Young Labour is calling for the government to cancel its funding to Destiny Church, which it describes as "state-funded homophobia". Young Labour President Ella Hardy and Rainbow Representative Sam Thompson say their organisation is appalled by revelations from Social Development Minister Paula Bennett that the social services arm of homophobic Destiny Church has received $860,000 in taxpayer money. "Destiny is an organisation which preaches prejudice against women, homosexuals and children and has been proven to divide communities in order to marginalise these groups. Comments by leader Brian Tamaki and Destiny have both offended and caused anger amongst New Zealanders and his organisation should not be the beneficiary of tax-payer funds," Hardy says. "There are many deserving organisations that are already established in the community that are working to help families, single mothers and children and who are struggling to run their programmes with inadequate resourcing from the Government,” Thompson adds. "Young Labour is also deeply concerned to hear that Members of Parliament attended the Destiny Church’s conference recently and failed to challenge the church and its leader on the homophobic, sexist and prejudiced teachings that it espouses," Hardy says. Labour MPs Shane Jones and Kelvin Davis were among those who attended the Destiny conference. Meanwhile the church, which is viciously homophobic and transphobic, is claiming it's being discriminated against because community groups do not want to work with it under the Whanau Ora health scheme. A spokesman for the church's social services programme has told the New Zealand Herald a funding request it made was turned down after it could not find willing community partners. George Ngatai added that the church had members working in Government departments responsible for funding decisions who had endured derogatory comments about the church from co-workers. "I believe we're being discriminated against." Ngatai believed Destiny's 'opposition to homosexuality' was the reason.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Thursday, 9th June 2011 - 1:47pm