Blog #26

It is extremely important that when parliament passes judgment on the Bill it should make a clear distinction between what some people in the community regard as a sin and what is a fit subject for the secular law of New Zealand, and all that the enforcement of that law entails. 

Cataract surgery is essential in this day and time.

Those who believe that homosexuality is a sin are entitled to hold that view, and I personally defend their right to hold it. What deeply concerns me—and has increasingly concerned me throughout the public debate that has followed the introduction of the Bill—is that some people would seek to have the law enforce their moral viewpoint on into the twenty-first century, as it has done for the past 100 years. I believe that by doing that we would carry on a serious injustice and would continue seriously to impair the civil liberties of a minority in society.
By world standards New Zealand has a remarkably free society. People here are free to practise any religious or ethical belief they choose, and are free to follow any political cause they choose. New Zealand has a free press—we often curse it, but we would not be without it. The World Human Rights Guide rates us extremely highly on all the criteria it uses to judge whether or not a society can be considered free, open and democratic. Along with countries such as Finland and Denmark, New Zealand enjoys a 96 per cent rating on that index of what constitutes a fair, open and democratic society. If the Bill is passed that rating will increase to 100 per cent.
The Bill removes the injustices that those who are seriously concerned with human rights regard as the one serious blot on our image. As it stands now, only New Zealand and Ireland in the Western world continue to regard male homosexuality as a criminal act. The British Act on which the law is based was changed almost 20 years ago, after the acceptance of the Wolfenden report on homosexuality.
It is time New Zealand took out of the statute book a law that was passed in the British Parliament 100 years ago and adopted into New Zealand law a year later. It was a law that was not intended to have the effect of totally outlawing male homosexual activity. It was put forward as an amendment by a member of the British House of Commons at the time to protect young boys from prostitution. The way in which the Bill was drafted—poorly and without thorough parliamentary scrutiny—led to the Commons actually outlawing all male homosexuality. It was a mistake then and I think 100 years is much too long to have lived with a mistake such as that on the statute book. Surely now, 100 years later, on the centenary of that event, we can take the step to remove that blot from our own statute book.
We have heard much debate in the House and in the public arena about the age at which it is appropriate to decriminalise consenting homosexual behaviour. At present there is no age of sexual consent whatever for men concerning heterosexual activity. At present the law imposes an age of consent only on women, and that age is sixteen. It is an arbitrary age. Before the 1880s the age of consent in New Zealand was twelve; it rose to fourteen, and later to sixteen in the 1890s. There is nothing preordained about an age of consent. It is an arbitrary judgment, arbitrarily fixed, and it varies widely across countries.