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Alison Laurie is the programme director of the Gender and Women's Studies at Victoria University. Um, Alison is a longtime activist. Long stand activist. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, where should I begin? Um, yes. Well, I, um I come from Wellington, Um, my background as, uh is [00:00:30] Maori, and, um, my, uh my father's people, um, come from the south island, And, uh, they were Maori, and and my mother's people was Scottish and, uh, from the Channel Islands. And, um yeah, and they were all rather, uh, interesting people with, uh uh, a lot of initiative [00:01:00] and that sort of thing. So I suppose when I came along And, of course, I'm part of the baby boom generation with the generation who, um, grew up in the aftermath of World War Two. And the question then was that, you know, we were told that the Second World War had been fought for us. Um, we got everything really, uh, free milk and schools, apples, free education, free medical. And so we kind [00:01:30] of grew up with a sense of entitlement. So I think, uh, throughout the world, really, when my generation came of age and understood that we're going to be discriminated against because, uh, we were queer or because we were women or, uh because of our ethnic background or any of those kinds of reasons. This is where you get the big social movements of the 19 sixties that people began meeting together and saying, Oh, this is not acceptable and [00:02:00] working out ways that, uh, we could do something about it. Now let's not say that people didn't do things before. There's a long trail that goes right back, Um, especially in terms of queer activism, a long trail that goes back at least to the mid 19th century with, uh, people who fought very hard to overcome discrimination, to try to get the laws changed to try to make a difference. Um, the interesting thing is, is that as [00:02:30] we start coming of age in the 19 sixties, we we didn't know about any of that because that was all a hidden history for us. We weren't being taught about that. It took a long time before we could begin to uncover the fact that there had been people before us and those people had actually had quite developed politics and that we had a great job to learn from them. So that was that was important, too. And I suppose it's also been important to, um, my generation that we left a very good [00:03:00] trail so that that kind of invisibility would not happen. So as easily, again doesn't mean that that can't happen. But, you know, and and part of doing things like this recording is, uh is all part of that, too, that we leave as many traces as we can in as many ways as we can so that something is sure to survive. And people will know. Uh, people of the future will know, uh, who was here and what we thought about it and what we tried to change and where we succeeded and where we didn't. And [00:03:30] they can learn from that as well. So, um, in the sixties, uh, you know, the it was very difficult. Um, for men, they could, you know, any, uh, male homosexual behaviour. Uh, men could go to prison for seven years, and they did, and we'd be people who did. And the police entrapped them. Uh, so that, uh and they would fall into those traps and they'd be taken off to prison. Um, [00:04:00] for lesbians, there weren't. Actually, there wasn't actually a law about, uh, sex between women, Uh, except the 1961 crimes Act that add in lesbianism for the first time by criminalising women over 21 with girls under 16, which you could agree with. But once you put a definition into law, you can play around with those ages. So So that was a bit of a concern. Especially since there were people who thought that Oh, why should women get away with this? [00:04:30] So, what age were you, then? Oh, well, uh, yeah, coming into, you know, my my twenties. Yeah. So you were really aware of what was happening to to gay men as well as the act, and that included lesbians. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We were absolutely aware of that. Yeah. Um, and the thing, Uh, then, um, although men organised here with the Dorian Society, but they the women, they wouldn't have lesbians as members, so we we couldn't [00:05:00] belong to that. And also, um, you didn't have, uh you had six o'clock closing people. You know, students frequently say to me, Oh, tell us about the lesbian bars, you know, in the 19 fifties in New Zealand. And I mean, I have been reading a lot of, uh, history from America. Um, you know, in New Zealand, after 1919, 18, you had six o'clock closing, and you and pubs were shut on Sundays and the alcohol leg, you know, legislation around alcohol was very strict. And [00:05:30] when you couldn't serve food in pubs, for example, um, you couldn't have any entertainment. This was all thought to encourage people to drink, and women were not served in a public bar. Women could be served in ladies and escorts bars called cats bars with the alcohol cost twice as much as in the public bar. Um, and the idea of the ladies and escorts was to help prevent prostitution because it really only prostitutes would want to go to pubs. You see, So, um, really, there