Winston is inciting terrorism

That's the conclusion of a report into security risks against Green MP Benjamin Doyle, in the wake of Winston Peters' waging a homophobic hate-campaign against them:

GRC’s report said a “hostility network” of politicians, commentators, conspiracy theorists, alternative media outlets and those opposed to the rainbow community had produced dehumanising and violent commentary capable of encouraging or inspiring action from a lone-wolf attacker.

“Much of the threat is socially motivated, rooted in deep-seated transphobia, moral panic, and conspiratorial thinking - often under the guise of ‘child protection’” it stated.

[...]

“This is essentially the manufacturing of moral panic to reaffirm us-versus-them dynamics. This also could be indicative of stochastic terrorism becoming an enduring part of NZ political discourse.”

The report found a 75% to 85% chance of Doyle being subjected to stalking and harassment, and a 15% to 25% chance of a physical attack. That's what Winston and his hate network are inciting. And the mainstream media outlets who have spread it for clickbait need to take a good, hard look at themselves and what they are complicit in. The Prime Minister also needs to take a good, hard look at his current Deputy Prime Minister and coalition partners, and consider whether inciting a terrorist attack against an opposition MP is really appropriate behaviour for a Cabinet Minister, or a member of his coalition.

Freedom comes to Barbados

Last year, Barbados they threw out the colonial monarchy. And now, they've legalised gay sex:

A top court in Barbados has struck down colonial-era laws that criminalize gay sex, becoming the third nation in the conservative Caribbean region to do so this year.

The ruling issued Monday by the Barbados high court is a pivotal moment for activists and non-profit organizations who have long fought against such laws on the eastern Caribbean island, including one that demands up to a life sentence for gay men found guilty of having sex.

“It’s gone from a certain ripple effect to a tidal wave in the Caribbean, which is what everyone involved set out to achieve,” said Téa Braun, chief executive of the London-based Human Dignity Trust, a human rights organization.

There's now only 6 countries in the Americas which still criminalise gay sex, and only 67 in the world. This sadly includes far too many in our own region - Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands and Niue all criminalise gay sex, though like Barbados none really enforce it. But as in Barbados, the mere existence of such a law is discriminatory and stigmatises LGBTQ people. It would be nice if these countries followed through on their promises of legalisation.

Good riddance

Its the end of the political year, and with an election coming up, the pre-election retirements have started. Paul Eagle is going, and that's good, because he was a waste of space who spent his time as an MP trying to become mayor of Wellington, rather than doing his job. But the retirement I'm most glad to see is Aupito William Sio. In case anyone has forgotten, Aupito was a rabid opponent of marriage equality, protesting against it alongside people who compared gay people to animals, demanding that the bill be withdrawn, and ultimately voting against it. And as of last year, he regrets none of it. The man is a bigot who panders to the worst bigots in our community. And our parliament is better off without him.

Now can Damien O'Connor fuck off too please?

Bigot schools are acting unlawfully

Earlier in the month we learned about institutionalised transphobia at Bethlehem College. The school is an "integrated school", meaning that it is state-funded while retaining a "special character". Stuff has now taken a look at several other similar schools, and found another three with institutionalised bigotry:

Three more state-funded Christian schools have been identified as having anti-queer policies, prompting advocates to call for a full-scale education inquiry into discrimination against the LGTBQI community.

[...]

The schools – Maranatha Christian School in Lower Hutt, Cornerstone Christian School in Palmerston North, and Matamata Christian School – say they only recognise marriage between a man and a woman, and only acknowledge two genders.

“Homosexual, lesbian or any other relationships or partnerships are seen as the outworking of mankind’s rebellious nature and therefore are not consistent with the school’s Special Christian Character,” Matamata Christian School says in its public statement of beliefs. “The term ‘gender’ is limited to the two separate and distinct sexes, the masculinity of the male and the femininity of the female.”

The bigotry is in the schools' official "statement of beliefs", which forms part of their integration agreement with the Ministry of Education. The problem is that it seems blatantly unlawful: both sex (which includes gender identity) and sexual orientation are prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Human Rights Act. While the Act allows "educational establishment[s] maintained wholly or principally for students of one sex, race, or religious belief, or for students with a particular disability, or for students in a particular age group" to discriminate on those grounds, there is no exemption for sexual orientation, or for sex or gender identity discrimination in co-ed schools. So, the schools are breaching the Human Rights Act.

