Twenty years of homosexual law reform: Have attitudes changed enough?

The architect of homosexual law reform, former MP Fran Wilde, says businesses face a value loss if they exclude gays from the workplace. “If you’re being discriminatory, you’re losing the value of those people that could be contributing,” says Wilde.

Twenty years on, she hears “anecdotally” that the Bill has made a huge difference in gay people’s lives, but equality is not there yet, she says.

“I get the feeling diversity policies are much better in larger companies. But it’s the same for any minority group. They don’t do as well in smaller workplaces.”

Ms Wilde says getting recognition for gays in the workplace was an important part of bringing New Zealanders to the realisation that they were already part of civic life.

“Workplaces were important in getting the law changed. People’s willingness to come out at work was a big factor in the campaign. We were running an education campaign so people could see that they already did know gay people, they worked with them, and they were OK. We needed visibility, and people were very brave,” Ms Wilde says.

The former Labour MP and ex-Wellington mayor introduced the Homosexual Law Reform Bill into Parliament, and steered it through 16 months of hard fighting until its passage on July 9, 1986. Ms Wilde is now a prominent Wellington company director and business consultant.

What they said at the time: Submissions and Debate on the Homosexual Law Reform Bill.

Debates in the House and submissions to Parliament from the public reflected a belief from some New Zealanders that gay people could not, and indeed should not, participate usefully in society, as workers or anything else. Here’s some of the employment-related comments made in the House in 1986 as the bill was debated.

Doug Graham (National, Remuera):
“If a homosexual approaches me for a job I cannot discriminate against him on that ground. I believe I should have that right; I should be able to say: ‘I do not blame you for being homosexual; I am not heaping scorn and condemnation upon your head; I accept that you have the right to think as you will, but I do not want anything to do with you and I don’t want to employ you.”

Tony Friedlander (National, New Plymouth):
“It means that there would be no ability not to employ a person solely on the grounds of homosexuality. I believe that is an unacceptable position for us to place society in.”

Paul East (National, Rotorua):
“In this legislation we are not just seeking decriminalisation; we are seeking acceptance by society and in that respect the legislation goes too far…the police service, the armed forces, the prison service and churches are not required to comply with human rights legislation in certain areas, but there are no exceptions in this legislation. That means the police service, the armed forces and the prison service would be required by law to accept in employment active, visible, practising homosexuals…”

Members of the public had their say through submissions to the Parliamentary Select Committee considering the Homosexual Law Reform Bill.

Mr C C Barnes, Hawera
“Homosexuality will not work to produce a peaceful, stable and fulfilled society because it will not satisfy nor fulfil the true aspirations and functions that men and women are capable of.”

Mrs Anne Parker, Dunedin.
“The family and the nation has been strong in the past but the innovative legislation which has been put through in more recent years has weakened both the family and the nation and created chaos in the workforce.”

Mr P A Bindoff
“I submit that the proposed Bill would be, if passed, a fountain of unmitigated evil.”

For some, the debate around the Bill was a call to stand up and be counted – even though this could lead to reprisals in the workplace.

Prue Hyman
“…the uninformed and unpleasant verbal attacks by opponents of the bill have both shocked me to a realisation that some people still hold these views which I find hard to understand and consider unbalanced, and have also caused me to be prepared to stand up and be counted in public in a way I have not previously felt able to do. It is still far easier for me, I am well aware, in an established career than for a schoolteacher or a nurse in a junior position who may fear reprisals….it seems to be important that gay men and lesbians in all walks of life make this fact public in the context of the bill, if only to show their families, friends and work colleagues that ‘we are everywhere’ or in other words scattered throughout the community and are not particular freaks.”

Twenty Years On – Society has apparently survived intact.

Prime Minister Helen Clark
"Twenty years on from the passage of the Homosexual Law Reform Bill, life for homosexual New Zealanders has improved immensely. Society is more open, people are more ready to take others as they find them, homosexual characters in the mainstream media programmes are largely unremarkable, and broadly speaking it is not as much of a shock for a child to come out to their parents."