Wednesday 17 April, 2013.

I remember that day like it was yesterday. It was an average morning, and I was a child sitting in class- eagerly awaiting the thing most young children shrieked with joy over: the nearing school holidays. It was a Wednesday. The day the house of representatives amended a law allowing same-sex marriage. I remember going home that day and seeing rainbows plastered all over the news. Well, kind of. I saw flashes of rainbows, the rainbows not concealed by my parents trying to hide it all from me. It’s ironic that we were both hiding the same thing from each other- gayness.

You could say I was too young to know, but I wasn’t. I may not have known the words for how I felt, but I could tell you that I hated boys and wanted to marry my best friend. You told me it was a phase, that you thought I secretly liked boys, but it was your internalised heteronormativity showing. It’s odd that you thought I would have been keeping heterosexuality a secret.

Fair, I was just a child. It was a law that wouldn’t affect me for years, but it was the first of many. It was the first to define an attitude in Aotearoa. A suppressed attitude becoming only as liberal as the newest face in parliament.

I grew up hearing Brian Tamaki calling homosexuals the cause of the Christchurch Earthquakes. Need I tell you 185 people died in that. Funny how, as a kid, that was just normal behaviour to see people on television promoting. This all coming from a man who also later blamed a devastating cyclone on overconsumption of pornographic media in a region- something he assured everyone he ‘did his research’ on. This is also coming from a man who supported a protest in which a children's playground was burnt down on parliament grounds.

The world kind of went quiet after gay marriage in Aotearoa became a thing; not much happened. It was kind of an anti-climax- that of only half the country supporting people like me getting married. Sure, we had the Big Gay Out and the Wellington Pride festivals, but that was it, really. We thought the world was becoming a better place, we at least hoped. That is, until covid hit.

When the pandemic of the 2020s arrived, it was progressively like we had gone back into the mindset of that during the Influenza pandemic. We may have had social media to guide us, but really, it is just a weapon of hate. We may have queer books, but like in the days after the closing of the Edwardian Era, they too are censored, cancelled, sometimes burned. We may be able to marry, but we are still not fully safe to outwardly display queerness in society. Those out, may be out, selectively. Selectively out, where you may be gay in queer circles, but still avoid disclosing your identity in any workplace situation. Leaving some of your greatest achievements off your CV, as they relate somehow back to being gay, or they might. Even if you aren’t subconciously looked down on for it, do you really want to be the diversity hire?

The banning of conversion therapy last year was a significant day. One could argue, special. But what’s special about having to fight to not be tortured. Seeing hundreds upon hundereds calling for the relligious freedom to express hatred. Having to argue with people twice, thrice, even fivefold your age, just for the right to live as you are. It’s hideous seing a school close, purely because they can no longer legally torture gay students into hiding in their heterosexual lens. Are we really in a society places exist purely for torture?

News headlines are always about what’s going on in America- quite clever that. It we focus on international issues, we can neglect to acknowldege what is going on in our own shores. The banning of this, the prevention of that. Blue states turning red. Everyone thought Donald Trump becoming president would lead to World War Three- it didn’t. Just like everyone thought the USSR would be responsible for World War Three- it didn’t, they dissolved. It’s so easy to get tied up in all the anti-transgender laws being passed in America at the moment, that we forget that we aren’t in America.

You may think we are better. After all, we are in Aotearoa, the country known for its laid back attitude, subtle discrimination and for getting through a pandemic by “Being Kind”. But we are not. We are just sneakier. See, in the states, any kind of action in support of queer people is very vocally opposed. Yet the good old subtle queerphobia we are infamous for lets such things slide right under the news radar. Last year, in a horrific week, 2 significant queer hatecrimes (The Rainbow Youth building fire in the Historic Village, and the vandalism of the Gloria of Greymouth church) had their 2 minutes of fame on the news, but then we stopped caring.

Sure, we may have marriage equality. But we are yet to see equality. As someone who falls into many queer circles, it is rare to find any out and proud queer person who hasn’t been met with some kind of abuse for who they are. I have friends who were beated up or threatened. Friends who were stoned for wearing pronoun pins. Friends who have been so scared to tell their families who they are at risk of social rejection.

What we are seeing is pure tokenism. Providing the bare minimum to tick a box, yet the box not actually making change. That’s fear doing that. People are still afraid to be authentically themselves, as they know how society treats them for doing so. Why, are we as a society, so concerned about gay people, that we will hide behind the “Well, you have marriage. Don’t be so needy,” message that stops progress actually happening. We are so scared to lose the tick box, that we are actually backtracking.

The world isn’t a safer place to live in now that gay marriage is legal. Ask any queer person who has recieved a death threat. We are so stuck in being seen as progressive, that any action is rather meaningless. The world is a horrible place for everyone, I’m not saying that queer people are the only ones at a disadvantage. But until we start caring about the people rather than the tokenism, we may as well be stuck back in 2013.

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