John Tamihere July 7, 2006. While gays and lesbians marked our freedoms stemming from Homosexual Law Reform in 1986, with dignified civic occasions and joyous parties, Radio Live's poster boy for red-blooded Kiwi bloke values, John Tamihere, and his talkback 'callers' vented their spleens. If you thought the first hour of Tamihere's World was bad enough, pour a stiff drink and follow these excerpts from the second hour of discussion of ‘gay issues': 1:16pm: The lonely voice of reason gets a few token minutes on air: Caller: The old guy that rung up saying he was liberal, that's just a lie. Straight people have done a good job of screwing marriage up. Regardless of anything, a family is about love and tolerance and acceptance in a society. So who cares what it is... gay, straight, black, white, whatever, it's about openness, tolerance and acceptance. Tamihere: My dad, he's seventy-three, came from a generation where he's conditioned... they still hold on to those views. Caller: But whatever you're from, you need to evolve. This is about evolution, and all these things that you are saying, come on, just because you're from provincial New Zealand it doesn't mean that you can get away with things like that. People are people and they can do whatever they want... live and let live But don't call up and pretend to be liberal when you're not. Tamihere: How far does the liberal agenda go in terms of where it's heading? Caller: Let's not put labels on everything. Why is there a difference between a gay couple and a straight couple? Tamihere: Well, I come from a straight couple background, my mum and dad and myself, and my darling at the moment, and because I haven't been exposed to that world, I struggle with it you see... Caller: I don't come from that background either, I'm not used to that. But who am I to judge? I don't know what's going on between them. If they're happy, good people, what does it matter? They could raise a child... there's so many kids and families that are abused by straight parents... Tamihere: Look, as a solicitor I came across two issues involving [same-sex couples]. I had some serious concerns about how those children were going to be working their adult or adolescent life out. Now this is a fascinating debate and we'll only be able to handle it on Radio Live. It's not about gay bashing but I'm a heterosexual and I can't get my mind around it, and I've got a right to say that... 1.30pm: Uppity gays and lesbians are getting above our station: Caller: I have been around homosexuality since I was about six, I've been involved in theatre, so I don't really have a problem with it. They're not like me but what's the problem? This actually started when the homosexual groups were saying that they didn't have the same rights as de facto couples. Tamihere: Yes, that was the civil union legislation that they pushed through. Caller: Well couldn't they simply have the same rights as de facto couples and nominate their next of kin? That could have surely been taken care of with legislation. Tamihere: Yeah it was... but there was one small splinter group who just want to consistently propagandise the lifestyle, normalise it. As a heterosexual brought up by a very staunch male authoritarian dad... I am starting to get a guts full of it... Caller: I am too. I've got a daughter at a tertiary institute and they had this seminar for women, the new age feminists were running it. And she got thrown out of it because she went, “bullshit” after the lecturer said “there is very strong evidence for believing that bisexuality is the norm for homo sapiens.” Tamihere: Because gay people have found it very difficult in a number of sectors of society, they have actually emigrated to academia, to media and to politics... so they're a very powerful group, far in excess of their numbers. I'm just getting sick and tired of the bandwagon being pushed... sick of their intolerance of my rights as a heterosexual to stand up and say “I think heterosexual relationships are bloody great, actually.” Caller: Yes, so am I. 1:35pm: The gays that keep going, and going, and going... Tamihere: I was part of the movement in Maori circles protesting in the late '70's... Maori society is as wide and open in scale, I suspect, as [Auckland University researcher Michael Stevens, writing in the NZ Herald] says the gays are... not all gays are wanting the civil unions bill, but it's just another way of pushing and propagandising gay life: “we're here, we're queer and we're staying, and we're going to keep going and we're going to keep going.” 