was gay. So it was it was in many of these situations, it was double whammy, not only having to deal with coming out as homosexual, but also revealing um one's health status. These stories um I don't feel have been told. Um uh and I know that the Burnett Foundation has put out some um podcasts around this, which is laudable, but this um uh this experience of New Zealand during the AIDS era is another one of the stories in this country's history, which I don't feel has at has been told adequately. And this is about um the way in which we embraced, for example, the young Australian girl um who came to New Zealand uh with AIDS because uh of the intolerance that she was experiencing in um uh in Australia, then again New Zealand sort of stands out as a model of of acceptance. Um but but to your point, I think this whole era um is um is an extraordinary era. My doctor now retired, but he told me he arrived in New Zealand in 1989 um uh from the UK and quote unquote he arrived and arrived just as age struck in New Zealand. He described these as his war years, i.e. equivalent to the second old war, because he was confronted with that when he arrived. So I I agree with you. I think this is another part of our history that um that there is much to be told of.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

Well, in terms of this um the homosexual law reform, too, there was a an argument that's right that probably helped to get over the line that if we're making this illegal, that's right, some of these people are not gonna get the health care and that's gonna risk more infections as well. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 46:03

And that was a very strong argument I remember people like Helen Clark making to their great credit. Um, and yes, it was used as a very strong argument, and I think a very compelling one, um, and also a very sensible one.

SPEAKER_01 46:18

Well, yeah, well, we've talked for

Closing Reflections And How To Help

SPEAKER_01 46:20

a while now, so I really appreciate your time, Stephen. This has been a great chat. And it sort of occurs to me too, with with this topic. I I think that you know, I could I could do this podcast. Um, this whole podcast could be about this era. I could have Fran on, I could have all these different people on, and we'd get a completely different perspective and and and a very vital perspective. It's there's a lot of moving parts to it, there's a lot of nuance, uh, there's a lot of personalities and fascinating personalities wrapped up in it. You know, you be one of them. Um, so so I thank you.

SPEAKER_02 46:52

And I think uh Dane, because we we finished on a uh perhaps a uh a less than exultant note, that's uh one of the stories to be told too uh is about the contribution that that um homosexual people have made to this country. Um and that's another story I think which is inadequately told, but um uh there has been a disproportionate contribution from um gay people to this country in all fields, and it's one which again um I don't feel has had has been adequately told, but which is one of the outcomes of that extraordinary um momentous uh event in 1986 with the passing of homosexual law reform. So thanks for the opportunity to discuss this with you.

SPEAKER_00 47:39

Thank you for listening to Free to Speak. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and consider sharing the podcast with others. We release new episodes regularly, and subscribing is the easiest way to stay up to date. If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions, you can contact us at podcast at fsu.nz. If you want to find out more about the New Zealand Free Speech Union, visit fsu.nz.