This page features computer generated text of the source audio. It may contain errors or omissions, so always listen back to the original media to confirm content. You can search the text using Ctrl-F, and you can also play the audio by clicking on a desired timestamp.
Well, we're at the gay fair today after last year. This is and a big parade I really, really enjoyed. And it's good to see the people out here and from my generation. I come from the fifties and everything happened right up to 1986. It was scary. I played rugby. I was always scared of getting found out and getting crunched in the bottom of a rock. It didn't happen. But today there are gay boys in the All Blacks. I can tell you called BOE voice of Experience. Yeah, I'm excited to be here [00:00:30] as well. Um, lovely, lovely weather, Really cool to see an enormous crowd and neat neat just to see it come to fruition. Really Just thinking of the kind of historic elements. What's your kind of top memory of law reform? Suddenly it was a relief. Um, I was on TV at times in my career, and I was always scared of being found out and then being victimised because of it. I enjoyed playing sport. I didn't want to be victimised there, [00:01:00] but I had to be very, very careful. And I had an interview recently about archives. What was it like what she was saying and one of it was a female asked me, She said, How could she was a nice, good looking man. She said, Can I say that? And I said, Yes, you can, Um, from your day you must have been nice and good looking in How did you get off a rugby field? And you're in the showers that you didn't, uh, get turned on. And I said, Very simple. I don't play rugby like they do today in my day, because today you can get substituted. You don't play a [00:01:30] full 18 minutes, you play 80 minutes of hard rugby. The last thing you're thinking of is a thing between your legs and a shower. I can tell you coming forward to today, Uh, what are some of the things that that kind of still need to be worked on for? For rainbow Communities? We've just been talking, um, a friend of mine and I about, um, how much social there still is and how to how to try and support young people in particular against the effects of [00:02:00] transphobia and homophobia and biphobia. It's It's still an issue. Even though we're first class citizens. It doesn't mean that everything has been resolved. Um, yeah. So we're still quite aware of it as well. And it's really interesting to hear from people who were so fearful of coming out prior to 1986. It's a It's a different thing. We can't imagine what it's like to come out and say I'm a criminal effectively before [00:02:30] that time, But now I I think it's still It's still a really tricky thing, and it's and it's not. Um, it's not easy to come out either. You do still fear a lot of, um, a lot of prejudice and discrimination and and also still physical, um, effects of it, too. Yeah, certainly. We solved a lot of problems of gay marriage, civil union and so on. Even, uh, legalising prostitution's help in another aspect. But, uh, one [00:03:00] of the things that we have never really solved the transgender and intersex issues. They are still on the agenda there. We're still getting over a little bit of our blood donations. Uh, we think we've crossed that hurdle now, um, and the other the other one is Really What? What? You're just talking about the younger people. Um It's still very difficult and you see some of the things in the private schools, what is coming out, and the board of trustees saying these things don't happen and in actual fact, probably their kids. It does and they don't know. And those [00:03:30] things have got to change that. People need support, and it's up to us, some of us older people to try and give that support because we normally have got to be able to get the platform to do it. The younger people, some people are just not listen to them. I think there's a really awesome um, sense, though, of a burgeoning, particularly a burgeoning trans movement that's really visible to just just a wee cisgender person like me. Like it. It's really exciting to see trans people and people of colour as well, really [00:04:00] take a stand and start figuring out how they wanna be, um, in the world and be really, really visible and kind of argy bargy about it. I'm excited by that. I think it's awesome. One thing that that seems to me to have changed a wee bit is is how we kind of identify ourselves. So the language that we use. So can you recall kind of the language that you would use to describe yourself, like way back when and and kind of the words that you'd use Now, some people, one place. Are you gay? And I said, I'm happy. That was why we are getting [00:04:30] around it. Um, I just can't really remember what sometimes speaks. It wasn't a topic that you I I experienced because I never really dressed up or never clapped my hands around and look say, like, John and me and on Are you being served sort of person? But sometimes it was that inside me wanting to get out, But I was too scared to do it. You know? It's, um the thing is, people were punching you. Then they would they would grab you, you know? And I've seen people get hit. I've seen a guy get hit over the head of a bottle because he was just himself and he wasn't in that person's face. [00:05:00] Um, he wasn't threatening that person, and it was quite scary to see and I thought that could happen to me. So I just kept my head down. Basically, How did you meet other gay men around that time. Like how did you know an established community? Well, you did have the gay bar in Wellington. I'm Wellington, and you used to have the, um, coincidentally fell into it, to be honest, uh, the tavern bar in Dixon Street. And