John Tamihere As Radio Live, the talkback stablemate of Radio Pacific, pulls out all the stops to drag up a viable audience for prospective advertisers, it seems to be pinning its hopes of success on stirring up redneck New Zealand. While gays and lesbians marked our freedoms gained by, and since, Homosexual Law Reform in 1986, with dignified civic occasions, and the likes of Urge Bar and Pound nightclub partied like it was 1986, Radio Live's poster boy for red-blooded Kiwi bloke values John Tamihere and his callers partied on air like it was 1956. Some excerpts... On het bashing, genes and advice from his dad: Tamihere: “I'm a heterosexual, and just because I don't necessarily adhere to the homosexual life, it doesn't mean to say that if I don't like it I shouldn't be allowed to say [that]... But the day that a heterosexual stands up and says ‘I don't like it,' all of a sudden you're a homosexual basher... I'd like to listen to your views on whether there is any medical evidence out there to say that this is genetic, just a genetic issue and it's going to happen, because I have looked at this closely, I haven't been referred to any study of any integrity or credibility at this particular point in time that would lead me to say that that is the case... and just because I hold that view doesn't mean to say I'm Genghis Khan on gay rights, I just don't like it... I don't accept as a heterosexual that my views make me wrong... because [I want my] two sons to actually grow up and, hopefully, marry a woman and have a child by way of the normal process of population, rather than by in-vitro fertilization or whatever else happened, because it's just the law of nature. When I asked ‘Hey dad, what's the Maori view on homosexuality,' he said, ‘I don't know about this homosexuality thing, all I know is that whakapapa is ‘beget by procreation,' and procreation happens in our genealogies and in all our carved houses, they are a celebration to the coming together of man and woman, because it's about procreation. And the reality is is that there is not one meeting house in Maoridom or in Maori culture that has an acknowledgment to a relationship that doesn't procreate, so therefore I don't, I don't like it.'” On Green MP Metiria Turei's push for legislative amendments to allow same sex couples to adopt children: “Every year, every minute, every day, the gay rights movement, the Rainbow sector of the Labour party and everything else wants to push another barrow. They're pushing Metiria Turei's bill for gay rights and their ability to adopt. See, a gay person at this stage can adopt, a gay person in a civil union can still adopt, all right, and so, so I just wanted to challenge that. Why would they get a black girl, a Maori girl, who happens to be heterosexual, to pursue this from the Green party, right? Because she's not a good target for anybody else to have a go at because, if you go against gay rights therefore you, you must be a gay-basher. Secondly, if she promotes it and you have a go at her, you must be racist. Thirdly, she's a woman so therefore you must be anti-feminist.” A female caller on the traumas that apparently turn us gay: Caller: “I really truly believe that I wasn't put on this earth to have sex with my neighbour who happens to be female, period. I believe it's a male and female thing. I don't have any problem with the homosexuals, I have a problem with the actions of the homosexuals. I've heard story after story after story of these people who are gay and their basis of being gay is through traumatic experiences in their past, every single one of them. And the story I heard from this girl, who had several, said that every one of those people were gay because of something that had happened in their earlier years which led them to believe, this is all they knew.” Tamihere: “Yeah, look, Leanne, all I wanted to say on it is that, you know, we're twenty years down the track from the reform legislation. I think we've become a far more tolerant society in certain aspects and I just want gays to tolerate my views. I become intolerant of people who are not tolerant when I am.” Caller: “Yeah, it's their defence mechanism to, to lash back at a prejudiced side of things, I think...because we are entitled to our view... we don't have to agree with what they're doing, as people they're fine... but it's what they do that we don't have to agree with and we're not prejudiced because of that.” A ‘liberal' pair discuss unnatural sex, adoption and pashing: Caller: “I'm an old pakeha fellow from Palmerston North here and I'm pretty liberal minded and tolerant of everything, but there's one thing I can't abide and that's this homosexuality business. I have had a lot of fun in my time with a good woman and a bit of nookie and I still do even though I'm seventy-three and don't need the old Viagra yet, but I draw the line at man with man and women with women. The minute you get away from natural things, that's when the world starts to go wrong... I don't know anything in nature or history that teaches us to be homosexual. So I'm a hundred percent against it and I can't for the love of me see any argument where they can justify it. I'll probably get pilloried for saying this, but I don't think gays should be allowed to adopt children. How would a child feel who brings his friends home from school and says ‘These are my parents,' and they're two men, or two women. Now what do you think of that?” Tamihere: “I still struggle getting my mind around how you adopt a young kid and he walks into a lounge and there's dad and dad having a pash up. I don't like it, I don't understand what impacts that'd have. And just because I have that sense of difficulty doesn't make me a bad bloke.” Caller: “I've got that bloody difficulty too, I've always had it and I'll die having it. For the love of me I can't see how the hell anyone could justify it. Man was made for woman and woman was made for man. You get a good man and woman together, they do what nature intended, that's the procreation of the species, the race. But the minute you get this other buggerising around, man with man or women with women, well, if that went on, there'd be no human race left after a while, would there?” Tamihere: “I don't want to get into a gay-bashing thing but I do want to understand it, and I do want us to have a conversation that's healthy about the rights that heterosexual peoples have to express themselves without feeling that they'll be vilified.” On Civil Unions and the gay agenda: Tamihere: Three months after [the Civil Unions] legislation went through the house, one would have thought that there [would have been] this huge floodwaters of gay people wanting to get married or civil unioned. Two and a half thousand kiwi heterosexual couples married and fifty-six gay couples civil unioned, or thereabouts, I think there were a couple of straight couples there... well whoop-dedoo!... I suspect in the gay movement there's people that are just moving on. Gay people were driven out of our working class communities when I was a kid and older... and they sort of crawled up the food chain into the creative sector, they're heavily involved in professionals, and in the arts sector where it's just not a problem. But do they have a greater drive on? Now this [same-sex adoption] bill promoted by Metiria Turei... what's the next one, what's the next one? ‘All heterosexuals that say anything like John Tamihere [says] on Radio Live should be jailed for sixteen months?'” All that and more was included in just one hour of Radio Live talkback. In a few days' time we'll bring you excerpts from the next hour of homophobic diatribes. GayNZ.com - 15th July 2006