weren't many places that lesbians could meet publicly, [00:06:00] Uh, except for coffee bars. And so there were There were a number of coffee bars, and, uh, we were lucky in the post war period that a lot of, um, people had fled Europe, especially Jewish people who'd come to New Zealand and when they arrived from the thirties onwards and when they arrived, they were fairly horrified to see that there was so little here. And so they started delicates and [00:06:30] coffee bars and things like that. So gradually, you know, we got a few amenities like that. And these coffee bars in particular the in Auckland and the Tate here, uh, became important meeting places for, uh for us. And we called ourselves camp. We didn't really call ourselves queer. That was regarded as a term of derision. And lesbians didn't use the term lesbian. It was also a word you wouldn't use. When did lesbian come into you? Not till [00:07:00] the 19 seventies. For lesbian feminist politics, it's a whole different question. So we called ourselves camp, and the etymology of that, uh, is probably we we normally we thought it was spelled with a K. Um, and it was used in Australia as well. And the etymology of that was said to be, uh, that it stood for known as male prostitute. And it was an abbreviation used by the New South Wales police on files of men who are suspected of being homosexuals. [00:07:30] So women used that we used that as well. Yeah. Yeah. So that was the term we used. Um, so you know, So we had we largely would meet at private parties. Um, and we became aware of some of the overseas organisations. We became aware of the daughters of in their magazine, the ladder, and we then became aware of the minorities research group, Uh, in London, Uh, producing, uh, Rena three. [00:08:00] It was very difficult and almost impossible to subscribe to these things because you couldn't get foreign currency very easily, um, to send off and subscribe to them. But it was easier with the British one. So, um, I spent time in Australia. Um, I ran away to Australia, actually, when I was 17. Um, what did your parents think about that? Well, they'd found this woman in my wardrobe, so Oh, goodness. So that it kind of literally out of the closet, [00:08:30] literally. So, um, So then what was their reaction? Was it like you? You're crazy, or you go to jail or what have we done or No, no, no. Um, my parents both worked and, um uh, my friend. She lived with an uncle and aunt here and I lived at home, and, um, I just started a university. That was the end of my first attempt to come to university. Uh, yeah. And so, [00:09:00] uh, we would because my parents both worked. We would, um, she would we would drive there in her car, she had a car. And, um, you know, that's where we could be together. And, uh, but the neighbours, uh, had suggested to my parents that I had a man that I was, um, because I could see this car outside. So my parents came home to catch this man, but instead they found this woman hiding in the wardrobe. So we were we just Yeah. So we just went off [00:09:30] together, and, uh, I, you know, I left university and we lived together, and then and we met a couple more people and that sort of thing, and we went and went to Australia together. Oh, yeah? Yeah, Well, uh, we went to Australia and, uh, the friends that we'd gone flatting with we flat here in Wellington for about three or four months. Um, they really had to get to Australia because, uh, the mother of one of them was, uh trying to get her daughter committed because she was under 21. That's [00:10:00] what they could do. You see, Because you're crazy, Because you're Of course, it's a symptom of, uh, madness. So your parents could have you committed And, uh, you know, homosexuality wasn't removed from the psychiatric illnesses. Uh, diagnostics until 1973. Simply true. Um, so that was a very real threat then. Anyway, I I had, uh, seen so I. I spent, uh, we together, I suppose a couple of years in Australia and, uh, [00:10:30] saw the communities there and all of that sort of thing. It was pretty wild, Pretty rough, Uh, communities in those cities, a lot of New Zealanders and of New Zealanders and rough In what way? Kind of parties or just hard or parties. Um and, um uh, A lot of Well, for example, the the pub where lesbians met and and many gay men was the Rex Hotel in Kings Cross [00:11:00] in Sydney. And the police raided it all the time. And the police would even though what also there you couldn't. There was no law against lesbians, but the police, the vice squad thought there should be so they would, uh, try to find reasons to arrest lesbians. They'd say they were drunk. Um, you know, there were all kinds of stories, uh, about how lesbians got arrested, you know, throw a push a hotel glass into their hands [00:11:30] and say you've been found for a stolen hotel glass, you know, sort of stuff, Uh, in a way, like a big game between a set of players and a whole lot of other people. It's very much, very much outsiders. And also, of course, in those hotels which were the only places where these vin and came in could were welcome. Because, remember, many hotel owners wouldn't have you there. You'd come in and they'd you