Wed 1 Jul 2015 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
The holder of “familyfirst.co.nz” has redirected the URL to the fundraising page of InsideOUT, a group which is trying to make schools safer and more supportive for queer and gender diverse youth. InsideOUT works with schools and groups across the country - it recently ran a Shift Hui in Whanganui. The alternative URL for Family First’s 'org.nz' website was snapped up by Hamish Spencer when its owner failed to renew its subscription in 2012. Spencer redirected it to marriageequality.co.nz. After Family First released a transphobic report on gender identity yesterday, Tabby Besley from InsideOUT tweeted that it was “depressing” the anti-lgbti group could commission, print and post copies of “a seriously harmful” 80 page document to every school in the country, “while at InsideOUT we struggle find funds to create and send our resource on making schools safer for trans and gender diverse students.” Besley then urged anyone “feeling the rage” at Family First today to donate to InsideOUT’s fundraising page. That prompted Hamish Spencer to redirect familyfirst.co.nz to that fundraising page. “I saw the tweets from Tabby Besley yesterday morning and thought that as Bob [McCoskrie of Family First] was making mischief again, aside from being an awesome cause, I'd annoy him by making his 'mission' less effective,” he tells GayNZ.com. “He's a major PITA [pain in the ass] for a lot of people, and with 1500+ hits/day to the domain, a lot of people will land at the InsideOUT page instead of his site. I previously had the domain pointing to the Abortion Law Reform Association, which he was furious about too,” Spencer says. “He just annoys me *SO* much, and by having people who intend to visit his site promoting bigotry etc end up somewhere else, it's almost a minor victory. Anything like InsideOUT that Bob is personally against is generally something people should support.” InsideOUT received a jump in donations of more than $600 yesterday alone. Besley says any money they receive will go towards their current project, working to create and distribute a resource on how to make schools safer for trans and gender diverse students. “The Youth 12 report on transgender students experiences of schools shows that transgender students were nearly five times more likely to experience bullying than cisgendered students and over half were going to school afraid that they would be hurt or harassed. “It’s every young person’s right to be safe at school, and that currently is not the case for trans and gender diverse young people. InsideOUT hopes that this resource can start to change that.” Besley says InsideOUT welcomes people to share their experiences of being a trans or gender diverse student at school and ideas for what they would like to see addressed in the resource by contacting them at hello@insideout.org.nz Meanwhile, Hamish Spencer says McCoskrie asked him last year what it would take for him to hand the domain back. “He just laughed when I said a $10,000 donation to the New Zealand AIDS Foundation, or another LGBTQ organisation of his choice and told me he was joking the day after.”
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Wednesday, 1st July 2015 - 10:01am