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The letter to my mom and dad from the Air Force, saying it is with regret that I must confirm that your son Darren was discharged from the Royal New Zealand Air Force on the 22nd of May 1985 on the grounds that he admitted to being a practising homosexual. Being in the closet in the military was extremely difficult to actually associate [00:00:30] with anyone else who was homosexual. You had to be away from the military area you couldn't portray. We worked. It had to be kept quiet. There was always a paranoia about being seen by someone else that you worked with and being seen anywhere near where you were working in the military areas. And being out in public in some jobs in uniform was hard as well. [00:01:00] Because you're always thinking who will see me and what will I think? Will I come and talk to me? What will the other people I'm with from the military think it made it very, very difficult. It also meant you couldn't let anyone know where you lived. If you were living in the barracks, you couldn't take anyone back to your place. You had to If you wanted to spend time with someone, you had to go to their place if it was possible or somewhere else, if it was possible and it made it very, very difficult. You [00:01:30] also had to watch what you're saying. You had to sit there and portray the straight heterosexual image. If someone made a joke about homosexuals, you had to laugh at them as well, which was laughing at yourself when you're being insulted. Um, if someone was talking about what they were doing with their partner the night before, you had to sit there and laugh and try and participate in the competition to fit in [00:02:00] or in the conversation to fit in. It makes it it made it extremely difficult. You had to keep entirely two separate lives, although you would meet other people when you were out socialising in homosexual or gay venues and you would realise that you knew them from somewhere. And then suddenly the next day you would see them at breakfast sitting in the mess hall on the Air Force base, which made it extremely [00:02:30] difficult because you knew the person and they didn't want to know you at work. But when you were outside work, they would be quite happy to talk to you. And it's just knowing that you know someone and you can't talk to them and they have exactly the same situation as you. I become very good friends with someone who and when I first met them, I knew them through church I was involved with. I didn't know that [00:03:00] he was gay, and sometime later, my time in the Air Force. When I was on a training course, a another gay friend in the Air Force told me that he was gay, which made it very, very difficult because I felt my found myself attracted to this person as a person who I could get into a relationship with and spend some time with. And I had my own personal rule that I had [00:03:30] set in, that I was not going to do anything on an Air Force base or with another person from the military as a way of keeping my life separate, which I'm afraid to say, I had to relent on that little promise to myself, and I had a very, very short fling with this person. If you call it a fling. I, um, had well, it would [00:04:00] have been a two day relationship with this person and become very, well, very attracted to the person. However, we were both stationed at different air force bases, which drew us apart to show affection to each other. You you can't show any affection in the public areas. The only time that we [00:04:30] had together in his room, which was a separate room, but next to rooms of other people, you could show affection and that your room was a private area. But you couldn't if you were in public if you were in the mess eating. If you were out walking around the base, you had to portray yourself as just being a friend, talking [00:05:00] about something you couldn't talk about, things that you might have had in common for fear of someone else overhearing it. You couldn't touch each other. You if you were in the Airman's Club drinking, you had to be extremely careful in what you said and the way you've Basically, if you had too much of a good time, people would either see it or hear it. So you had to either be off the [00:05:30] Air Force base where you at somewhere, that no one else was around from the Air Force or entirely within a room where no one else could possibly see you or hear you. It was difficult in the military. I felt happy within myself about my lifestyle. I found it very difficult to lead two lifestyles. I had to be very careful [00:06:00] that the two didn't cross over. But I felt happy with myself that I was a homosexual. I was leading a happy life. I had a job that I enjoyed. It just involved a major part of my life and that I had to live sometimes and breathe my job. At other times, I had time out from that where I could go and associate with other gay people, go to gay clubs [00:06:30] and enjoy letting my hair down and being totally myself with the way I wanted to do things, not having to sit there and behave perfectly straight 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I had time out from that and that was time that I could get out and be part of the