know, you'd be thrown out. Um, so those with the hotels were, you know, quite big criminal elements [00:12:00] also met, uh, you know, there was close association with prostitution. Um, some lesbians in Australia, um, did live on the earnings of prostitutes because people had problems getting employment. Um, so they were pretty difficult. Uh uh. You know, public communities now, there were also a very discrete networks, middle of middle class people. But the thing is, if you were young, you really didn't have a lot of access to those middle class networks because [00:12:30] they would immediately think, you know, you know, gosh, you know, an underage person could be trouble. Um, that sort of thing. So there wasn't anything like the kinds of communities that you know you might think about today, that you've got public communities who are largely young, largely working class and who do have quite a few problems and who associate, You know, there's a close association with with criminal networks as well, so there's constant fear of police [00:13:00] harassment. The police, also in New South Wales, had a had some rules which made it quite easy to arrest. And and that was true, actually in South Australia and Victoria as well. Uh, the laws which were called the consorting laws. And they've been set up at the end of the beginning of the 20th century to break up the gangs in Australia. And that was the the charge was habitual consorting with known criminals. Now habitual. That meant that you'd have to be booked, [00:13:30] um, about from memory. Something like about eight times as consorting with a known criminal now a known criminal is not one that's been charged, just known, just known to the police or suspected of being a criminal. So if you were hanging out with gay men, they're known criminals because they're suspected of homosexuality, which is a criminal offence. Uh, and of these bookings, only four needed to be, uh they needed to tell you the others could be silent bookings. So then you might get this charge put against [00:14:00] you a year later, and you've got to prove that you were not doing something on the 21st of July 2 years ago, but so that was was pretty successful. And you could get a two year jail sentence for that. So these were Australian laws. New Zealand laws, similar or quite different. They didn't have consorting laws, but they certainly had, um they certainly had that. You know, there was a squad, and they certainly had, uh, similar attitudes to lesbians. And certainly some of those police officers did absolutely [00:14:30] think that it was wrong that lesbians should be getting away with it. So what brought you back from the The rough bars of Sydney came back broadcasting? Um, did you try to go back to university or you know, I did go. I did go back and do a couple of units part time, but by that point, I was, you know, working full time. So, um yes. So I did that. And, um and then, you know, and that was the time. Really? Where? You know, we've got these communities here. [00:15:00] Uh, those kinds of things are are happening. Uh, and we know about, uh, these associations that are beginning or have begun in the United States and in Britain, and that holds out a whole other kind of hope that you that you might have a political organisation that's working for social change. And I was already involved with things like CND the campaign for nuclear disarmament. I'd been involved with that since I was at school. Um, so you've always kind of felt social change, [00:15:30] social change, and also that social change was possible And that you could change you and that You know why? Why shouldn't you change things? You know why? Why should you just accept things if that you believe are wrong? You know why? Who are these people that have the right to tell you how to live your life? do you feel that that drive of we can change things is possible? Is that something that's still sifting around in the ether kind of today in in these times or [00:16:00] Oh, I think that's a hard question. Um, I don't know. Um, I think the problem is when you get an economic recession, is that you have, um, you you can start to get a kind of sense of hopelessness, and you also start to get people who go along with the status quo because they don't want to rock the boat. And they think that if they if they put their head down that you know, they're not gonna get there, that they're not gonna, you [00:16:30] know, be the one that gets hit on. But of course, that's never the case. You know, it's what I call the Nemo syndrome. You know, that's what happened to people in, uh, Nazi Germany, you know? But I said, you know, first they came for the, uh, you know, Jews and I wasn't a Jew, so I didn't say anything. Then they came for the Social Democrats, and I wasn't, you know, so forth. And eventually they came for me and By that time, there was nobody left to speak up. And I think we forget that. [00:17:00] You know that, um that if you don't try to prevent something, it will get worse. You know, there's no I. I think there's no point hoping that that's all there's gonna be that we'll just allow this little thing to happen. We'll just allow a little thing to happen, like