I was sad to read ‘Queer students flag school’s pride’ (p4 / Franklin County News / June 23, 2022), explaining that the rainbow flag was not flown for gay pride week at Pukekohe High School because it was “unnecessarily inflammatory”.
It instantly transported me back to the early days of our Gay Rights campaign when the gay community decided it was no longer going to put up with having to hide in the closet and pretend to be something else. Back in the 60s people were being arrested for being gay. People were being discriminated against in some awful ways for being gay or homosexual.
My involvement in the late 70’s and into the 80’s was as the Secretary of the National Gay Rights Coalition, when the campaign for homosexual law reform began in earnest after the failure of MP Venn Young’s second attempt to legalise Homosexuality. ‘Salient’, the Victoria University Students Association Newspaper noted, “…the NGRC has established itself as a weighty, authoritative, and credible voice in speaking on behalf of gay right, in detecting discrimination and in protesting false stereotyping… The formation of the NGRC injected a new spirit of confidence into the gay rights movement, as a result of which has grown and diversified.”
We were there to fight and fight publicly. To stand proud and equal. Gay Pride week developed for that very purpose.
I recall teams throughout the country hoisting Pink Triangle flags on public flag poles, and later I remember our friend Fran Wilde introducing her Bill for our equality, and the campaign of public meetings against that Bill by the Salvation Army which we would protest outside or storm the meetings.
During 1985 were the marches supported with a lot of people who were not gay. When we marched in Wellington, people were coming out of the pubs and shouting abuse, throwing tomatoes and eggs and stuff like that. But there was such huge positive energy from the people marching, that they just kept marching.
We fought hard and for a long time. And to read that the rainbow flag was not flown for gay pride week at Pukekohe High School because it was “unnecessarily inflammatory” was a shock, propelling ourselves back to the 60’s where gays were criminals and hid in their closets!