Is the discrimination authorised by some other statute? It does not seem so. While the old Education Act 1989 authorised the Minister of Education to negotiate and approve integration agreements, which may "prescrib[e] the religious or philosophical instruction and observances that are to form part of the school programme after integration", no part of it authorises departure from the Human Rights Act (nothing in the new Education and Training Act 2020 seems to authorise it either). And insofar as an integration agreement actually contains clauses inconsistent with the Human Rights Act, they are void, and sections 3 and 19 of the BORA mean that they were beyond the power of the government to make anyway. Contracts must be consistent with the law, and the government cannot simply contract out of its legal obligations or ignore them when exercising its powers.

So what should happen? Pretty obviously, the schools should obey the law, cease discriminating against queer and trans students, and remove the offensive sections from their statements of belief. If they refuse, the Minister should exercise their powers under the Act, cancel the integration agreement, and refer them to the Human Rights Commission. The government should not be funding bigotry.

Something is wrong in Tauranga

On Monday, Stuff reported that queer-supporting students at a Tauranga "Christian" school were subjected to chants of "kill the gays". This morning, a building hosting queer and trans groups was burned down in an apparent arson attack:

A building used by Gender Dynamix – an organisation that aims to meet the mental health needs of the transgender and nonbinary community of the Bay of Plenty – has been targetted by a ‘suspicious’ fire.

The fire broke out at the building, which is also the home of advocacy and support service Rainbow Youth, at Tauranga’s Historic Village complex in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Police were called at around 12:45am to the premises on 17th Avenue following a report of a fire.

“It's being treated as suspicious,” confirmed a police spokesperson.

Homophobic harassment, followed by an apparent anti-gay hate crime. Something is very wrong in Tauranga, and it seems like the entire city is being infected by hate and bigotry (see also: their racist museum). I guess we just have to hope that the police catch those responsible. Meanwhile, if you'd like to help Rainbow Youth recover from this, they have a GiveALittle here.

112-8

The Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Act passed its third reading tonight, with only 8 MPs voting against it. The Act prohibits the torture of LGBTQ children by bigots and quacks, protecting their right to be who they are. It will make Aotearoa a safer place for these kids to grow up in, and its passage is something we should all welcome.

So who were the eight bigots? Simon Bridges, Simeon Brown, Melissa Lee, Todd McClay, Simon O'Connor, Chris Penk, Michael Woodhouse and Shane Reti. None of them bothered to speak to explain their hate - too ashamed, I guess. The thing they all have in common is that they are all from National, which has generally been on the wrong side of history on every vote about gay rights. The good news is that there were only 8 of them this time (of 33 National MPs). Which I guess goes to show how far the dial has shifted, and how indefensible this sort of bigotry is becoming. But if National wants to shift that dial further, and move in the right direction for once, it could make it clear that these MPs have no future in the party, and de-select them at the next election.

On the wrong side of history, like always

Parliament debated the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill this afternoon, and voted to send it to select committee by a margin of 87 to 33. The only party opposed? National.

This is a bill aimed at ending the torture of LGBTQ kids and giving them the freedom to be who they are. But under the guise of "needing more debate" (which they then explicitly voted against), National opposed that. Which is I guess what happens when you get wiped out at the polls and only your religious bigot rump survives. But its another example of how the party and its members consistently stand on the wrong side of history (and then salves their conscience by pretending to apologise for it in their valedictory speeches). And for a party which claims to be the main opposition party, its absolutely appalling.

Ending conversion "therapy"

The government has introduced a bill to outlaw homophobic conversion "therapy":

Practices intended to change or suppress someone's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, also referred to as gay conversion therapy, will become a criminal offence under legislation announced today.

Minister of Justice Kris Faafoi said today the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill had been introduced to Parliament.

Measures proposed in the Bill were aimed at ending conversion practices which didn't work, were widely discredited, and caused harm to rainbow communities and the wider community, Faafoi said.

Good. This "therapy" is basicly an attempt to torture and bully the gay away. Despite the name, it serves no therapeutic purpose whatsoever. Instead, its directly discriminatory, an attempt to stop people being who they are, and we should all be glad that the government is outlawing it.

