Homophobia Still Exists In Aotearoa: Discrimination At Pride Proves It / Neill Ballantyne
Following the Pride parade in Wellington a Gay couple were assaulted and harassed. Neill Ballantyne says that this is just a symptom of a bigger issue.
I can just imagine it … drunken jostling bodies… queuing haphazardly… slurring their orders… focussed on eating some junk food after a long night of drinking. And then it happens, someone falls out of line, and the mob turns on them. Shrieking their disgust, hands outstretched, grabbing. You reach forward, putting your hand out in protection and say, ‘hey leave my boyfriend alone.’
Now they turn on you, a ripple spreads through the crowd as they realise what they are dealing with, not just any queue jumper, but a gay queue jumper, oh the audacity. They grab you, someone yells ‘faggot’, you feel a fist fit your face as you and your partner cower in fear.
And in that moment you realise that everything you feared about being gay has come true. The hate that made you deny your own identity has surfaced. The hate that kept you in the closet for so many years just yelled ‘faggot’. The hate that kept you from holding your boyfriends’ hand in public, just hit you in the face.
Because the LGBTIAQ+ community know we are different. We know that deep down many people find us strange, weird and wrong. We know that many religious people think we are going against the created order, that we are sinful, we are abominations.
We hear it from the pulpit, we hear it from our family, we hear it from our friends. We see that the only representations of healthy happy relationships are those that are heterosexual and cisgender. We see that our identities are hidden and shameful.
But New Zealander’s are quick to pat ourselves on the back. We look at marriage equality and pride parades and think that all is well. We don’t believe that homophobia still exists even if we secretly hope our kids are straight. We smugly tell off our colleague for referring to Caitlin Jenner as ‘Bruce’ even if we secretly think they/them pronouns are grammatically wrong.
The fact that a gay couple experienced homophobic violence following a pride parade/ party in Wellington, vividly demonstrates that we have a long way to go on our journey towards inclusion. This is backed up by finding such as this 2019 report[1] which found that one fifth of all crime is linked to discrimination. The impact of this discrimination on the mental health and wellbeing of young New Zealanders is shown in stark terms by the Youth2000 series of reports[2].
And churches/ religious organisations are still among the biggest discriminators in New Zealand. It is religious people who most vehemently oppose legislative change, it is in religious spaces where I have personally experienced the most homophobia, and it is in religious organisations where I have less rights than a heterosexual.
It is strange that a faith which believes in grace, believes that Jesus calls us to look after the ‘least of these’, believes that God is love and that all love comes from God, would deny me my love.
We have a long way to go as a country, and we have a long way to go as a church. My question is, what part will you play?
Neill Ballantyne is a community development practitioner driven by Kingdom values and the way of Jesus. He is passionate about supporting those on the margins while always finding time for a good, ethical coffee.
[1] https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/118225953/hate-crime-a-fifth-of-offending-in-new-zealand-is-linked-to-discrimination
[2] https://www.fmhs.auckland.ac.nz/assets/fmhs/faculty/ahrg/docs/Youth12-transgender-young-people-fact-sheet.pdf