get rid of AC C. And that will be all because it doesn't work like that. If they're successful, then more things will happen. You can. That's the one thing you can be certain of. And, you know, history proves that to us time and time and time again. And that's [00:17:30] not gonna change. You know, once once someone has some successes, then they continue. I mean, and we all would, you know, we all would. We all do. In whatever thing we believe in, you know? Um, yes. Anyway, um, I, uh uh I went to Britain. Uh, I joined, uh, MRG, um I, uh MRG the Minorities research group, which was the first lesbian, um, [00:18:00] association. It was kind of largely social, but that in itself was political. To have something like that. We had discussion groups and there was actually a whole network of people right throughout England is It was started by a woman called Langley who was pretty shocked when she started it, because immediately she got phone calls from all over Britain of women saying, I'm in love with the woman next door. I don't know what to do. If my husband finds out, I think I'm going to kill myself, you know? So suddenly it was very apparent that there is this [00:18:30] huge need of people, uh, who were very isolated and that there was a need to create some kind of, you know, social services, those sorts of things. So anyway, so I was there, and then, um, I went travelling, as you do, and, uh, I wound up in Denmark, and I lived there for a long time and became a Danish citizen. And I was involved with the, uh, Lesbian gay Association there, which [00:19:00] was called the, uh, in 1948. But because it had been founded in 1948. Um, and that was, um, that was very good to get that experience of living in in a society which had a very strong commitment to social justice, which was very progressive, where you worked with and learned from people. Uh, you know, in, you know, in one of those typical, uh, European quite conservative lesbian gay [00:19:30] associations which had been founded after the war years, who actually they they they were the inheritors of all those pre-war organisations about which we hadn't known anything like the Hirschfield organisation founded in 18 95 in Berlin. Like the extensive network of, um organisations that existed until wiped out by the Nazis in 1933 in Germany and then throughout occupied Europe. Uh, about which, [00:20:00] uh, I'd know nothing until, you know, going to live and work in those countries. And even they were only beginning to uncover information about what had gone before because so much of what had gone before it had been so systematically destroyed by by the Nazis. So anyway, that was a very good working with that organisation. And then, um you know, then gay liberation came. I was there when, uh, gay liberation began. And, uh, that really revolutionised, [00:20:30] uh, the political approach as we took because the approach of gay liberation wasn't that there's a set minority that should be seeking, uh, civil rights or human rights. Uh, the view of gay liberation, I mean, is still totally revolutionary today, which is, you know, the aim was to bring up the lesbian and gay man in everybody's head. And the problem is heterosexuality. So let's examine that and see just what's wrong with that and why it's compulsory. And actually, if it was so [00:21:00] natural, why it wouldn't need to be made, uh, compulsory, because everybody would just be, you know, flocking to it. Um, So those messages of ga libration were very powerful and very important. And and, you know, that was how our politics then developed. Uh, and then, um very soon, um, lesbian feminism developed. And, uh, because, uh, with the newly emergent, [00:21:30] uh, ideas of Gala and the big proliferation of a lot of people joining those organisations, you got a lot of very conservative gay men who had never really worked with women. And in fact, they were more conservative, really than straight men might have been. But at least straight men had, you know, if they lived with a woman, then you know they'd be trying to get along with her, and she might be, you know, telling them things. But But some of those gay men really had had very [00:22:00] little to do with women, and they didn't want to and that their idea about working in a mixed organisation, these new ones who were coming in was well, yes, well, of course, the women should be doing the typing and making the coffee. And of course, they would be making the important speeches and so lesbian issue taken with that, indeed. So lesbians started to feel quite agitated. And this is a worldwide thing, too. You get reports from New New York and right throughout the United States, Canada and Australia and New Zealand. Same things are happening. Um, and in the women's movement in the feminist movement, there's a similar [00:22:30] thing happening because as more conservative women begin to join these women's organisations, you know, because the the vanguard are are are pretty out there so they don't care, and a lot of them are lesbians. But then you know you want to attract more women, and then they're there. And then those women are saying, Oh, people might think we're all lesbians. Oh, don't