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Uh, my name is Hugh Young. I was, uh, in 1985 when Fran introduced the bill. I became very interested. And I was at that time closeted, uh, to not only to the world, but to myself, for reasons which I don't need to go into. Um, so when des Smith formed a a Wellington branch of hug, I went to the first meetings, [00:00:30] and there I met Kim Saffron, and we be and because, uh, I was involved in media, she and I wrote a lot of press releases for hug sometimes to, um, sort of as prescribed and sometimes of our own bats. Hugh, what was hug Hug heterosexuals unafraid of gays. At that time, I still considered myself bisexual. And since there was no bisexual unafraid of gays I I and so I wore the hug badge. And I know [00:01:00] some of the community considered me a hypocrite, but it I felt I was wasn't doing the community any harm. And, um, I, you know, and working for I was doing some good and still it made a lot of friction right throughout the campaign because I never didn't yet consider myself part of the gay community. So, um, Kim and I made these press releases and distributed them, and, um, we [00:01:30] we'd write them at her place, and then I or maybe at my place, But in a way, we would sort of race around the city, hand in hand, put dropping them in the news papers and radios, and, uh, press gallery and, uh, very few ever got picked up, but occasionally we might see a paragraph we'd written, and we feel our one big success was when some MP. Proposed an amendment that the fire brigade, [00:02:00] the police, the armed forces and it was something completely irrelevant to the gay issues. Should be, um um uh, exempted from homosexual law reform. We said, Well, what next? Bus conductors. And we called it the Shiny Buttons amendment and that got into the paper. So how how did the media respond to the, um, pro [00:02:30] campaigners? Was it? I mean, were they hostile? Were they, um what, you know, did they tell the media the media tried to be balanced, as they put it, and so they would tend to try to give equal coverage. Um, but of course, when one side is right and the other is wrong that that's not good. Uh, we we felt we didn't get a fair hearing. We felt that the anti law reform campaign has got more than they deserved. [00:03:00] But then we would say that, wouldn't we? I wasn't very objective of it. I didn't keep a big clipping file. I wrote a lot of letters. I wrote a lot of letters to the paper, and I always signed them. Young and Helen Young, who was in charge of the concert programme. I said people kept. She didn't actually complain because she supported law reform, too. But she said, People keep coming up and say, Have you been writing letters to the paper? And I said, [00:03:30] I think I told her we should do what Bertrand, Lord Russell and Russell of Liverpool once did and wrote Write a collective a joint letter to the paper saying, Dear Sir, neither of us is the other Now. Today we're actually standing in the National Library, and we're at the, um, event, the show on television. So I've got quite a number of things on display, including, um, pink triangles. And so you you were involved in the pink triangle. No, I wasn't part of the Pink Triangle Collective [00:04:00] I wrote. I probably wrote letters to the pink triangle. Uh, but the my particular involvement with the pink triangle is that, uh, the we can we can see the issue itself here of, um, May June 1987 which dates it. So it's after law reform. So I was out of the closet to myself, to my friends, and, um, I was gradually coming out [00:04:30] to the wider world and in my role as a consumer radio programme producer, I, uh, took a took a to task one of advertisements in Pink Triangle for Adelaide chinchilla. The second best thing you've ever felt and what I took objection to was you'll agree. The old name Adelaide Chinchilla says so much more for its plushness than a possum. And [00:05:00] of course, this fur is a possum. And but that was the only clue that it was. And so I took them to task for passing off a possum as some better fur. And the advertiser was so angry at this that he withdrew all his advertising from the pink triangle. So the Pink Triangle collective got very angry with me for hurting the gay community. I felt I was protecting [00:05:30] the gay community from being ripped off, and some of the collective said, Uh oh, but nobody would Seeing that advertisement would think that it was anything but a possum. And yet a letter appeared in the pink triangle from somebody complaining about the cruelty to the poor little chinchilla, whatever they are. And Hugh, can you describe for me the the the image that goes with the, um oh, yes, well, it's It's rather a hot image I. I rather actually actually liked it at the time. It's this blonde man who's [00:06:00] clearly not wearing anything with, uh, you can see the hair in his armpits and he's lounging and gazing at seductively at the camera while wrapped up in this, um, very actually probably quite comfortable fur.
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