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Hi. I'm Doctor Alison Laurie. I was the General Women's Studies Programme director at Victoria University of Wellington. Uh, here in New Zealand for many years, I'm a writer and horror historian and a lesbian gay activist. Today, I'm going to be looking at the legal background relating to same sexuality in A in New Zealand. And considering many of the changes that happened, uh, through the years, [00:00:30] I'd like to start off by thinking about the situation before European contact. Um, Maori, the indigenous inhabitants of this country, uh, came here some hundreds of years ago. There's various discussions about that. Some people think it might have been 800 years ago. Other people think it could have been 1200 years ago. But whenever, um, Maori came, uh, in a series [00:01:00] of canoes, uh, known as WAKA, and settled in various parts of the country, instances of same sex relations in Maori culture Uh uh, interesting. It certainly appears that there were not really restrictions against that kind of behaviour. There were very strong restrictions in Maori culture about who could marry um, those kinds of questions of genealogy and what would be appropriate [00:01:30] there? Uh, so far as we know, and more research has been done on this topic by a number of prominent Maori scholars and quite a bit has been now written about it. So far as we know, relations between men or between women were reasonably well accepted in Maori society. Uh, some of the scholars have gone back to look at, uh, what possible terminology may have been used. And in the very famous story [00:02:00] of and which is usually interpreted as being a a heterosexual love story set in Rotorua, uh, there's a reference in that story which has been noted in which was noted independently by several Maori scholars to Tai, a Maori word meaning intimate companion of the same sex, and had an intimate companion. He had his, uh, whom he [00:02:30] was very, very close to. So that would imply that this was well accepted. That you would have someone like that. Of course, it wouldn't mean that you didn't marry you if you were, uh, particularly if you were highborn, you would have a responsibility to provide Children heirs to carry on the bloodline. But what you might do with your own sex because they couldn't be Children from that is probably not taken as taken particularly seriously or certainly not [00:03:00] seen as a threat to any kind of social order. Um, there are some early European records. Uh, based on this, um, one source is the, uh is a French source, uh, from who was a Frenchman on the ship, Uh, the card in 17. 72. And he observed, These natives are greatly given to embracing each other, but in their caresses, they display a most noticeable ferocity. [00:03:30] They're strangely fond of kissing each other, and this they do with great intensity. They're never weary of admiring our skins, especially their whiteness. They sucked the flesh with an astonishing greediness. So, um, there are a number of reports like this from, uh from European observers, which clearly would show that this was not at all unusual. Um, and there are other kinds of reports, particularly things in [00:04:00] song which suggest that through the 19th century, there's plenty of this kind of activity going on. And we also know that some Europeans, uh, were involved with Maori, in particular the Reverend William Yate, who worked for the Church Missionary society in the Bay of Islands. And he was uh, closely involved with a number of young Maori men. He, um he was reprimanded by the church, but, uh, and and that has been written about, uh, to [00:04:30] some extent, but he was not the only one. So what we can assume from that is that before the coming of European law and European attitudes toward same sexuality, there was a much, uh, more open, much more natural, uh uh, attitude of simple acceptance of this among, uh, among Maori. So the first people to come were whalers sailors. They came from various parts of Europe. [00:05:00] Um, And when we look at the mix of people coming into Southland, uh, and many of those people married or or at least had set up some kind of family unions with local people And we now know that there would have been people men, all men, um, from Holland, from Norway, from Denmark, aboriginal men from Australia, uh, Native American men from North America. Uh, a lot of groupings from [00:05:30] the whole world really were coming in and and and were involved in these kinds of different activities at the same time. A bit later, the missionaries began to come the first ones were the French. Uh, they came in the north. Uh then came the Church of England. And by the time we get to about 1800 the the Church Missionary Society is starting to get concerned about what it sees as lawlessness. Uh, a lot [00:06:00] of Europeans who aren't under any kind of control. They seem to be breaking the law a lot. There's a lot of drunkenness, uh, and so on. So they begin to talk about the fact that it would be a good idea if this country, uh, which now became known as New Zealand if this country were to, uh, be brought into the British Empire as a colony. And so that was discussed for some time and event that eventually [00:06:30] there was a treaty signed that's known as the Treaty of Waitangi, and that was signed in 18 40 it was signed between the British crown. And at that time, that was Queen Victoria and many of the Maori tribes, not all of them, but many of them, and probably British law applies from this time, it's clear that the British weren't totally certain of this because [00:07:00] in 18 58 they passed a law which is known as the um as the English laws act, uh, which states that all laws in force on the 14th of January 18 40 apply to New Zealand. So they may have thought that there could be some difficulty in being quite certain that all these laws would apply here. So once the law is applied, these laws included prohibitions against crimes known as buggery or sodomy, that [00:07:30] is to, say, sexual relations between males, for which the penalty was imprisonment from 10 years to life. And in fact, the death penalty for these acts had been abolished only in 18 36 in England. So that's four years before the treaty. The British law against, uh, same sexuality was in fact, put into force