take that sign along to the demonstration that says lesbians support abortion rights. Don't put lesbian on the sign. Everybody will think we're lesbians. [00:23:00] Um, so lesbians kind of found themselves in a position of, you know, dealing with the homophobia, the Lesa of straight feminists and some some parts of the women's movement and dealing with sexism among some parts of the gay movement. So then you get the rise of separate lesbian organisations. Um, so I tried about this time that I come back here. I mean, in between, I go to the States and, you know, go around a lot of those organisations there, [00:23:30] and that was very exciting and everything was happening. And, you know, it was a great time. The seventies was a terrific time because everything seemed possible. It's a real watershed between the old and the new. This is the This is where the the baby boom generation really come together to make fantastic, very rapid social changes and things are never the same again. Um, and that's the point of you know, of people learning from other progressive organisations, [00:24:00] uh, particularly uh, the black civil rights movement so that out of concepts like black pride. You get things like gay pride, lesbian pride, um, and visibility And these kinds of ways of political action which no longer are reliant upon just accommodating and and being grateful for, whatever crumbs might fall off the table of the powerful but actually starting to demand a seat at the table and and and [00:24:30] saying, Why shouldn't I be? Why why shouldn't I be here at this table making these decisions with you? I'm not. Why should I be calling around on the floor? Grateful for whatever little crumb you might be choosing to give me. So it was a very important time. And I think also, it's a time that you you have other periods in history which are revolutionary in that sense too. You know, uh, people who? People who were alive during the French Revolution, Uh, in the late 18th century, uh, say [00:25:00] similar kinds of similar kinds of things. Um, Wordsworth, for example, in his poem that about the French Revolution, you know, bliss Was it in that time to be alive? But to be young was very heaven. Um, because these are moments in history when things are moving very fast. and you feel that you're on the quest of a wave, you're all moving in the same direction and change can happen, and you can see it happening daily. You can see that, you know, you're making making changes. [00:25:30] So I came back here, like when it when it stopped. Well, there was a lot of consolidation to do, you know, and and needing to evaluate a lot of the things that had happened. So I mean, I came back in 73. We, um we started, uh, the Sisters of Homophobic Equality. That was the first lesbian organisation here these days. It seems like a pretty silly title. But you couldn't use lesbian. You couldn't get it in the newspaper. They wouldn't print it. Um, a lot of women absolutely didn't want to [00:26:00] call themselves that homophile we thought was an advance on homosexual, because at least it kind of meant Well, love are of the same rather than just having sex all the time. Um, and it had a decent acronym. Which was she, um, we started the magazine circle, uh, which was New Zealand's first, uh, lesbian magazine. And that went that ran from 1973 to 1986. So it's still the longest running Sian magazine. And we started, um, uh, club 41 [00:26:30] here in Wellington, which was, uh, in Vivian Street. That was the first lesbian club here in Wellington. Um, well, it was a club. It was a club for women. So it was like a bar, or like a bar. Yeah, selling liquor illegally. Lovely. Because you do it, Did it through a ticket system is how people did it. Then, you know, So people buy the tickets, and then they exchange the tickets for the alcohol. So the [00:27:00] yeah, so eventually, eventually, you know, I mean, the police would be raiding it and that sort of thing. So eventually, um, it closed in 1977. Because that happened, you know, once too often. Um, but there's a really interesting history around, um, having, you know, a venue that sort of meeting place. Interestingly with, um, with something like the club 41 the policy was always that it was a club for women. And, uh, you know, far from, uh, lesbian feminists being [00:27:30] highly separatist at that time, uh, the idea was that you wanted to welcome women who identified as heterosexual into everything because they would immediately become lesbians. And the idea was that anyone can be a lesbian and should be. And quote by Martha Shelley, which people would write up everywhere. You know, um, in a society where men oppress women to be lesbian as a sign of mental health, you know, and in fact, and in Christchurch because, uh, she [00:28:00] began, uh, first in Christchurch. And then we, you know, started it here. But in Christchurch, she the woman from she actually started, uh, the first women's refuge in the country. So women's refuge and to give them credit. They don't deny this. That not only was the first refuge started by in the country started by lesbians, it was started by a lesbian organisation and Joe Crowley, who's now a lesbian