 Several Dunedin schools were in the news recently for refusing to allow their students bring same-sex partners to school balls.
The International Socialist Organisation helped organise a rally on June 28 to remember the 1969 Stonewall riots, where gays refused to be intimidated and silenced by the police and to protest the continued discrimination of gays. This is the text of a speech given by Kevin H at that rally.
Forty years ago, nearly to the day, massive demonstrations broke out in the streets of Greenwich Village, New York. Thousands of gay men and women took to the streets, demanding the end to years of police persecution and discrimination, sparking off what was to become the gay liberation movement. They were responding to yet another police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a well known gay bar. Normally the cops burst in, broke a few heads, arrested a few people and then moved on to the next club but on the night of June 27, 1969, the patrons had had enough. They pushed the cops back and the rest is history.
In the years between now and then, gay rights activists have fought hard and won recognition and legal equality across most of the developed world. The struggle has been a long one and the victories begrudgingly wrested from the hands of our rulers.
In New Zealand, it is now illegal to discriminate against people based on their sexuality and Education Review Office legislation states that schools are required to have specific policies in place to address homophobia.
Unfortunately, we’re not just here in celebration of these fantastic achievements, but also because it seems some Dunedin schools missed the memo.
A few weeks ago, a friend who attends Otago Girls High School informed me that their year had been told that they were not allowed to bring female partners to their school ball. Needless to say I was shocked – after all, has it not been 16 years since the NZ human rights act outlawed discrimination based on sexuality in NZ. Worse, it didn’t take long to discover that a good number of other schools in the city have similar policies. Kings College, Columba College and St Hilda’s Collegiate, among others, also do not allow same sex couples to attend school formals together. If there is any flexibility on the issue, it involves getting special dispensation, talking to intimidating and often unsupportive senior teachers, signing forms declaring they are queer and in a committed relationship or, in the worst cases heard of, required accepting counselling! As if the student were somehow sick! On the other hand, if a female student wanted to take that guy they met at that party last week, no questions asked…
I think we all agree that having different rules for queer and straight students is blatant discrimination.
If a university department organised an event and told their queer students that they couldn’t bring their partners, you’d be able to hear the cry of outrage from Christchurch. The lecturer would be fired and the university would be jumping over itself to apologise.
So how is it that our schools, arguably the most formative of experiences for most of us, setting the standard of acceptability for our entire society, can get away with these sorts of homophobic practises without reproach?
I think we’re all here today to say that they can not.
Contrary to what right wing pundits say, homophobia is the real sickness in our society.
Opposition to homophobia is a fight that has to be brought back into the open. Since we put Destiny Church in its place a few years back, the vocal homophobic elements have been pretty quiet, but implicit discrimination remains.
It’s a fight that is as vital to the lives of every single person - gay or straight. As long as the message that homosexuality is not a sickness has not sunk into our schools, how can we expect it to have sunk into wider society?
But this fight is only part of a much larger struggle.
Socialists see the struggle for equality of all sexualities as part of the same struggle for sexual equality between men and women, both in the workplace and in the home, and the same struggle for racial equality. All have different battlegrounds, with different measures of victory, but each has the same enemy. While the struggles may appear as distinct, the one thing that we all share is our class.
It doesn’t take a lot of thinking to recognise that a gay millionaire stockbroker has less in common with any of us here than a nurse striking for better wages or the black woman demanding civil rights in the 1960s.
As socialists, opposing homophobia is not an optional extra. It’s not something we do because we feel obligated, or because we merely think it is important. We see it as an absolute necessity, a fundamental requirement for any society based on equality, the same as opposing racism and sexism. Martin Luther King Jr (not a socialist by any measure) said “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” and I think that says it all.
We study the sources of division in society – racism, sexism and homophobia, we examine the origins and the expressions and most importantly, we take the historical understanding to the streets. So we fight alongside the gay rights movements, as we did when Destiny Church wanted to spew their hate in Dunedin, and we’re fighting again now. But this is only a small step, and we will need to keep on fighting.
So a huge thanks to Philippa Kearney of the Otago University Students Association and other unnameable persons for their hard work towards today’s success. Remembering the courage of the men and women who have fought so hard for the freedoms we enjoy today is important, and so too is remembering what so many of them were fighting for. Not just legal equality, but for a better society completely free of discrimination. If you share this dream, as we do, the ISO is the best way to achieve it. |
Home