Dreaming of a New World
One of my nieces, knowing that I enjoy reading, and that my first degree was in history and politics, gave me a very large book this Christmas. Called Frontier of Dreams it is a volume published to accompany a Television New Zealand thirteen-part documentary of the same name. The particular name was chosen for the series because every shipload of colonists and each subsequent generation of New Zealanders has articulated its own vision for the country. I embarked on a journey through the lavishly illustrated work, mindful that all four of my grandparents were amongst those early settlers who came from Scotland, Ireland and England, to forge a new and better life for their families.
All went well until I reached the final chapter ‘Breaking Free, 1984-2005’ which focuses on the social and economic restructuring, largely at the hands of the Labour Party’s ‘libertarian young things’, which amongst many other advances provided new freedoms for Maori and gays. These freedoms which had long been sought by both communities were welcomed enthusiastically by both – or so I thought. And then I came across the caption accompanying a photo of the annual gay Hero Parade in Auckland, which says that the Maori Bishop Whakahuihui Vercoe, deeply respected within the Maori community and now Archbishop, Primate and Metropolitan of the whole Anglican Church in New Zealand “dreams of a world without gays”.
You could say that I was gobsmacked. As a person who knows Archbishop Vercoe reasonably well, and aware of his history of championing the rights of the poor and dispossessed, this utterance was unexpected. My immediate thought as a person who has been a long-time supporter of Maori rights was that if I were a racist and publicly stated that I dream of a world without Maoris, I would immediately be hauled before Joris de Bres, a former colleague who is now Race Relations Conciliator, rightly forced to make a public apology to all Maori, and perhaps have to face a court case as well. So why shouldn’t Archbishop Vercoe be hauled before the Human Rights Commission and asked to apologise to the entire gay community?
I turned to the newspaper interview which elicited the Archbishop’s comments in The New Zealand Herald of June 5, 2005. Here he allegedly told the reporter that homosexuality is ‘unnatural’ and an ‘abomination’ to the dark races. He thinks that in the future society will find homosexuality unacceptable. “It may not come in our time, but it will come”, he says. “There will be a strong reaction for later generations; we will suddenly discover a morality, a new morality”. This sounds like a call to return to an older morality which saw not only gays, but all those regarded as different, at best a blight upon the community and at worst deserving of eradication.
We are here confronting a sensitive and difficult area, that of the traditional beliefs and attitudes of indigenous peoples and behaviours regarded by them as culturally appropriate. In terms of the gay issue some Maori have adopted the typical post-colonial response that homosexuality was unknown in their communities prior to colonisation. I have frequently heard in Africa the claim that homosexuality is a ‘white disease’. But I also recall that when this kind of argument was raised in a meeting of Maori to discuss the decriminalisation of homosexuality, one of my Maori colleagues bravely took the floor and asked people to look back through their genealogies – the rehearsal of which is fundamental to Maori culture – to recall heroes from pre-colonial times whose orientation was homosexual. ‘We all have gays in our tribes and families as far back as we go’, said Hone.
Archbishop Vercoe certainly admits that there are gays in his extended family. “I have relatives who are gay. They’re still my relatives, they’re still my blood, my kith and kin. They have every right to call on me for help and also to be included in my relationship with them and other members of my clan” he says perhaps in an allusion to the supposedly Christian adage of condemning the sin while loving the sinner. The Church’s mission, he says, is “to go and seek out the poor, the lame, the blind, the unfortunate, the landless, the homeless, the foodless, and identify with those people completely. Always look after the underdogs and the underprivileged. Just love them to death”. Asked whether this list includes the gay community, he responds “Absolutely”. He does not indicate what kind of justice he has in mind for the gay community, nor how he will embody it, but loving people to death is an ambiguous activity. And sadly his remarks on homosexuality will probably have driven far more people out of the Church than his long ministry has managed to attract to it.
The interview provoked wide public discussion and a flood of letters to the editor. Many found it strange that a person with such a radical political agenda should also articulate such a conservative social agenda. Cultural questions were posed in many instances. The Anglican Dean of Auckland opined that the comments arose purely out of a cultural context and that Maoris find the issue of homosexuality culturally difficult. Dr Leonie Pihama, a project researcher, responded to the Dean saying “Such statements are colonial and Victorian views that merely seek to oppress certain sectors of society and have no basis in tikanga Maori”. Describing the Archbishop’s view of a world without gays as ‘holocaustic’, she insisted there is no tradition within Maoridom for hatred towards a particular group in the community. Dr Clive Aspen, who heads up a Maori sexuality research project said that statements like the Archbishop’s threatened long-term and permanent damage to young people grappling with their sexuality. He too insisted that research shows that Maori had always had an open and embracing attitude towards sexual diversity within social networks.
In defence of his views, Archbishop Vercoe insisted that everybody had a right to say what they believe. “I’m a Maori”, he says “and can’t be anything else. I have to be true to what I am”. Yes, of course this is so when one speaks in a personal capacity. Amongst previous Archbishops of New Zealand have been three friends of mine, one of them a Maori, who always took great care when representing the Church to convey the generally liberal mind of the New Zealand Church, rather than their personal opinions. Archbishop Vercoe it seems has abandoned this understanding of inclusivity and consensus in favour of speaking out of both his ethnic and tribal perceptions. And in this case he has succeeded only in resurrecting attitudes and condemnations from the past which are, in the words of the internationally renowned gay Maori writer Witi Ihimaera, “very, very punitive, very patriarchal, very homophobic and very sexist”.