1:39pm: Gays are part of the evil plot to destroy our ‘Maxim Institute-sanctioned' world: Caller: It's not so much gays, although that's one of the main tendrils, it's the liberal left, worldwide. The gays happen to be one of the major vehicles, the others are people like the Greens. I heard Metiria [Turei, proponent of revising adoption laws to allow gays to adopt] is one of those people. She was talking about how the youth of today have no rights, she just went on and on. It was like the whole revisionist history sort of stuff. Tamihere: Yeah. Caller: But I said to her these people are the most advantaged people we've ever had in the history of mankind. Their daughters can rock off and get an abortion without so much as a by-your-leave to the parents... Tamihere: They can get the independent youth allowance, tell mum and dad, go and get stuffed... Caller: Oh my word, yes. Tamihere: ...just because they've been told to come home early. Caller: But you see where I'm going with this... the gay thing is part of it. The reason that you haven't seen a massive uptake [of civil unions] in New Zealand is because the property laws around that actually are borrowed from the de facto relationship side of it, so if these guys or women were involved in, any relationship basically, it's fifty-fifty. And the reason it doesn't happen is because a study by Stacey and Biblarz [See Craig Young's column elsewhere on GayNZ.com for background on Stacey and Biblarz - ed.] shows that the language that we hear is used against us. Like, “I'm in a committed relationship” does not mean that he or she goes home to the same person. Particularly men, it says, don't go home to the same person every night. That means that that's the main person... [they] might have five other sexual partners through the year. So that's one part of it, and the longest relationship was not more than three years with homosexual men. Tamihere: From observation, they can be as promiscuous as anything. If a male and a female relationship had a few other partners on the side, ‘that's disgraceful,' ‘it's terrible,' you get vilified for it. But for gay people it's okay! And therefore you're not allowed to say, “well shucks, you don't think it is okay.” Caller: Another thing... when you look at homosexuals... there's a fairly high degree of them all turn up in the areas that you've already covered, you know, like the arts, the media... Tamihere: Academia, politics.... Caller: Yeah, very much the influential part of society. Tamihere: It comes in waves, you know, it comes in waves, because they just never stop, and Metiria Turei's bill is drafted to allow gay and lesbian couples to adopt children., [but] the law at the moment allows married couples and single people, including single gay and lesbian people, to adopt... and they do, and they live together. It's not a problem Caller: Exactly, I know, I know... Tamihere: It's like civil unions, mate, it was all looked after by the property relationships act, but to just get wave after wave of propaganda rights... Caller: I know there are lesbian doctors and nurses and they have already had in vitro fertilisation, i don't know who paid for it... Tamihere: Oh you know, I don't mind them doing it, but the point that I'm raising is the glamorisation, the propagandisation... and then the final thing I worry about is they become intolerant of my view that I'm not one, and I don't like it. Caller: Yeah, you're not going to get the tolerance that you're looking for, because this is an agenda that marches on relentlessly. This one might go away, you know. Whether it be an anti-smacking bill or whatever, somebody will get the ball passed to them and it will be a lefty... 1.47pm: Moving right along to the revisionist voice of the south: Caller: Listen mate, my name is Philip Norman Jones, I'm the eldest son of the late Norm Jones from Invercargill, and as you know he was a bit of an enigma to the New Zealand society, but you remind me a lot of him actually. I wish you were still in Parliament with your independent views. Tamihere: Hey Phil, are you still down in the south? Caller: Yes I am, down in invercargill, where men are still men and pansies remain flowers, you know the story. Tamihere: Yes, Phil. Caller: And i'd just like to say that I'm enjoying your debate. My dear old dad opposed any drug reform. He also was very supportive of the Springbok tour and, of course, he was one of the main leaders of the anti-homosexual law reform bill, and as I say, he was a bit of an enigma. He setup the Southland Save Manapouri committee, he was involved with Save the Forests, he set up associations to look after deaf children and things. And in his memory I'd just like to say that, over the last twenty years, twenty-five years, I think he has been vindicated in his stand. Like you, I came from a very disciplined background, the question of alternative sex didn't really ever come into anything. And what dad did was ask society in New Zealand to question where the line was drawn. Like you, as a heterosexual, I sometimes feel I'm not hip or not in the bloody vogue if I'm not alternative. It's quite hard to be straight these days. Tamihere: ...I'm not bashing gay people. It's been legalised twenty years ago, it's now as much of Kiwi society and network as you can get it, but it just keeps coming, wave after wave. If, for instance, the civil union was required to ensure that gays were protected, why is it in the first three months that, that the flood gates didn't break, and why is it that two and a half thousand Kiwis got married and only fifty-six got civil unions. I mean, you know, it's obviously now a movement being led from this elitist intellectual top, like it is in Maori society. Caller: Quite agree, mate, and I have two wonderful sons, John, and love them both, and they both have partners, female partners, but in their formative years, if one of them had said to me that they were, they were of a gay way of thinking, I would still love them. You know, the family thing is stronger than a direction. I don't think we're any worse or any better off for the fact that we've got these laws in