The bill is here. It makes it clear that actual medical practice or just the mere expression of bigoted religious beliefs do not qualify. Instead, it is aimed at discriminatory and harmful quackery. There are significant safeguards against prosecution. It looks good, and the sooner Parliament passes it, the better.

More bigotry in Hungary

Last year Hungary ended legal recognition of trans people and banned gay people from adopting children. Now, they've followed that up with a Russian-style "propaganda law", banning "promotion" of homosexuality in schools or on TV:

Hungary’s parliament has passed a law banning gay people from featuring in school educational materials or TV shows for under-18s, as Viktor Orbán’s ruling party intensified its campaign against LGBT rights.

The national assembly passed the legislation by 157 votes to one, after MPs in the ruling Fidesz party ignored a last-minute plea by one of Europe’s leading human rights officials to abandon the plan as “an affront against the rights and identities of LGBTI persons”.

[...]

The Hungarian legislation outlaws sharing information with under-18s that the government considers to be promoting homosexuality or gender change.

There's an obvious parallel with the UK's infamous and now-repealed Section 28. While it was never tested in court, one of the reasons for its repeal (besides basic decency) was that it was believed to be inconsistent with the European Convention on Human Rights. The Council of Europe seems to think Hungary's law is the same, describing it as "run[ning] counter to international and European human rights standards". Hopefully this time there will be a legal challenge, and this institutional homophobia will be outlawed forever in Europe.

Equality wins in the US

The US Supreme Court has ruled that existing anti-discrimination law covers sexual orientation and identity:

The top court in the US has ruled that employers who fire workers for being gay or transgender are breaking the country's civil rights laws.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court said federal law, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, should be understood to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

The ruling is a major win for LGBT workers and their allies.

This is despite Trump trying to stack the court with Conservatives - it appears that even they can read a statute, and understand that firing someone for being gay or trans necessarily involves consideration of sex, and punishing them for behaviour that they would not question if they had been of a different sex. A lot of people on the American right are probably wondering what the point of court-stacking is if these people turn out to have limits to their hackery (not everyone is as limitless as Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas). Because for them, its not actually about the law, but the "social order" they think it upholds: an order which has people like them at the top, and everyone else subject to their whim. Hopefully this case will be another rock on their grave.

New Zealand should not fund bigotry

Two years ago, the Cook Islands government announced that it was planning to join the civilised world and decriminalise consensual homosexual sex between men. Now, they've reversed their position, and decided to criminalise lesbians into the bargain:

Two years ago, in a step welcomed by many people including the gay and lesbian communities, the Pacific nation's Parliament removed "indecent acts between men" and sodomy from a draft Crimes Bill.

On Saturday, select committee chairman Tingika Elikana said they would reinstate the clause.

In fact, in an unintended consequence of moves to make legislation gender-neutral, the anticipated effect of the bill will be to also criminalise sex between women, as well as between men.

The select committee's recommendation to Parliament would reinstate a penalty of up to five years' imprisonment, and a sentence of seven years' prison for consensual sodomy.

New Zealand currently provides $66.17 million a year to the Cook Islands in development assistance - about a quarter of their entire government budget. I doubt New Zealanders are very happy with the thought of their taxes supporting a foreign government to support bigotry and put gay people in jail. Respect for basic human rights should be a fundamental condition of any funding, and if the Cooks refuse to observe them, we should cut it entirely.

Barbaric

The Ugandan government wants to murder gay people:

Uganda has announced plans to impose the death penalty on homosexuals.

The bill, colloquially known as “Kill the Gays” in Uganda, was nullified five years ago on a technicality, but the government said on Thursday it plans to resurrect it within weeks.

The government said the legislation would curb a rise in “unnatural sex” in the east African nation.

The death penalty is barbaric enough. Seeking to apply it to private acts between consent adults is utterly mind-boggling. That's simply not the proper domain of the state, let alone of state murder.

Last time Uganda's bigoted government tried to push this law through, the international community responded with sanctions. Hopefully we will do the same again.

Botswana decriminalises homosexuality

Botswana's High Court has ruled that colonial laws outlawing homosexuality are unconstitutional:

High court judges in Botswana have ruled that laws criminalising same-sex relations are unconstitutional and should be struck down, in a major victory for gay rights campaigners in Africa.

Jubilant activists in the packed courtroom cheered the unanimous decision, which came a month after a setback in Kenya when a court rejected an attempt to repeal similar colonial-era laws.

