Sun 10 Jul 2016 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
Sustained standing ovations were delivered last night to the woman who, as a neophyte MP, fronted the parliamentary campaign to strike down a law which for decades had effectively made gay and bisexual NZ men criminals. Fran Wilde speaking at the civic reception in Auckland last night At a catered civic reception hosted by Auckland's deputy mayor Penny Hulse and the Council's Rainbow advisory panel, and at a glittering gala and dance party hosted by Rainbow Auckland and Sky City, Fran Wilde was cheered and whistled thirty years to the day, and almost the hour, since Parliament passed the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. Wilde spoke of what she felt was the rightness of the cause which caused her to embark on the campaign helmed by hundreds of glbti activists around the country. Of gay men becoming criminals in order to love one another, Wild recalled that she "though that was terrible, it cannot be like this." The mid-1980s also saw the arrival of the then-fatal HIV/AIDS epidemic in New Zealand, almost exclusively killing gay and bisexual men.Wilde recalled how the law was effectively killing some of them. She recalled that many men with advanced AIDS were too scared to seek medical help for fear of being branded as homosexual. "I felt that ridding these men of the stigma of being criminals society would become more forgiving and offer them better health care," she said at the civic reception. But she admitted the campaign was longer and more intensive than she or the bill's supporters had anticipated. "When we saw the strength and ugliness of the response we had to scale up," she said, recalling measures such as public opinion polling, selective targeting of MPs who might be convinced to vote for the bill, organisation of pressure groups and public meetings, instant media response strategies and a host of other projects. Also present at the reception, held in the council chambers, were law professor Don McMorland who drafted the final bill, Bill Logan and Peter wall who headed the Wellington and Auckland Gay Task Forces respectively and became the public faces of the gay community, politicians past and present, many of those who worked actively on the Homosexual Law Reform campaign and representatives of current Auckland glbti organisations. Earlier in the week Wilde was the focus of adulation in Wellington with a grand event held at Parliament, outside which the rainbow flag flew officially for the first time.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Sunday, 10th July 2016 - 12:38pm