A new flag for New Zealand - designed by Clint Woolly Given that researcher Chris Brickell is about to release his pioneering work on gay male history in New Zealand/Aotearoa, I thought it might be pleasant to prognosticate about our intermediate future. What role might LGBT New Zealanders have in our nation's future? In the seventies, there was a Commission for the Future, one of whose tasks was to envisage future scenarios for our country. They put out one memorable slender volume which predicted the New Right reforms of the eighties and nineties, which extrapolated the Labour Opposition's nuclear-free policies into neutrality and fair trade, taking it out of ANZUS and out of a cataclysmic nuclear war which broke out in 1989 (!) There was also a small-is-beautiful eco-future model where New Zealand turned deep green. So what might happen in our future? As I've frequently noted, we will witness the successful end of our legislative agenda, with the achievement of more substantive transgender anti-discrimination laws, inclusive adoption reform and eventually, same-sex marriage proper. Beyond that, reproductive technologies might render extra-uterine reproduction (ectogenesis) and merged ova reproduction (parthenogenesis) feasible, or not. As I've noted, there will then be a future generation of ethical debates about those reproductive technologies. What about New Zealand's wider future, though, beyond our own communities and their legislative needs? I have a few ideas for additional intermediate reforms to New Zealand's political structures, including the abolition of the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act 1993 and the establishment of a written constitution for New Zealand to safeguard our human rights and civil liberties. But what else? Let's look at some other key probable future political developments. Maori will continue to burgeon and their strength of numbers will probably lead to a proportionate number of Maori seats eventually. This will be positive, as it will probably add to pressures from other quarters for enhanced constitutional rules, centred on the Treaty of Waitangi. We need to pay heed to this, because if we do not become involved in these debates, we risk abdicating the field to the predatory likes of Destiny Church and its hireling Family Party. Personally, I would regard the Treaty as the cornerstone of any future written constitution. What about climate change? There will need to be vast changes to our resource consumption patterns if we are to successfully blunt the cumulative changes to our biosphere. This means gay male professionals will need to make a virtue of neccessity, and cut down conspicuous consumption. Mind you, the gym bunny sector of the gay male community will relish the chance for more bicycle lanes, and hopefully, we'll be able to find a biofuel substitute for emergency vehicle rapid transit and trade purposes. As a result, there may be pressure for smaller and planned families, which should suit us, given that there's little other way that we can produce families other than through careful planning usually. Eventually, given environmental change's epidemiological implications, we may also see a rise in tropical disease pandemics and pressure for the decriminalisation of voluntary euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. In terms of foreign policy, I hope that the green evangelical trend isn't just a temporary development. If it is, then the United States will probably face some hard times as it loses its superpower status to the Peoples Republic of China. On the positive side, that means the Christian Right will probably also lose its remaining international reach. On the negative side, there may be a future right-wing theocratic coup in that country. The European Union will continue to consolidate. I don't see any Australasian political union- we've been too independent of each other for too long, and we are divergent societies. Australia will need to grow up constitutionally and politically for that to happen. There will be no Great Reversal, as some fear, unless New Zealand First is replaced by something akin to Pauline Hanson's verminous One Nation or the equally reprehensible British National Party. If that happens, one hopes National won't go into coalition with it. LGBT rights are secure for the intermediate and long-term future in this country. Just as well, because we face a radically changed world over the next century or so. Craig Young - 21st June 2008