At this time of seasonal goodwill, GayNZ.com honours seven individuals or groups outside the GLBT community who have helped us this year. Brian Tamaki In the spirit of flip-flopping favoured by Don Brash we've followed suit and put everyone's favourite fundamentalist pastor at the top of our Best list this year, after he made top of the worst last year. Why? Well, we've got loads to thank Brian for. Firstly, he's frightened the horses at TVNZ so much that they've hapily replaced his show with something much less scary for kids in the morning – the adventures of Buzz and Poppy, a pair of animated huhu grubs (even though the programme is created by Tamaki cohort Trevor Yaxley of the Lifeway Academy, where Maxim's Compass boot camp for kids is being held in January) Brian's blackshirt Enough is Enough march down Lambton Quay was the turning point in the campaign for civil unions, with at least one MP – NZ First's Brian Donnelly – going on the record to say it turned his abstaining vote into a "yes". Brian has another march planned for next year, in which he aims to piss off the entire population of New Zealand's largest city by shutting down traffic for an unauthorised jaunt across Auckland's Harbour Bridge. Judging by the results of his last march, this “mass gathering” should have us on target for converting a further 30% of the population to the "homosexual lifestyle", as set out in the third draft of Homosexual Manifesto 2004 (remember, that was the one where we voted against having special pink passports issued and in favour of crap weather for Christmas). David Benson-Pope The former schoolteacher from Dunedin South was well-equipped to deal with the childish tantrums and behaviour he encountered as he shepherded the Civil Unions Bill through Parliament this year, and continually called for tolerance from the fundies. First to throw their toys out of the cot was the Maxim Institute, with whining managing director Greg Fleming publicly declaring that a "powerful $40 billion government" was attempting to bully his "small, charitable group" (with its trifling $1 million annual budget) into submission, and stifling free debate. In classic schoolteacherly fashion, Benson-Pope responded matter-of-factly, "I think that sort of talk is rather silly. I think it's ironic that those who advocate for freedom of speech would try to stop me having it." He then put the cherry on the cake by revealing Maxim's links to fundamentalists in America, which they'd vehemently denied since Adam was a boy sneaking off with Steve behind the bike shed when Eve wasn't looking. He brushed aside a puerile attack on his office which saw Christian activists from Otago University plastering his windows with anti-civil union posters in the style of a Tui beer advertisement, and an unidentified assailant simultaneously leaving a jar of shit outside the door. He rejected calls for amendments to the Civil Union Bill, and for a referendum, saying: "What could it possibly mean to say that New Zealand's human rights legislation, including the Human Rights Act 1993, should only be applied in a particular instance if the majority of the population decides that it should be? What kind of protection for a minority is that?" And finally, when the Bill passed and the fundies still would not be silenced, insisting that it was time for a Defence of Marriage Act, Benson-Pope responded with two words that must have been more than mildly irritating for the Christian activists from Otago: "Yeah right!" Paul Litterick Paul is secretary of the NZ Rationalists GayNZ.com - 25th December 2004