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Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 19. August 6 1979

A Sense of Direction

A Sense of Direction

The second national conference in 1973 was, I think, of particular importance to the movement. It formulated general aims and guiding principles for the movement which have since been affirmed and reaffirmed in manifestos and policy decisions. Perhaps the most important of these was implicit in the use of the word 'gay'. Homosexuals have been vilified with literally dozens of expressions, all voicing and re-inforcing negative and hostile attitudes. Homosexual conduct has been explained in terms of sickness and deficiency, sin and pervers deviation, abnormality, failure, arrested development etc. The word 'gay' is, by contract, political ammunition in its own right. It declares someone able to form those specially personal relationships - physical, emotional, mental - with people of the same sex. It recognizes homosexuality to be an alternative form of sexuality and not a degenerate form of heterosexuality. And, above all, it presupposes the individual's right to sexual self—determination.

Everything else follows from this. To teach gays to respond to their sexual orientation with pride and respect instead of the shame and guilt inculcated by society at large. To educate everyone about homosexuality so as to expose ignorance and prejudice, and so as to eradicate erroneous though widely held, stereotypes of gays. To secure full human rights for gays and to remove all discrimination against gays. These aims are, of course, conceived in broad terms. There is thus room for differences of opinion over the particularities of their implementation and for degrees of openness of involvement fed their pursuit.

Finally, in order to underscore a sense of gay responsibility for the movement, none but self-professed gays are permitted full membership in the movement. The long-term aim of the gay rights movement is, according to the Victoria University of Wellington Gay Liberation manifesto of 19 76, a world in which people are no longer labelled homosexual or heterosexual, but are thought of simply as people seeking positive, fulfilling expression of their sexual natures. But, ironically, anyone who labels himself or herself exclusively heterosexual is debarred from participation in the decision-making processes of the movement whose long-term aim that is!