activist in Auckland. She was the first sort of person looking after that refuge. So she lived there. She was only 18 [00:28:30] at the time, and and, um, they had posters, uh, all around the walls with, you know, things like, you know, come out and, you know, and so these women would be leaving their violent marriages and coming to this house and everyone just thought, Oh, as soon as they get here, they'll come out as lesbians. And of course, they leave their husbands. So they came out as lesbians and they did. That's the interesting thing that a lot of women in those early years, that's exactly what did happen. So not so much later, I must say. But yeah, that was certainly certainly a thing. [00:29:00] And one of the things that was very clear in those years was that the single thing that meant that more New Zealand women could come out was the D PB because that meant that women had a means of support prior to the D PB, which was introduced in 1972 women really could not easily leave their marriages at. The women were very trapped and you'd had a society of you know, which was, which was not particularly equal society at all, [00:29:30] where economic opportunities for women to be economically independent were not great. So you had very high rates of women marrying young marriage, Um, from especially in the post war period. So a lot of women had, you know, ended up in marriages, who then realised that that really wasn't what they wanted to do. Yeah, So you had a lot of women coming out in the seventies and you had a lot of ideas and around that, that's what they should do. So it really started to be quite [00:30:00] a big movement. And this is still more than a decade before homosexual law reform. Oh, yes, yes. Well, homosexual law reform is able to happen because of these organisations. So it was it kind of like a critical mass. It's a critical mass. Um, now, remember the gay organisations You know, the gay men So So you've still got some lesbians working in mixed, uh, gay organisations and gay liberation? Um, you've got some lesbians working in separate, uh uh lesbian organisations. You've still got organisations [00:30:30] like the Dorian Society that gay men uh, now and then they decided they would admit women and then after they've done that for a month or two Then they say that we can't have women, they get drunk and fight. Um so you've got some gay separatists, you know? So you So you've got quite a disparate lot of different organisations now. Plus what? You've still got the old camp communities now, interestingly, uh, the the [00:31:00] camp communities in this country were, you know, from certainly from the 19 fifties and probably earlier, but not much as documented prior to the 19 fifties. Uh, they're predominantly Maori and predominantly working class. And what you get with Maori is a massive urbanisation taking place from 1945. So the three quarters of the Maori population live in rural areas in 1945 by 1973 quarters now live in urban areas. [00:31:30] And what we do know is a lot of those people young people were, you know, lesbians or gay And, uh, you know, which can have been a strong motivation for why you might want to leave the country area. Um, I think an interesting and very influential person here in Wellington was Carmen, uh, who was a trip, Uh, and and, uh, she came to, um, originally to Auckland to Wellington. And Carmen started, uh, [00:32:00] Carmen's coffee bar, which became a very important meeting meeting place and then Carmen's balcony later, which became very important, uh, in Victoria Street. And, um so Carmen is a very flamboyant figure. Um, at the time, Carly would have identified herself as a drag queen. Um, as with many of the, uh, people who worked there important, flamboyant figures in the history [00:32:30] of Wellington people like Tiffany and people who really were right on the edge in terms of actually creating visibility, creating meeting spaces and showing fantastic courage, uh, right through. And that's one of the things you know, that you'd have to think about all those early communities were required courage to be out there. You know, it wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world to be doing because you still have a great deal of hostility. Um, you know, throughout the the [00:33:00] society. Yeah. So gay liberation conferences start to be held. Uh, the first lesbian conference is held in 1974. Uh, it's held here at Victoria University. Um, and then, uh, the national gay rights coalition forms. And that's an umbrella organisation for all of these organisations. I like about 35 organisations throughout the country, so that makes it possible to have a a unified political approach. Um, [00:33:30] so that, um with various law reform attempts that start surfacing, the NGRC can take a considered view of them. And, uh, by this stage. The view is that there has to be an equal age of consent, so we're not going to go into any half measures. The, uh it's clear from the British legislation. If you accept an age of consent of 21 you're gonna be stuck with that for years. [00:34:00] And also, it's highly insulting. Why would you want a different age of consent? This is discriminatory. You're