“Human dignity is harmed when minority groups are marginalised,” Justice Michael Leburu said as he delivered the judgment. “Sexual orientation is not a fashion statement. It is an important attribute of one’s personality.”

[...]

“A democratic nation is one that embraces tolerance, diversity, and open-mindedness … societal inclusion is central to ending poverty and fostering shared prosperity … The state cannot be a sheriff in people’s bedrooms,” Leburu said.

Good. And hopefully this ruling will be echoed in other countries suffering under the homophobic legacy of British colonialism.

Bigotry loses in Romania

Romanians went to the polls over the weekend to vote in a constitutional referendum to ban same-sex marriage. Or rather, they didn't - because the referendum failed due to miserably low turnout:

A referendum to establish a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in Romania has failed - after only a fifth of voters bothered to turn out.

Romanians were being asked whether they wanted the constitution changed to specify that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.

But just 20.4% of eligible voters cast ballots - short of the 30% needed.

The referendum appears to have been a plot by the government to distract from ongoing corruption scandals by appealing to bigotry. Fortunately it didn't work. Those who opposed the change boycotted the poll, holding boycott parties instead. Unfortunately Romania still doesn't recognise equal marriage in law - but at least there's not a constitutional prohibition on it. Meaning that that failure to recognise can easily be overturned by the European Court on Human Rights when it catches up with the rest of society and recognises such legal bigotry as fundamentally incompatible with the ECHR's affirmations of equality and non-discrimination.

Wedding cake bigotry is illegal

So, some Auckland bigots have decided to try their hand at US-style wedding cake bigotry, and refused to provide a wedding cake for a marriage:

A same-sex couple is "shocked and upset" that their request for a wedding cake was refused by a Warkworth baker who said marriage equality was against her beliefs.

Moe Barr and Sasha Patrick both live in Brisbane, but since Australia had not yet legalised same-sex marriage when they got engaged last year, they planned their wedding at Waipu in Northland for next January.

When they approached Kath's Devine Cakes in Warkworth to make the cake, "Kath" refused, saying despite the New Zealand government legalising same-sex marriage, she believed it was not correct and therefore she would not make the wedding cake.

This is pretty obviously illegal. The Human Rights Act 1993 prohibits discriminating in the provision of goods and services on the basis of sexual orientation, just as it prohibits it on the basis of race or disability. While this must be interpreted through the lens of the Bill of Rights Act, which affirms freedom of religion, the consensus when the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill was passed was that people had no right to refuse to provide services to gay couples, any more than they would to interracial ones. For that reason, a National MP put up a bigot amendment which would have allowed his fellow bigots to refuse services in exactly this manner. It was voted down, 79-36.

As for what should happen, the Human Rights Commission should take these bigots to the Human Rights Review Tribunal, which should award damages for hurt and humiliation (and pour encourager les autres). And of course, no-one should buy cake from these bigots ever again. Because this sort of shit isn't acceptable, any more than refusing to serve Maori is.

Homophobia loses in Trinidad

The High Court of Trinidad and Tobago has struck down the country's colonial sodomy law:

A judge in Trinidad and Tobago has declared the nation’s laws banning sodomy and consensual homosexual acts are unconstitutional, a ruling that could potentially lead to the complete decriminalization of homosexuality.

Judge Devindra Rampersand of the High Court of Trinidad and Tobago ruled on Thursday that Sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offenses Act are unconstitutional as applied to acts between consenting adults.

The court will meet again in July to determine whether the sections of the law should be struck down in their entirety or just in part.

LGBTQ activist Jason Jones challenged the colonial-era sodomy law in February 2017 by suing the nation’s attorney general, claiming that the prohibitions on “buggery” and “acts of serious indecency” between two men violate his — and, by extension, other LGBTQ people’s — right to privacy and freedom of expression.

Ironicly, it was the T&T legislature's own homophobia which allowed this. They had successively rewritten the law to increase the penalty to 25 years imprisonment - an act which removed the law from the protection of a "savings clause" preventing judicial review of colonial laws, and placing it squarely under the jurisdiction of the courts.

There's still a long way to go. Trinidad and Tobago is still a homophobic society which permits discrimination and employment and has a legal ban on homosexuals entering the country. But hopefully this ruling is the first step towards making it a better place.

