Colin Craig (TVNZ pic) The head of New Zealand's largest glbti support organisation is horrified at the inacurate information about glbti people being voiced on national TV by Conservative party leader Colin Craig. On the Paul Henry Show last night Craig dismissed gay people as not being normal and comprising only one percent of the population. But figures on how many New Zealanders identify as gay have never been collected. “Speechless was my first reaction. Then shocked. Then horrified,” Outline General Manager Trevor Easton tells GayNZ.com Daily News. “I can’t believe anyone in 2014 can come up with those comments.” Easton says the most relevant and reliable recent statistics he knows of come from the Australian Federal Government Department of Health and Ageing, which said in 2012 that people who identify as being part of the Rainbow community make up 11 per cent of the Australian population. He’s also aware of studies which have suggested up to 15 per cent of people are gay. “It depends, like all statistics, where you find them from. And obviously he’s not getting them from anywhere that’s intelligent,” Easton remarks. “And as for his comments about normal, what is normal? Does anyone in this world want to actually be classified as being completely normal? Like everyone we eat, work, sleep,and play a little bit. We just happen to love the same sex. I don’t know where he gets his ‘normality’ from. But if he’s normal, I don’t particularly want to be like him.” Craig is coming under increasing ridicule and pressure after he threatened to sue Greens party leader Russell Norman for telling a crowd at the Big Gay Out that the Conservative leader wants to see women in the kitchen and gays in the closet.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Thursday, 20th February 2014 - 10:05pm