A Rainbow Correction

The New Zealand Parliament last week redecorated one of its Select Committee rooms (where MPs go to chat with members of the public about bills and whatnot) to reflect the positive contribution that New Zealand's 'Rainbow' community had made to New Zealand society. I'm not surprised if the opening of the 'Rainbow Room', which joins other rooms dedicated to minority groups in NZ society including women, Pacific peoples, Maori and Asians, failed to register on your news radar. After all, last week was also a week where American Banks realised they didn't have any money any more, where Thabo Mbeki was turfed out of the South African presidency to make room for Jacob 'Showers after sex cure AIDS' Zuma, and John McCain finally went senile. This Rainbow Room will hardly be noticed by anyone, in the world ever. It is the smallest of very small steps in recognising that LBGTI New Zealanders enjoy full citizenship in our country. Given that the New Zealand Parliament only recognised that deciding to say 'I LIKE PEOPLE WITH THE SAME GENITALIA AS ME', wasn't a crime against God and decency about 22 years ago, and only decided in 2004 that it was all good for a man to be buried next to the man he loved, I would have sympathised with the Rainbow Community if they had of compared the opening of the Rainbow Room to giving a litre of housepaint to someone who lost their home in Hurrican Katrina. Surely, a much more effective gesture would have been a campaign in primary schools to get small chidren to not use 'gay' as a swearword.

BUUUT, despite my grumblings about Tokenism, I still think that the opening of the Rainbow Room is a positive step forward for the Queer community in New Zealand. In essence the NZ Government is saying 'look, we know we persecuted you guys for your lifestyle choices in the past, and we know that we denied you guys rights that you as citizens were entitled because of your lifestyle choice. We are deeply sorry for this, so here is a small token to honour your contribution to society and to say that never again will your legitimacy as full citizens be compromised'. And I think that I would be correct in saying, if you take the hateful, spiteful Muppets of Richard Lewis's 'Family Party' out of the equation (and I wish I could), that the vast majority of New Zealanders would recognise the legitimate claims to citizenship that the Rainbow Community have. (This does not mean that all New Zealanders morally agree with all aspects of their lifestyles, but there is agreement that Rainbow New Zealands should not be persecuted for living this way).

Which is why I was surprised with the readers comments on this article . It seems that New Zealanders did have a problem with the Rainbow Room for two very different, quite baseless reasons.

The first reason was that 'ZOMG, Inflation has hit 5% and there is a war in Georghanistaraq - Now isn't the time to worry about silly little things like rooms for trannies'. It seems to be a common argument, especially amongst the right, that issues of citizenship do not carry nearly as much policy weight as important stuff like the economy and defence. The idea is that stuff will be dealt with in due course, but lets wait for a day when Parliament doesn't have anything else to do. Like maybe one day when it is raining. My response to this is that issues take on a differing levels of importance depending on your proximity and effect to them. That's why I'm way more excited about debates about a universal student allowance than my Grandma is, and why my Grandma is more worried about the rising price of spinach, starch and cat food than I am. For a straight, white Anglo-Saxon male like me and John Key, of course the issue of gay rights takes a back seat to pocketbook issues. But when your rights as a citizen are fundamentally limited because the goverment has decided that YOU are unacceptable to them, then not being discrimated against becomes fundamentally important. The Rainbow Room, for homosexuals who were forced to hide their homosexuality from the law prior to 1986, is an expression that those dark days will never come again and is the culmination of a long fight.

The second responseI found on the Stuff article, was more troubling. It was the view espoused by many heterosexual white males that if there was a room for gays, a room for Asians, and a room for chicks, why couldnt they have a room too? And on that note, Why couldnt there be a room which celebrated the nuclear, 2 parents - 2 kids family? I have two responses to this. My first is that Im sure if there was sufficient public interest in getting a 'family room' or a 'Barry Crump memorial room', Parliament would act on these wishes. But the fact there isn't, and hasn't been sorta reflects the fact why there shouldnt be a room at all. My second response is that all select committee rooms reflect parliamentary recognition of the contribution of groups in society that were previously discriminated against by law. Samoan families were raided in the seventies. Chinese had to pay a poll tax. Maori land was confiscated. Women couldnt vote. Homosexuality was once illegal. White heterosexual males have not been discrimated against by law, the law in fact for much of history has been based on the moral valuations of white heterosexual males - and what they do or do not find distasteful. While a 'male room' may satisfy the strictest definition of equality, it is a slap in the face to groups that have suffered past discrimination and compromises attempts to redress this.

So we should salute the Rainbow Room, and the statement it makes about the progressive values of New Zealand. To do otherwise - well, as my little sister would say...its a bit 'gay' of you, really.