not going to accept it. Um, and obviously some of the more conservative and older gay men believed that there should be, uh, law reform at any cost. And you could also appreciate their position. Some of them have been to prison, so they felt that that that that any reform was better than no reform. So there are diff differing opinions about this that start emerging. [00:34:30] Um, because of, um, a very difficult campaign around a proposed around some proposed proposed reforms around the freer bills and because of amendments that were proposed that would, uh, have, uh, have decriminalised male homosexual acts, but would would have made the promotion of homosexuality illegal. Um, the coalition ran out of steam. So So it collapsed. Really? So by the time you get to the early eighties and, uh, the [00:35:00] introduction of the homosexual law reform bill in 1985. If you don't have any of those organisations what you have, uh, the gay task Force in Auckland and in Wellington and they've been put together fairly recently. They were put together in 1984. There was a There was a Equality Bill coalition in Auckland, which wanted a pretty dicey bill that probably would have ended up including women and which lesbians opposed and which, fortunately, the women MP S could see [00:35:30] that that wasn't a terribly good idea. Um, Anyway, by the time you get to 1985 Fran agreed to to put a bill through, but, um, it was a very difficult campaign because there was immediate mobilisation from the right wing against that, and they were well funded and supported from fundamentalist organisations in the United States. So it was a pretty hard campaign. Um, so [00:36:00] I won't talk. Talk about that in any detail. Um, so it's really important. I'm kind of getting a grasp of. There's just so much history that's so important to kind of Yeah, I guess now and and Well, you need to get it all in context. So after the after homosexual law, reform passed in 1986 and we've had that very hard for two years. It was very, very difficult. Um, and we lost, of course, the human rights, Um, part of the bill, which is the addition of sexual orientation. And we've been fighting for that for a long time. You [00:36:30] know, since the inception of the Human Rights Act in 1977 national Gay Rights Coalition had been trying to get sexual orientation into the human rights bill Human Rights Act. Um, tried very, very formally with the homosexual law reform bill, part two. But that was defeated. Uh, so that reemerged. Um, in 91 when cater Reagan, by that point, you got a national government, Catherine, um, who [00:37:00] had, uh, who had taken over Marilyn wearing the seat? Uh, she agreed to, um, take this private members bill. So that was finally achieved with the addition of several new grounds into the act, Uh, in the 1993 Human Rights Act and we managed to get, uh, which was a big battle. We managed to get sexual orientation defined as heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian or bisexual [00:37:30] because otherwise we thought it was unclear. Uh, and it's difficult to know how, how well people would identify particular. Yeah, so big. Big struggles, big changes, big gains. I think as well in the last kind of three decades. Well, I think you have to. I think you have to get the legal changes done first you see, and it needs to be understood that without the without the passage of the Human Rights Act, then that sets the stage. Although the government gives itself [00:38:00] an extension immediately, it it applies to, uh, private business so that so the protections are not across the board. The protections are in the provision of goods and services and the provision of employment and of housing. So goods and services then starts becoming an area. What does this mean? So obviously it probably does mean marriage. Uh, so that sets the stage for what then has to happen. Our government gives itself an extension initially until the year [00:38:30] 2000, and then it extends that further. So whatever government you had in had to do something like the civil union act because you have to. It's in accordance with that original legislation from 93. So everything stems from that. And also then the statutory references, uh, act which, um, goes right through all government legislation to ensure that there is no difference made between same sex couples, uh, or people and, uh uh, [00:39:00] and different sex couples. So So it follows very logically. And that is followed into immigration policy now, into the registration of births. Um, so very far reaching and without, um, you know, I mean, we used to have big discussions, uh, right through the seventies and eighties. As to whether, you know, if you just work on law reform, surely you should work on, you know, changing people's attitudes. But the other side of that is that for many people, what changes their attitudes [00:39:30] is the law. If they suddenly find out, they're gonna be breaking the law. If they say they're not gonna hire a lesbian, um, that helps with the attitude. It pretty quickly. It helps very quickly. And that was the evidence from overseas. And that was the evidence that I had, you know, known about from living in