Politics
Gay rights were a major political issue during the Homosexual Law Reform debates, but have subsequently become much less so. The Civil Union Act was opposed by nearly half of Parliament, but in tones much more restrained than that of the Homosexual Law Reform era. The Destiny political party, founded to bring ‘Christian morality’ into politics, received only 0.62% of the party vote in the 2005 general election.
There are a number of gay and lesbian Members of Parliament (MPs). The first to be elected was Chris Carter, who became the first openly gay MP when he came out shortly after the 1993 election. He lost his seat in the 1996 election, but won it again in the 1999 election and became New Zealand's first openly gay cabinet minister in 2002. Carter united in Civil union to his long-time partner of thirty three years, Peter Kaiser on 10 February 2007.
Tim Barnett was the first MP to be elected as an openly gay man, in the 1996 election. In 1997, Barnett and Carter started Rainbow Labour as a branch of the Labour Party to represent gay, lesbian, and transgender people within a major mainstream party, the first of its kind in New Zealand.
Maryan Street was New Zealand's first openly lesbian MP, elected in the 2005 election. However, the National Party's Marilyn Waring had preceded Street, and while she was outed at one point, Waring's strong pro-choice identification and vocal feminism overshadowed her lesbianism, which was then considered a private matter. Since she left Parliament in 1984, Waring has more openly acknowledged her sexual orientation. In 2005, Chris Finlayson became the first openly gay National Party MP, elected to Parliament on his party's MMP party list in the 2005 election. Other current openly gay MPs are Charles Chauvel and deputy leader Grant Robertson of the Labour Party and Kevin Hague of the Green Party. Following the resignation of Darren Hughes of the Labour Party caucus in 2011, the openly lesbian Louisa Wall became an MP. She was joined by openly lesbian Green Party MP Jan Logie following the 2011 general election.
Georgina Beyer became the first transsexual mayor in the world when she became the Mayor of Carterton in 1995. In the 1999 election, she became the world's first transsexual MP. She retired from Parliamentary politics on 14 February 2007.
Read more about this topic: LGBT Rights In New Zealand
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far as blather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Of course, in the reality of history, the Machiavellian view which glorifies the principle of violence has been able to dominate. Not the compromising conciliatory politics of humaneness, not the Erasmian, but rather the politics of vested power which firmly exploits every opportunity, politics in the sense of the “Principe,” has determined the development of European history ever since.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country—and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.”
—Charles Krauthammer (b. 1950)