Need for Unity against Wall

What do we hope to achieve in a picket anyway? The cause is put across to the media, which is a good thing. People get more of a chance to see what is happening and both points of view get a national airing. But did it intend to change Wall's ideas, or the ideas of anyone present? It seems that just about all those who attended did so because they either supported reform/repeal of laws against homosexuality, and therefore found this Bill repugnant to their aims; or they were there because they wanted to see homosexuality properly squashed, to shout some interjections. It is ironic that Wall was one of the few there who supported both the liberalization of homosexuality and his Amendment.

There is a sufficent number of organized speakers from the expected groups to keep interest aroused. At first there are no MPs in the offing, but the man himself wanders out smiling blandly and takes the microphone. As in the previous confrontation, the crowd plays into his hands. There are efforts to shout him down at first, his opportunity to ask whether the freedom of speech they were demanding was for them only. Prof. Roberts seemed quite prepared to chuck in his position of MC with this display.

But there is worse to come. Wall is a man who can be convinced by hard facts (remembering that vote power is another hard fact). The best way to convince him that you have no reasonable point to offer is to shriek extremist insults, make puns on his name and sing old demo songs. You guessed it. The lesbian teenyboppers may be doing something useful behind the scenes; they may be doing no harm, since there is little chance of a largely irrational crowd changing any of Wall's opinions or the opinions of those who follow him; but they certainly do little good. There are plenty of opportunities to promote Gay solidity, and as anyone who has looked at any movement from the outside knows, the emotional mutual reinforcement buildups are strictly for consenting members in private if you don't want to look very silly. This applies to Jesus Freaks, Young Nats and anyone else whose views aren't normal.

Then it's Wall's turn to challenge the crowd.

• Are you saying that your intention is to spread these views to children of 15 and 16 in schools?
• yes!!
• Right! That's what I want to know.

More interjections. 'It's better than being hetero!' brings sectional cheers.

A baby is proferred to Wall as an example of those unable to receive enlightenment. Much is made of the inability of parents to tell their children certain things, and of the age limit, even though Wall has said that both of these could be altered if necessary. Wall wanders off and talks to some of the statuary policepersons. Basset, Birch and Highet all speak in opposition to Wall's Amendment. Birch tells me afterwards that he is opposed to Venn Young's Bill, admitting that he may be wrong and still searching for a fair solution, but still fearing that the Bill threatens the Family—yet he has not developed so bigoted a fear of homosexuals that he will tolerate an amendment like Wall's.

Wall later tells me that he would vote for Venn Young's Bill even if his own amendment were voted out, but that he thinks there is a reasonable amount of support for him in the house. He makes the interesting claim that there is a large group of MPs who were not prepared to vote Venn Young's Bill straight out, but who have been put into turmoil by this Amendment and will have to look over the whole thing again. I assume he means that Young's Bill will only be acceptable to them in this form. So perhaps it is about time the opposition made itself quite clear. I stand ready to be contradicted, but to the best of my knowledge, homosexuals and homosexual groups see the ditching of Wall's Amendment to be of far greater importance than the passing of Young's. That is, if Wall's Amendment is grafted onto the present already inadequate and some-what damaging Bill, then they will ask MPs to vote against it.

So the only real achievement of the picket was to get itself on TV and a pretty favourable report in the papers. Fair enough, but it could have been a damn sight better. And I think it's time all those folks in the crowd sat down and worked themselves out a common policy of reasoned opposition and stuck to it, even if it means that some of the extremists should shut up for a while. We are no longer simply considering the freedom of NZ homosexuals to be themselves, an important enough freedom. We are looking at the possibility of a future in which enlightenment is censored by one Doctor Gerry Wall. And it frightens me very much.

marty