Marilyn Waring at the Wellington Town Hall today Marilyn Waring has given an inspiring and powerful talk on what she termed the “silent human right” of dignity, at the opening session of the Human Rights Conference at the AsiaPacific Outgames, expressing hope we will achieve it in her lifetime. The former MP marvelled at being in the room full of around 300 glbt people from across the globe, saying “In this space it’s almost like I’m sighing, but I’m not. I’m taking these huge breaths and exhaling with the relief in this space with my extended family.” Waring recalled the social climate she lived in as a teenager in the 1960s, recounting a vivid memory of watching The Children’s Hour when she was 13 or 14, a 1961 film where a rumour emerges about the ‘attachment’ between the two women running a girl’s school, where one of the women ultimately kills herself after confessing her love for her colleague. “The lesbian word wasn’t used anywhere in the film,” said Waring. “But that was my first lesson in what might happen to women who loved women. And despite the fact I’d had no sexual experience at all, I knew I was one of them.” Waring said one or two years later she was sent to a girls’ school where she heard the term “lesbian” for the first time and then tracked down a copy of Radclyff Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, which spends time in Paris where the gay community is portrayed as somewhat tragic, suicide-prone and alcoholic. “So in my short life to that point suicide or suicides were not great role models. There was no Martina and no Ellen. The media images of the 60s of the feminist movement frankly weren’t promising either. Boots, boiler suits, bikes and anger didn’t do it for me.” Waring said it wasn’t until 1975 that she saw a group of women under a United Lesbian Nation banner at a women’s conference, who were “neither suicidal nor leather dykes on bikes”. It was the same year that she entered Parliament where she was “definitely the gayest MP,” she said grabbing a laugh from the audience, which had earlier been treated to talk of a “gay-off” between sitting MPs Kevin Hague and Grant Robertson who are both claiming the title of Parliament’s gayest MP. “Tim [Barnett] was always desperate to claim he was the first out sitting MP. He must have missed six weeks of the Truth in 1976,” she said referring to the tabloid’s extensive public outing of her 35 years ago. Waring says as the only woman in the National caucus, never mind the only lesbian, she was frequently advised most Thursday mornings “most normal women didn’t think like me”. She says the opening salvo from Robert Muldoon on the night the government fell told her immediately he was not interested in mediation. Waring says he launched forth with “what the fuck do you think you’re up to now you perverted little liar?” Waring was elected to Parliament at the tender age of 23 in 1975 and survived three terms in the bear pit. Now a Professor of Public Policy at AUT University in Auckland, she has worked in many countries. She pulls no punches when she says that she carries a wedding band and a picture of her brother and nephews overseas so she can get people talking ,”so when it’s necessary to try and get domestic violence in the national plan of Bangladesh I pull them out and show people ‘my children and my husband’.” Waring says she is not afraid to use what has to be used to help. “I know some of the work I do is more important, frankly, that my own pride and integrity at that very moment. And I tire of those people who think there is only one way to be gay all the time, and that is to be out everywhere, because you can jeopardise other people’s movements in doing that.” CIVIL UNIONS Waring referred to an AUT lecture where she compared the framing of the debate around what she calls “uncivil unions” in New Zealand with the debate around gay marriage in Canada. She said he compared the two nations because with the exception of a few words, New Zealand’s Human Rights Act and Bill of Rights and Canada’s Charter are the same. She said when you are in politics you understand that the most important issues are already framed before they hit the community. “Somebody’s already determined how far they think we can go, and in New Zealand from the very beginning we were framed to lose our dignity.” She said it is not about laws and equivalency, but dignity and equality. “It was a sad but understandable experience in New Zealand that our gay leaders could not wait to move until equality was the only purpose. I understand, in a Parliamentary context I certainly do, I just mourn that second-class rights were deemed enough,” a sentiment which received great applause nthis morning. “We are battling towards dignity. And I hope we get there in my lifetime,” she ended to thunderous applause. Jacqui Stanford - 16th March 2011