Hopefully the Archbishop will wake up to the fact that the scenario he imagines is a nightmare rather than a dream, and substitutes for it the more adventurous vision of communities and cultures which don’t discriminate against but welcome otherness.
All went well until I reached the final chapter ‘Breaking Free, 1984-2005’ which focuses on the social and economic restructuring, largely at the hands of the Labour Party’s ‘libertarian young things’, which amongst many other advances provided new freedoms for Maori and gays. These freedoms which had long been sought by both communities were welcomed enthusiastically by both – or so I thought. And then I came across the caption accompanying a photo of the annual gay Hero Parade in Auckland, which says that the Maori Bishop Whakahuihui Vercoe, deeply respected within the Maori community and now Archbishop, Primate and Metropolitan of the whole Anglican Church in New Zealand “dreams of a world without gays”.
You could say that I was gobsmacked. As a person who knows Archbishop Vercoe reasonably well, and aware of his history of championing the rights of the poor and dispossessed, this utterance was unexpected. My immediate thought as a person who has been a long-time supporter of Maori rights was that if I were a racist and publicly stated that I dream of a world without Maoris, I would immediately be hauled before Joris de Bres, a former colleague who is now Race Relations Conciliator, rightly forced to make a public apology to all Maori, and perhaps have to face a court case as well. So why shouldn’t Archbishop Vercoe be hauled before the Human Rights Commission and asked to apologise to the entire gay community?
I turned to the newspaper interview which elicited the Archbishop’s comments in The New Zealand Herald of June 5, 2005. Here he allegedly told the reporter that homosexuality is ‘unnatural’ and an ‘abomination’ to the dark races. He thinks that in the future society will find homosexuality unacceptable. “It may not come in our time, but it will come”, he says. “There will be a strong reaction for later generations; we will suddenly discover a morality, a new morality”. This sounds like a call to return to an older morality which saw not only gays, but all those regarded as different, at best a blight upon the community and at worst deserving of eradication.
We are here confronting a sensitive and difficult area, that of the traditional beliefs and attitudes of indigenous peoples and behaviours regarded by them as culturally appropriate. In terms of the gay issue some Maori have adopted the typical post-colonial response that homosexuality was unknown in their communities prior to colonisation. I have frequently heard in Africa the claim that homosexuality is a ‘white disease’. But I also recall that when this kind of argument was raised in a meeting of Maori to discuss the decriminalisation of homosexuality, one of my Maori colleagues bravely took the floor and asked people to look back through their genealogies – the rehearsal of which is fundamental to Maori culture – to recall heroes from pre-colonial times whose orientation was homosexual. ‘We all have gays in our tribes and families as far back as we go’, said Hone.
Archbishop Vercoe certainly admits that there are gays in his extended family. “I have relatives who are gay. They’re still my relatives, they’re still my blood, my kith and kin. They have every right to call on me for help and also to be included in my relationship with them and other members of my clan” he says perhaps in an allusion to the supposedly Christian adage of condemning the sin while loving the sinner. The Church’s mission, he says, is “to go and seek out the poor, the lame, the blind, the unfortunate, the landless, the homeless, the foodless, and identify with those people completely. Always look after the underdogs and the underprivileged. Just love them to death”. Asked whether this list includes the gay community, he responds “Absolutely”. He does not indicate what kind of justice he has in mind for the gay community, nor how he will embody it, but loving people to death is an ambiguous activity. And sadly his remarks on homosexuality will probably have driven far more people out of the Church than his long ministry has managed to attract to it.
The interview provoked wide public discussion and a flood of letters to the editor. Many found it strange that a person with such a radical political agenda should also articulate such a conservative social agenda. Cultural questions were posed in many instances. The Anglican Dean of Auckland opined that the comments arose purely out of a cultural context and that Maoris find the issue of homosexuality culturally difficult. Dr Leonie Pihama, a project researcher, responded to the Dean saying “Such statements are colonial and Victorian views that merely seek to oppress certain sectors of society and have no basis in tikanga Maori”. Describing the Archbishop’s view of a world without gays as ‘holocaustic’, she insisted there is no tradition within Maoridom for hatred towards a particular group in the community. Dr Clive Aspen, who heads up a Maori sexuality research project said that statements like the Archbishop’s threatened long-term and permanent damage to young people grappling with their sexuality. He too insisted that research shows that Maori had always had an open and embracing attitude towards sexual diversity within social networks.
In defence of his views, Archbishop Vercoe insisted that everybody had a right to say what they believe. “I’m a Maori”, he says “and can’t be anything else. I have to be true to what I am”. Yes, of course this is so when one speaks in a personal capacity. Amongst previous Archbishops of New Zealand have been three friends of mine, one of them a Maori, who always took great care when representing the Church to convey the generally liberal mind of the New Zealand Church, rather than their personal opinions. Archbishop Vercoe it seems has abandoned this understanding of inclusivity and consensus in favour of speaking out of both his ethnic and tribal perceptions. And in this case he has succeeded only in resurrecting attitudes and condemnations from the past which are, in the words of the internationally renowned gay Maori writer Witi Ihimaera, “very, very punitive, very patriarchal, very homophobic and very sexist”.
Hopefully the Archbishop will wake up to the fact that the scenario he imagines is a nightmare rather than a dream, and substitutes for it the more adventurous vision of communities and cultures which don’t discriminate against but welcome otherness.
posted by MichaelElliott @ 4:22 PM
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