Mayor of South Wairarapa, Fran Wilde, reflects on the 40th anniversary of Homosexual Law Reform and why social media may have changed the outcome
As Aotearoa marks the 40th anniversary of Homosexual Law Reform, former MP Fran Wilde says reform was won through courage and face-to-face persuasion. But she is not convinced it would have survived the hostility of today’s social media environment.
Wilde, who sponsored the Homosexual Law Reform Bill, says the political conditions around her made her a practical choice to lead the legislation through Parliament.
“Firstly, I was the MP for Wellington Central, which was a pretty liberal electorate, so there was no particular political pressure on me from my electorate not to do it,” she says.
“Secondly, I had indicated my support for this when I had been lobbied. Then they came back to me later and said, ‘Well, would you sponsor a bill?’
“It probably helped that I was not a lesbian. Having a straight woman MP in a liberal electorate worked.”
Wilde had been working on reform from as early as 1982. The first attempt was drafted as the Equality Bill, which would have changed the Crimes Act so the age of consent applied equally to all sexual activity, regardless of gender.
But the political climate was complicated. Aotearoa was still feeling the divisions of the Springbok Tour era, with mass demonstrations and deep public unrest. Wilde says the Labour Party was nervous about taking on another controversial social issue, particularly in rural and provincial electorates.
“The other group that was not happy was the radical lesbians, who said, ‘You are now actually criminalising us,’ because they were not mentioned in the law before,” Wilde tells us.
The proposed bill would have criminalised sex for anyone under 16, which created unintended consequences. Wilde says it soon became clear the approach would not work, and the bill was redrafted.
The 1984 snap election then brought a wave of younger, more liberal MPs into Parliament, giving the reform a stronger chance.
“I knew we had a sporting chance of getting it through,” Wilde says.
But she had not anticipated how brutal the campaign would become.
“I had no idea when it was introduced how awful it was going to be for everyone. If I had been a gay man, I would have expected that, because, of course, they had had this all their lives.”
“We realised very quickly that this had to be a very organised and very focused campaign.”
There were many moments when Wilde feared the bill could fail. One of the most critical came when opponents called a vote and National MP George Gair crossed the floor to support the bill.
The most fraught issue was the age of consent. After the bill returned from select committee, Parliament considered it clause by clause in the Committee of the Whole House. Wilde believed there was a real risk that MPs would reject the legislation if the age of consent was set at 16.
She took that concern back to the gay community.
“They just said, ‘It has to be 16 or nothing.’ I said, ‘That’s fine. That’s your decision. That’s what we’ll do.’”
In a twist, opponents of the bill also believed the age of consent being set at 16 would doom the legislation, so they strategically voted for it. Once that happened, Wilde knew supporters could not retreat.
“I had to say to all the MPs, ‘We’ve got 16, and we can’t change it now. You know what has been unleashed in New Zealand because of this bill, and what the opposition are like. They have shown themselves now. We know how terrible they are. Not just for the gay and lesbian community, but for any kind of liberal cause that we had.’”
For Wilde, the bill became about more than decriminalising sex between men. It came to represent a wider fight over the future direction of NZ society, including women’s rights and race relations.
“They understood by then that the opposition to this bill was made up of entrenched radical conservatives who, if they had stopped this legislation going through, would have realised they had a majority in Parliament and would have tried other things as well.
“So it was not just looking after gay men; it became a symbol of a much wider liberalisation of New Zealand society.”
The original bill had two parts: decriminalisation through changes to the Crimes Act, and anti-discrimination protections through changes to the Human Rights Act. Wilde believed both were essential for gay people to be treated fairly under the law.
However, the human rights protections did not pass at the same time. Some MPs were prepared to support decriminalisation but wanted to reassure their electorates they had not forced them to employ or rent accommodation to gay people.
That came in some years later, in a bill sponsored by National MP Katherine O’Regan.
Looking at the rainbow community today, Wilde understands why some people fear progress is going backwards amid increasingly hostile culture war debates.
“We have trans visibility becoming a massive issue all over the world. This whole movement about ‘a woman is a woman’ is dividing the lesbian community too. It is not as though everybody in the rainbow community has the same view.”
But Wilde does not believe New Zealand has returned to the climate of the 1980s.
“Back then, most New Zealanders did not know that they knew any lesbians or gay men. They were maiden aunts who had never married, and it was never even talked about.
“Now we have gay MPs, and gay men and lesbians in senior positions throughout the country.
“But there is a much more vicious campaign, centring around the trans community.”
Wilde says the true heroes of Homosexual Law Reform were the gay men who publicly came out during the campaign, despite the enormous personal risks.
“The stereotype being put around by the people opposing the bill was that these were all child molesters. If this became legalised or decriminalised, your children would not be safe. That was the messaging that underpinned everything they said.”
The way to counter that, Wilde says, was visibility. New Zealanders needed to understand that gay men and lesbians were their neighbours, colleagues, family members and friends.
Many gay men responded by speaking publicly about who they were. They appeared in newspapers, met with MPs and told their stories, even though they were still treated as criminals under the law unless they lived celibate lives.
“They were incredibly brave because they were likely to be sacked from their jobs, possibly lose their accommodation if they were renting, and quite likely lose whānau relationships too.”
Wilde says their willingness to be visible changed the public mood.
“I could not believe the numbers who were prepared to come out publicly, and our polling showed attitudes shifting because of it.”
But Wilde says one major difference between then and now may have helped the bill survive: the absence of social media.
In the 1980s, the campaign was vicious, but it moved through newspapers, public meetings, letters, petitions and direct lobbying. Today, Wilde believes the same debate would have been exposed to a level of online hostility that could have made it even harder for MPs to hold their ground.
“When you see how toxic social media is, I am not sure we could have got this bill through if we had had it then.”
Wellington is hosting a number of events to commemorate Homosexual Law Reform’s 40th anniversary throughout July. Visit 40yearsoflove.nz to find out more
