One of the main driving forces behind Homosexual Law Reform, Bill Logan, says he is disappointed at the decision of the organisers of Saturday Night's function at Parliament withdrawing his invitation to speak as a result of what he describes as a vendetta against him. Logan (above left) at Saturday night's function. (Photo: Michael P Moore) Logan, now a counselor, was the face of the gay community for many New Zealanders during the long and bitterly-fought battle to decriminalise homosexual intimacy. He was prominent in the Gay TaskForce which was the main organisation coordinating strategies and facilitating communication between the many disparate and sometimes fractious groups campaigning for law reform. "Unfortunately, without any representative of the Gay Taskforce, there wasn’t much of a feel at the event of what the struggle for Homosexual Law Reform was like," Logan says. "There wasn’t a sense of how it was all tied together with the struggle against HIV-AIDS, and AIDS-'phobia, and the first wave of deaths of all our friends." Logan's invitation to be a speaker at the event, which launched Wellington Pride Week and marked thirty years since the successful campaign, was withdrawn after organisers were made aware of a situation two years ago in which he was censured by the Association of Counsellors. He believes the organisers' decision magnifies the incident in people's minds and GayNZ.com Daily News understands there are now rumours circulating that the police were involved in the situation, which was not the case. "At a personal level, there is a nasty side to this," Logan believes, "because reasonable people believe that Out Wellington would not have left the representative of the Gay Taskforce off the speakers’ list unless he had committed foul and criminal acts. But I have done no such thing. The Committee’s action has led reasonable people to false and damaging beliefs about me. "What the Counselors Association found is that I failed to recognise and manage what they saw as potentially sexual behaviour toward me by an adult student counsellor. It was not my behaviour but his, and that behaviour never became overtly sexual. "The other finding involved a young man, a non-client, who I had internet cam sex with. Nine months later he approached me again on the internet in a dangerously depressed suicidal state. I saw him professionally three times before I managed to get him to see another counsellor. He was not harmed in any way and I might have saved his life, but I had broken the Code of Ethics. The Counsellors Association penalty was that I undergo additional education and supervision for a year." Logan says he is being penalised all over again. "The Out Wellington Committee thought this wasn’t a sufficient penalty. They had not heard the evidence. They didn’t know what it was all about. But there was a group wanting to get at me, to dramatise a point or pursue a vendetta. And the Out Wellington Committee wanted to have a fun party."
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Monday, 7th March 2016 - 8:47pm