Bigot nation

Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning the use of the death penalty for consensual same-sex acts. The usual suspects - Saudi Arabia, Iraq, China - opposed it. Appallingly, the United States joined them:

The U.S. on Sept. 29 voted against a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution that condemns the death penalty for those found guilty of committing consensual same-sex sexual acts.

The resolution — which Belgium, Benin, Costa Rica, France, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia and Switzerland introduced — passed by a 27-13 vote margin.

Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa, Togo, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Albania, Croatia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Slovenia, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Paraguay, Venezuela, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland and the U.K. supported the resolution. Botswana, Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, China, India, Iraq, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joined the U.S. in opposing it.

Kenya, Nigeria, Tunisia, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea and Cuba abstained.

The resolution specifically condemns “the imposition of the death penalty as a sanction for specific forms of conduct, such as apostasy, blasphemy, adultery and consensual same-sex relations” and expresses “serious concern that the application of the death penalty for adultery is disproportionately imposed on women.” It also notes “poor and economically vulnerable persons and foreign nationals are disproportionately subjected to the death penalty, that laws carrying the death penalty are used against persons exercising their rights to freedom of expression, thought, conscience, religion, and peaceful assembly and association, and that persons belonging to religious or ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented among those sentenced to the death penalty.”

So its now official US foreign policy that gay people should be murdered. Isn't America great?

More Australian cruelty

The Australian government is currently trying to close its Manus Island concentration camp and abandon its victims (who they should be giving homes in Australia) to persecution in Papua New Guinea. But there's a group of refugees who face extra persecution there: gay men:

For gay men who fled persecution in their homelands to seek asylum in Australia, detention on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island offers a special kind of torture.

Homosexuality is illegal in PNG.

[...]

A detainee advocating for gay men on the island said there were about 20 in the prison camp.

Amir Taghinia said it was clear there were no options for these men on Manus, or in other parts of PNG, if Australia forced them to stay.

"We have witnessed many of these guys have been very very badly traumatised. They have been assaulted, they have been insulted," he said.

"These people will face a very harsh life. They will be abused in Papua New Guinea. They will very likely get into trouble and they will eventually be persecuted by the Papua New Guinea government."

Many of these men are fleeing regimes which could persecute them for the sexuality. And Australia is planning to dump them in the hands of a government which would do exactly the same. That's both immoral, and a blatant violation of the Refugee Convention.

As for what can be done about it: if PNG persecutes people on the basis of their sexual orientation, then that is immediate grounds for victims to be granted asylum here, in New Zealand. And if Australia doesn't like that, fuck them.

Bigotry is not for the public benefit

Bigot-group Family First has been stripped of its charity status by the Charities Registration Board:

The Charities Registration Board said in a decision today the reason was "because it does not advance exclusively charitable purposes".

"The board considers that Family First has a purpose to promote its own particular views about marriage and the traditional family that cannot be determined to be for the public benefit in a way previously accepted as charitable," said chairman Chairman Roger Holmes Miller.

"Family First has the freedom to continue to communicate its views and influence policy and legislation but the board has found that Family First's pursuit of those activities do not qualify as being for the public benefit in a charitable sense."

Or, to put it another way, hate and bigotry are not publicly beneficial. Which is pretty obvious, really.

Family First will naturally be appealing. I hope they fail. Not that this will put them out of business - they'll just need to pay tax like normal people, rather than being able to spew their hate tax-free.

About time II

Last week National finally introduced its bill to wipe historic homosexual convictions. But in addition to the bill, Parliament will also be formally apologising to the victims of its bigotry:

Parliament will issue a formal apology to men convicted of homosexual crimes under old laws.

Justice Minister Amy Adams will move the apology during the first reading of a bill to expunge the crimes from the record on Wednesday.

The motion will read: "I move that this House apologise to those homosexual New Zealanders who were convicted for consensual adult activity, and recognise the tremendous hurt and suffering those men and their families have gone through, and the continued effects the convictions have had on them."

Good. While its not compensation, a formal apology is better than nothing.

Meanwhile, I'm wondering how Winston Peters will vote on this. He's one of the few MP's who were in Parliament when Homosexual Law Reform passed (the others are Trevor Mallard, Annette King and Peter Dunne), and the only surviving MP to have voted against it. Has he resiled from his historic bigotry? Or is he going to vote against this apology?