Tag: history
Historian Gareth Watkins explores past May dates that have had a profound effect on Aotearoa’s rainbow communities.
17 May 1915
In Auckland, Leslie Lander pleaded guilty to committing an unnatural act (buggery) and was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 10 years imprisonment for indecent assault. The 24-year-old had earlier been the...
Exclusively for YOUR EX, Writer and director Paul Oremland reflects on the profound changes he has witnessed in societal attitudes toward the LGBTQ+ community in New Zealand.
Our film, Mysterious Ways, is now available to stream on TVNZ+. It’s a gay love story about a Vicar who wants to...
Historian Gareth Watkins uncovers May dates in New Zealand’s past that have impacted today’s queer community in Aotearoa.
May 1983
2023 marks the 40th anniversary of the first International AIDS Candlelight Memorials which took place in San Francisco and New York City. In New Zealand, the memorial was first observed as...
Gareth Watkins examines the events that shaped our Rainbow Community during Januarys through the ages.
22 January 1896
Poet Walter D’Arcy Cresswell was born in Christchurch. After serving in WW1 he returned to New Zealand, turning to poetry as a vocation. Nowadays he is probably better known for his entrapment of...
Historian Gareth Watkins uncovers significant dates in NZ’s rainbow history.
2 December 1897
Social reformer and activist Rewi Alley was born in Canterbury. Much of his life was spent in China, living there from 1927 until his death in December 1987. Academic Roderic Alley believes Alley’s most significant legacy to...
Gareth Watkins looks back at the events that shaped our Rainbow Community.
November 1957
Activist and politician Georgina Beyer was born in Wellington. Beyer’s rich life has been the subject of books and films documenting her journey from, as she puts it, “cracking it as a prostitute” to becoming the world’s...
Gareth Watkins looks back at the events that shaped our rainbow community.
14 October 1888
Writer Katherine Mansfield was born in Wellington. Mansfield had well-documented relationships with both men and women - one being Edith Kathleen Bendall. For a time, Mansfield wrote letters nightly in violet ink to Bendall inviting her...
Gareth Watkins looks back at the events that shaped Aotearoa’s LGBTI+ community.
September 1863
Explorer and writer Samuel Butler wrote of his blossoming relationship with Charles Paine Pauli whom he met in Christchurch. Butler recounted that a barman in California had labeled Pauli as “the handsomest man God ever sent...
