New Human Rights Tribunal appointee, "tranny granny" Jacquie Grant, should be removed from her position immediately, says a fundamentalist lobby group, supported in their stance by ACT MP Stephen Franks. Grant's crime was writing a frank email to the authors of an anti-gay hate site which has sprung up from nowhere in the lead-up to the final vote on the Civil Union Bill vote in Parliament. The largely anonymous group behind the site (whose domain name has been registered through a proxy to prevent the public finding out who owns it) is printing leaflets entitled “Say No To Same-Sex Relationships”, complete with Paul Cameron's universally discredited 1980's ‘research' on homosexuality, and distributing them in people's letterboxes. Grant wrote: “After reading your hate site I make the following comments: I have raised over 70 children as a foster parent for CYPS, some for most of their lives. None have ever turned out GAY. All have had an improvement in their lives. A large number are now married, and functioning members of society. A good number attended Christian churches of different denominations with my support and blessing. “By the way I am a transsexual woman – by your definition I used to be a man. Prostitutes can only function when there are clients. FACT – most clients are married men, undoubtedly a lot would describe themselves as Christian. It is easy to deflect issues away from oneself when trying to cover up. My suggestion is you people examine your own back yards first. “I will debate these issues with you anywhere, anytime but I think you are basically cowardly people and I do not expect to have that opportunity soon. Rest assured you will be taken to task at every opportunity for hate crime.” A second email criticised the intolerance of the Christian movement, in which Grant said she knew people who had killed themselves after pressure from "so-called Christian families". The group, calling themselves the Campaign Against the Civil Union and Relationships Bills, described Grant's letter – which they have reproduced on their site and released to the media – as “threatening”, and have made a formal complaint to the Ministry of Justice to have her disqualified on the basis of her “anti-Christian” bias. “The Christian Gospel is the Good News found in the Person and Work of the Lord Jesus Christ,” they stated in a press release. “He calls all people to repent of all sin, including all forms of sexual immorality that destroys human relationships, and come to Christ and experience the compassionate forgiveness of our Triune [sic] God.” MP Franks, ACT's justice spokesman, says Grant hasn't the "faintest idea" what human rights are, and should be removed. He says he has urged – unsuccessfully – to have a clause inserted into the Civil Union Bill which will protect people with anti-gay views.
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Friday, 26th November 2004 - 12:00pm