real world and 1984 85 period, New [00:07:00] Zealand was going through a private members bill that had been introduced into Parliament, which was the homosexual law reform bill. And it was introduced to decriminalise homosexual activity so that we couldn't be sent to prison for committing homosexual acts. And people like our landlords couldn't be sent to prison for renting a flat to a homosexual person. So during this time I had a petition that was organised [00:07:30] by a Christian coalition against the private members Bill. The petition was presented to me to include my signature, and I initially refused to sign it. It was represented a day or so later by one of my superiors, and at that stage he insinuated that I should sign it for my own good. So I had been thinking about it, and in the end, I thought, [00:08:00] Well, I've got to sign it. And primarily my feelings for signing it were so that I didn't have an accusation made against me, that I might be gay in the military, And that really did worry me because if I was found out to be gay in the military, I would be kicked out at that stage. I signed the petition and then spent a day or two thinking about what I had done and how I could [00:08:30] get my signature off the petition again because I didn't feel right with signing it because, after all, I was gay and I didn't want to be fighting something that was going to benefit me. So I actually sat down and I phoned the base padre who was a multi denominational minister and asked if I could see him. I needed to talk to him. So I went down [00:09:00] and talked to him about my feelings At the time of being presented with the petition against the homosexual law reform, I said how I had had it offered to me and that they wanted me to sign it, and at that stage he basically assured me that I could talk to him in confidence and when I did, I said, Well, I am gay [00:09:30] and I am not happy signing the petition and I have signed it and now I have to struggle with the fact that I've signed it. I don't believe the petition is right and that I believe the law reform issue is right and I'm struggling with having signed it and not being able to refuse to sign it in an environment where if I didn't sign it, I would be gay and everyone around me would chastise [00:10:00] me for being gay and I could lose my job and wanted to know how to cope with that situation. He basically reassured me that I would be OK and that one signature wouldn't matter in something like that. And from then I thought, Well, OK, I'll accept that. And I just carried on with thinking about going back to work the next day [00:10:30] and that it made me think a lot about myself and a lot about where I was and the fact that I had talked to someone and I felt a little bit better and I carried on back to work the next day. Until then, I was asked to report to the person in charge of our side of the operational Squadron and was confronted with the issue that I was practising homosexual and I was going to be discharged from the military [00:11:00] Fake puffs bender as Bender when I rang home to tell them that I was out of the Air Force and where I was currently living and give them the phone number. My father answered the phone and I said hello to him, he said straight [00:11:30] away to me. We've received a letter from the Air Force saying that you're a practising homosexual. Is that true? I just said one word to him. I said Yes and my dad said, I'll get your mother and drop the phone receiver in which the noise of it crashing on the desk and I waited until my mother came on the phone. And at that stage I talked to Mum. I was very lucky with Mom and that she was extremely understanding right [00:12:00] from the start. She had asked some time before, when I was actually on leave one Christmas time from the Air Force if I was a homosexual, because one of my friends was and my mother was extremely accepting in that issue, I think, probably probably because one of her best friend's son was openly gay and she had dealt with the whole process of her best [00:12:30] friend going through it. So Mom was extremely supportive and talkative about it, and today they are both my parents accept that I am gay, my father I think in so much as doesn't accept my lifestyle. However, he accepts that I'm still a son and mom is great about it. She doesn't have any problems. We just don't tend to talk about it. [00:13:00] I didn't sue at the time because there was a law Air Force law that stated my position. It was also a lower of the lane that see that it was illegal to be a homosexual or to carry out homosexual acts. And during [00:13:30] the time of the law reform, when it was legalised, there was still the position of discrimination. And once the human rights bill was passed, I didn't sue because I wasn't interested in stepping back to go back into the military. I had been through that experience in my life. I had more to achieve by continuing with my life as it was, and I couldn't see a point in suing for that. I had achieved [00:14:00] what I wanted to achieve out of my life and had direction of where I was going, and it would have been a step backwards, as well as publicity that was not required.
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