Signs of a thaw in Destiny Church's homophobia have come to nothing Less than a year after claiming gay people are welcome at his church, Brian Tamaki is back whipping up anti-gay fervour. Herald on Sunday reporter Cherie Howie has been sitting in on Destiny Church’s $65 a head annual conference this weekend. She says during his speech Brian Tamaki began talking about the biggest problem in the world at the moment - "gaypower". He said he was shocked by marriage equality in Ireland and claims “a whole generation of children will be bisexual because the ‘perversion of homosexuality is leading the charge,’. He adds: "Gaypower, that spirit is so powerful it's changing political institutions and half of them don't even want it, but they're forced to. "Churches are powerless. You go there now and you talk about that now and you'd be driven out of town. "Not by the gays, because they're so well organised, but most of the neutral population agree with them. Gay is the new thing, it's taking over the world. "It's a fire that's allowed to burn because the church ran out of fire. After a while the whole globe is going to be on fire." Howie writes “in a crowd this large there will be people who are homosexual. I wonder what they're thinking.” Read her entire piece here There had been signs the church was softening its homophobia and transphobia. Destiny Church was notably publicly silent on the issue of marriage equality in New Zealand, a stark change from civil unions and the ‘Enough is Enough’ march. Last June Tamaki even told Seven Sharp gay people were now welcome at his church. “We all grow and we mature hopefully into better people. It’s just defined and refined for me as a leader,” he stated, but attempts by GayNZ.com to get some clarification were met with silence. At the end of 2013 he attended a tribute night for former foe Georgina Beyer, someone he had refused to acknowledge was a woman for at least a decade. Beyer believed it might be the beginning of reconciliation with the glbt community. Also in 2013, the New Zealand Herald reported Tamaki as saying that he doesn't hate gay people and that he has "a lot of gay friends." GayNZ.com appealed for those gay friends to come forward. The only one who did was Jevan Goulter, who spoke about his friendship with Brian Tamaki and his wife Hannah.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Sunday, 31st May 2015 - 9:49am