you had the, um Oh, what was it called? The other one. Anyway, there's one where the transistors went and and that all [00:05:30] the prostitutes were in selling to the sailors that came. It was at the the Royal Oak, the royal oak. I'm just trying to think of the bar was called, but the tavern bar was the one next to it. And then Mel and Mel took over. Not so much Scottie, the banana bar upstairs. So there was always that gay venue. Ironically, there were two bars in Willis Street that attracted the crowd as well. Um, and because we had television in the up to 1973 the 1975 before a came along. Uh, you did have a lot of, say, theatre community there. [00:06:00] Television started in 1960. The majority of people making programmes come from overseas. And of course, that was from England and a lot of them were gay. Uh, the heads of department and things like that, uh, television was great. It allowed, um, women to break the glass ceiling. And verbally, some of those women were, should I say, not straight. But they managed to keep everything quietly within the thing until till the late seventies. Things come out a bit more, and it's more acceptable to be gay to be on television or [00:06:30] theatre. Um, and that made life a bit simpler for some of them And that that's one thing. The other bars. Um, the other thing was, the club was a secret society, but it wasn't really, um you got invited to join the bar shut at 10 o'clock in my day. So, uh, you wandered down the door and you had a key to get in. You bought tickets down the bottom for the drinks, and we got raided. One night, we got raided because, um, somebody had been on a cruise ship and they had them on those days. [00:07:00] Must have very straight cruise, but, uh, somebody had done a lot of or robberies on the boat, and I suspected from the gay community. So the police were thumped a bit. So they came up and raided the door club and most of us, Uh, shall I say, shut our pants? Um, because we're getting sprung. But the policeman said, No, we're not after you guys, because we know you're in. You're in one place. You're not doing the toilet. You're not offending anybody. You're all grouped together, and, uh, and you don't roll out of your very drunk, which you mustn't have been looking very too much time because some of us did. But, [00:07:30] um, the thing was, they arrested the guy, and sure enough, he was a bad thing to happen. But the police left us alone in that respect, Um, and in a door and moved up to Willis Street. And it became you could take ladies along. There were ladies nights, Um, and then it died away. I can't remember why it died, but it died. And I think what came into vogue more was the gay bar itself. It become more acceptable to go to a gay bar after the law, law reform came through, and people like Scottie held that scene to get [00:08:00] in a big, big way in Wellington. Just finally, um, so we're 30 years post homosexual law reform. What do you think the world is gonna look like in another 30 years time? What? What's your ideal world for 30 years from now? Wow, what a tough question. I think this and then some, I suppose, Um because I, I think that our with our social connectedness enabled through social media platforms, it will only get stronger and stronger. [00:08:30] And I think those, you know, that burgeoning sort of movement that I I can see will will also take on older people as well. And that's growing too. So I think I hope we're just going to be more bolshy because, um, we're gonna be out there and we're not going back into closets. And we've got a lot of wrongs to write. And a lot of, um, of great benefits of working together and, um, and developing a world that we want [00:09:00] to be safe and healthy in too. So yeah, positive future. Well, all I can say is that, uh, 30 years on, um, we've had a lot of change in my lifetime. I. I visited Germany in 1973. The war was up and I never thought in my lifetime that would come down. It came down 16 years later. Um, I went back and grabbed a piece of it. Uh, but, um, it was quite a shock for it to happen. What I think now is people are listening. People up in Parliament are listening. You're getting things. [00:09:30] And I think the transgender issues and that would be more more acceptable. There's adoption. That's another issue that's got to be sorted. I think that will happen. Um, but it doesn't matter. A lot of a lot of talking a lot of chatting. Uh, one thing I'd like to see is a more We're very lucky in New Zealand. Really. Um, we're able to get through these hurdles, and there are countries around the world that aren't I mean, it's pretty pretty awful. So my thing in 30 years is let's hope that these companies, the countries, are doing things like throwing people off buildings and God knows what because of their [00:10:00] sexuality that 30 years on from here, they are at the point where at least where we are now, we've got a really good point, and I think that a has an opportunity to use influence in in those regards as well we should. We should be using our influence within the world. One thing I've got in my and I've got a lot of long stay. Students here are all from overseas. They see in New Zealand, the South Koreans are here. They're seeing what we're saying about North [00:10:30] Korea and that, and I think the answers in those people are recognising that the sky is not going to fall. And if something happens, New Zealand's done it. We should be able to liberalise our country a little bit and it's those people are going to make the change. Not not the parents of them are older.
This page features computer generated text of the source audio. It may contain errors or omissions, so always listen back to the original media to confirm content.
Tags