in 15 33 by Henry The eighth, uh, when he took over the church, [00:08:00] established the Church of England, and this is the first law on his books. And you might say, Well, what did Henry the eighth have against sexual relations between men? And it seems likely that he had nothing against it. It was just a very useful law to charge into the monasteries and on the pretext that they're committing a crime because they're having sex together. And, of course, everybody thought that's what monks and priests would be likely to be doing. Uh, and then you could take over the monastery and confiscate all their property, and that was, very, [00:08:30] um, enriching for the British throne so that law had been enforced right from then. So it's when we get to 18 36 the death penalty is removed. So that's the first change in all those years. And it's this law then, uh, from that time that applies in New Zealand and the offences against the person Act 18 67. That's the first New Zealand law which, uh, passed [00:09:00] actually here, which criminalises buggery, and it retains the punishment of imprisonment from 10 years to life. And then, in 18 93 the General Assembly passes the Criminal Code Act, which repeals that but retains the sections against buggery. Now, what's important about this is that this is based upon the English Laws Crimes Act of 18 85 which, uh, criminalised uh, sex [00:09:30] between men, uh, for which consent was no defence, and it's any kind of sexual relations. And that's the law, which, uh, Oscar Wilde is imprisoned for in England. So this law is it then gets passed here, and that's the one that continues. There are no laws prohibiting sex between women, and you could take several views about that. Um, one is that, uh, certainly for many centuries, because [00:10:00] of, um, sexist attitudes about men and women. It was thought that women couldn't really be having sex since women didn't have penises. There's no way that women could penetrate one another. So sexual relations don't happen between women. That's one school of thought. Another school of thought is who cares what women and Children do anyway, so long as you can control them economically. And certainly the other law that came to New Zealand was the, uh was the law, uh, regarding the position of women [00:10:30] which, based on a an opinion in the, uh, late 18th century, said that women were the property of their fathers and on marriage, the property of their husbands. So in a situation like that, it doesn't really matter what women do. So that's one thought about why the rules didn't apply to women. The other thought is that when the discussions were held in England in 18 85 revising the law to make it apply [00:11:00] in private and saying that consent was no defence. There was an attempt to criminalise lesbianism. Uh, it passed through the House of Commons but was rejected in the House of Lords by Lord dear, who stood up and made a very, uh, stirring speech and said that mentioning lesbianism in the law would be to bring it to the attention of women who've never heard of it, never dreamed of it, never thought of it, and that would be a very grave mischief. So the idea there is that [00:11:30] women are very suggestible and that if you mentioned it in the law, they might get the idea, and then they might go and do it. So that's the other opinion about why such a law was not passed here in other parts of the world. Uh, there was legislation against sex between women, especially in some of the states in the United States and other parts of Europe. So that wasn't a universal thought, but it wasn't criminalised in England, and it wasn't criminalised here. So after the [00:12:00] late 19th century, we move on into the early 20th century. There's another act in 19 08, and that reaffirms these sections of the criminal code and the kinds of punishments uh, that were that applied? Um, some of the punishments are pretty terrible. The 18 93 act, uh uh, punished buggery by life imprisonment, hard labour and flogging. Uh And then [00:12:30] it's not till 1941 that the punishment of flogging is removed from New Zealand law retaining life imprisonment. That's the 1941 Crimes amendment Act. And not till 1954 is the punishment of hard labour removed from the law, but it retains life imprisonment. Now, this country has followed what happened in Britain fairly closely. Although we became a Dominion [00:13:00] in the early 20th century, meaning that we had local self-government. Nonetheless, we retained the British crown and a certain kind of cultural cringe in terms of legislation and things of that kind. So what was very important was the wolfing uh, report which reported in 1957 to the British Parliament. Uh, the wolf committee was set up to look at prostitution and to look at homosexual behaviour, and [00:13:30] that committee recommended the decriminalisation of prostitution with some regulations around that. And it also recommended decriminalising private, consenting homosexual behaviour. And that's 1957. So that was known about here. And from then there are certain discussions about it, Um, but there's no real commitment to any kind of decriminalisation. Uh, and although, um, the Sexual Offences [00:14:00] Act of 1967 abolishes total prohibition of homosexual acts in England with an age of consent of 20 years, that doesn't, uh that that's not that discussion is not really held here. However. In 1961 the Crimes Act reduces penalties for homosexual acts. But it introduces lesbianism into the law by criminalising sexual relations between women over 21 and girls under 16. And you can say, Well, that's fair enough because it's, uh, it's abuse of minors. [00:14:30] But it's clearly a move that means that once you get some kind of recognition of lesbianism into the law, then you could play around with how you interpret that, Uh, by saying that consent is no defence. You can play around with those ages. And as we enter the 19 sixties, we are entering a decade where the first people of the baby boom generation born during the war are starting to come of age, and they are beginning to question, uh, many things. [00:15:00] Uh, so the whole question of homosexual law reform becomes part of those discussions as that decade continues, and I'll be talking about that later in another talk.
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