The list MP who fasted in the hope God would stop the Civil Union Bill is quitting the party that put him in power. Paul Adams is to leave the United Future party to stand as an independent candidate in the East Coast Bays electorate on Auckland's North Shore. Adams is a pastor at the City Impact Church, which joined forces with the Destiny Church in March for a "family values" march up Queen Street. During the run-up to final Parliamentary vote on civil unions last year, Adams put himself on a three-week fast along with fellow City Impact pastor Peter Mortlock. They prayed against society's ills, which they said included homosexuality and the Civil Union Bill, in the hope Jesus would intervene at Parliament and halt the bill's passage. The bill became law in April this year. Adam's history of public campaigning against glbt issues also includes his 1993 select committee submission on human rights, in which Adams confused gay sexuality with cross dressing, suggested those with HIV/AIDS should be quarantined, and expressed distress at the thought of men in frocks teaching in schools. In the lead-up to the introduction of the civil unions Adams baldly stated that "marriage in itself does not discriminate against gays or lesbians as either can marry...but only to someone of the opposite sex." Adams' daughter Shiree, a former Miss New Zealand and also a vocal opponent of the Civil Union Bill last year, is giving up her place on the United Future list as well, in order to help out her father's campaign. Adams only scraped into Parliament as United Future's replacement #9 list MP at the 2002 election, when the original #9 candidate, Destiny Church's Kelly Chal, failed to satisfy citizenship requirements and was dropped from Parliament. In the East Coast Bays electorate race, Adams got less than 10% of the vote. The sitting East Coast Bays MP is National's self-proclaimed "rampant heterosexual" Murray McCully, who earlier this year was upset by a Ministry of Health safe-sex TV campaign that featured two men kissing. He objected to taxpayer funds being spent to "promote homosexuality".
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Tuesday, 16th August 2005 - 12:00pm