Denmark and living in Norway, and, uh you know, knowing that, you know, as soon as you put laws of that kind in, then within probably two or three years of those laws being there, the majority of people, uh, just [00:40:00] accept them. So it really does. This helps promote the attitude change now and also maybe the campaign for changing the law, uh, helps you do public education anyway, so that you know, it's it it it all helps to do that. So 2010, what are what are your hopes for the for the future? Kind of. Well, I think politically visual vigilance, because I think that, you know, if you, [00:40:30] um I think there's really interesting lessons to be learned, uh, from the past. And I was just recently at a, uh, at an event about the Holocaust run by the, um, Holocaust Centre here, and, uh, a very interesting speech made by a Jewish speaker who, um, whose family came from Austria and, uh, who spoke about what things were like in Germany. You [00:41:00] know, Germany was the centre of culture. It was tremendously progressive. It was the place where Jewish people had been able to make their homes and live free from discrimination for a long time. It was a centre of art and music and and also it was a centre for homosexual activism. I mean, this person didn't talk about that, but, you know, we know that so that there were big organisations there were, you know, there were There were dozens of lesbian gay magazines in Berlin, you know, there were organisations everywhere, [00:41:30] you know, But this person talking about what happened to Jewish people and that said that what had become really clear to them, you know, during the thirties was if this could happen in Germany, which was so progressive, it could happen anywhere and that you could never be certain what might happen in a society. And what you need to think about are the kinds of turns and twists and the things you might accommodate to, and the things that might allow other kinds of regimes to come to power. [00:42:00] What those regimes might do and what we do know is that depressions are dangerous because people start looking for scapegoats. Um, you know, it doesn't take much to fan people up to decide that you know this, this group or that group you know, they are the They are the troublemakers. If we just got rid of them, everything would be fine, you know? And whether you decide that you're going to fan up the flames against Islamists or you're going to fan it up against Chinese immigrants or whether you're going to fan [00:42:30] it up against queer people, Um, it's a very similar kind of mechanism. And, um, I think we have to be very vigilant about that and watchful not only for what is happening to queer people but any kind of any kind of mechanism which starts to create others other the other ring of groups that then it becomes permissible to treat those people as subhuman to start denying them rights to start excluding them and those kinds of things. So I think, [00:43:00] um, although I think it's very good that a generation coming of age in 2010 don't have to go through all the things that, uh, we we we did, um uh, nonetheless, you know, and that they can just live their lives Nonetheless, I think it's very important that they're aware of the history so that they so that they are watchful and so also that they know how you can strategize and how you can fight. If these things [00:43:30] start to happen, what you do immediately I think it's important to have strong organisations because I think, um you just working on your own you very easily get picked off. I think it's very important to have strong organisations and good communications because, you know, that's crucial. Every kind of resistance movement has had a way of, um getting its messages out and OK, so these days we've got the internet and, uh, we texting and, [00:44:00] uh, as against where once on a time, we had to type things up and, uh, and make copies with carbon paper and distribute them like that, I'd say to that, Don't forget, don't forget. Don't forget that technology because if the worst comes to the worst, we might have to do that again because things like the Internet can be controlled. Yeah, things like, you know, I mean, we now learn that Telecom Telecom said they were gonna, uh, call our text [00:44:30] messages. They were gonna get rid of them now, but I didn't even know they clicked that we should have realised that of course, you know. So So we need some kind of independent way of ensuring that we have a method of communication that is independent and it might be very low technology, but that we can manage to do, even if the worst came to the worst. Uh, that's important. And I think it's I think it is important to have strong organisations, [00:45:00] and, uh, it bothers me that we don't have, um, as many organisations as I'd like to see us have And that, uh, and by, you know, membership organisations that, um that are well supported, uh, economically and that, uh, are in a position to act and if when necessary, You know, and all of that, all of that. Thank you [00:45:30] so much for your time and for sharing with us. All of that. Alison, welcome.
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