place at the moment. It's just that it's very hard to understand. Followed by: It's so hard accepting you're not the only one on life's pedestal: Caller: John, I'd hate in this day and age to be an able bodied heterosexual pakeha male. I thoroughly agree with what you're saying. In the rush to make it safe for homosexuality, the rights and the needs of the heterosexual has been completely sidelined, not leaving a space for our identity. I'm completely heterosexual myself, but I do understand the needs for it, the civil rights.... Tamihere: Yeah, shucks, we've got a huge welfare problem with people being abused out of fourth generation, deprived, degraded in their hundreds in families up and down this country. And politicians continue to push their own barrow after the battle has been won, and the battle's over, it was won twenty years ago. You would think that [gays] were still the most discriminated people out. You'd think they were still being sent to gas chambers, electrified and beaten to death. I don't know whether any babies have been beaten to death this year by homosexual couples, I don't know the research that's been carried out on babies being brought up by homosexual couples, to determine whether we're making an informed decision on the adoption question, and in any event they've already got kids, they already go out and do it. Caller: I think as far kids go, any group, and that includes the disabled, the homosexuals and, and people with infertility problems... I think in that sense the safety of children born to people who have had a lot of trouble needs to be fairly secure really. But this trend isn't sort of unique. There's certain waves of feminism, part of getting their identity was to denigrate men and sometimes you see this too in, with Maori radicals. It feels like there's no space to be proudly heterosexual, proudly a male, proudly a pakeha because of the need to make space for the others. Tamihere: I agree there with you. 1.56pm: It's the schools' fault... and we don't like it, say 'three gay westies': Caller: Listen mate, I'm the father of five kids, I've got a couple of boys and I tell them that homosexuality is wrong. I believe what's happening in society is the lines have been blurred between what's black or white, or right or wrong. And I think a lot of this rubbish coming through, especially in the universities and the schools, that ‘no matter what you do, it's okay,' is wrong. We need role models like yourself, like me, to tell our young boys that, sure, homosexuality has been here for a long time, we can't stomp it out. B ut just to not stand here and pretend that it's roses, I don't think that that's the case at all. Tamihere: Twenty years since homosexual law reform, now there's Metiria Turei with her adoption bill, and it will be never-ending you see, and, and I said to these gay guys, “well what do you guys think?” They said, “no... we're getting on famously, we don't need more exposure, John, as it makes it tougher for us actually.” And that's just for three gays out in West Auckland... because once again it, what it does is it builds up a counter reaction which is unfair. Caller: I used to be in the hotel industry, now I'm in dairy farming, but guys I sit down to at barbecues, guys around my age, forty, forty-one, we'll sit there with our kids and all of them, without being gay bashing, they don't like homosexuals, they don't believe it's right. I mean it's just small sets of people that, you know, proclaim that it's the norm. That's absolute rubbish. It's not the norm and a lot of people out there don't like it. Tamihere: You've got a right to say it, too. But all of a sudden, you're driven into a car park with your mates, whispering it. Caller: Well it is disgraceful. I'm not going out there to bash them, or to do something horrible to them, but I'm not going to sit here [pretending] it's fine, when it's not. Tamihere: Yeah, that's right, I've got two boys, mate, and I bring them up the same way as you... now look, if one of them was to become homosexual and that, I'd still love him and respect him.... Caller: Of course, you've got to love them. Tamihere: ...because he's blood of my blood and flesh of my flesh, but I've got a right as a father to say it would disappoint me dramatically, I don't like it. Caller: I think we need more men in parliament to actually let people know what most people are actually thinking, as opposed to a couple of them that have just got gay agendas. Tamihere: Yeah, right mate. 1:58pm: How come gays can adopt Kiwi kids, while we had to make do with a Russian one? Huh?: Caller: My wife and I have adopted a child from Russia. We were in the adoption pool in New Zealand for two years... there were about fifty couples waiting for one child to become available. And how adoption works is, once a child becomes available you get picked. Now most simple, solo, single mums who are adopting out the child, they look at a family being normal. Now, if they see a gay couple putting a name in there, they may not see it as normal... Tamihere: But mate, I've seen gay couples with kids... Caller: ...yeah I know... it interests me how they're doing that. We'll give you a couple of days to digest that little lot before bringing you the next course in this buffet of bile. Unbelievably, it just gets worse and worse! GayNZ.com - 20th July 2006