I Want an Apology Too
New York Press,
June 11, 2002
333 7th Ave, 14th Fl., New York, New York 10001
Email: mugger@nypress.com
By Michelangelo Signorile
It’s not every day that a tiny nation like New Zealand—for the most
part, two islands sitting on the bottom of the planet—can make a country
like the all-powerful, supposedly sophisticated United States look backward.
The frumpy, reserved little sister among the siblings birthed by mother
England—including the cocky Australia and the flashy America—New Zealand
often struggles to have an identity and to even be recognized among the other
mostly white Anglo-Saxon countries. Its television news and entertainment are
overwhelmed with cheaply sold product from the mother country as well as from
the U.S. and from Australia, while its small market often makes homegrown
projects cost-prohibitive. As an isolated island nation of fewer than four
million, its teeny economy is always precarious; the New Zealand dollar has
plummeted over the past few years, beaten up by both the U.S. and Australian
dollars and the British pound.
But one area where New Zealand leaves its mother and sisters in the dust is
on human rights. The reparations made to the Maori in New Zealand—where
Maori is now even an official language—make the supposed amends that the
U.S. has made to Native Americans look even more paltry than has often been
charged, while the Australian treatment of aboriginals is positively abysmal.
And last week New Zealand, a place at the end of the Earth that no one ever
talks much about, made them all look pretty pathetic when its prime minister,
Helen Clark, offered a formal apology "on behalf of the government"
to gays and lesbians for the past harsh treatment against them at the hands of
the state. "People have put up with the most appalling discrimination,
stereotyping, people have been criminalized," she said.
On the surface, few would think that on gay rights the U.S. is actually
closer to a Muslim fundamentalist society like Egypt—which, only under
international pressure, recently released a number of men who’d been
arrested because they are allegedly homosexual—than its Anglo-Protestant
sister New Zealand. But consider that there are gay-specific, biblically
inspired sodomy laws still on the books in a number of states, including
Texas, and that those laws continue to be used to arrest people; in Texas in
recent years, people have had police barge into their homes and haul them into
jail.
Also consider the fact that the current president, as well as the previous
president (when he was attorney general of Arkansas), have both been on record
supporting such sodomy laws, which no doubt goes a long way toward locking up
the South in the primaries. Though the penalties may be far less severe, much
of the U.S., like Egypt, criminalizes homosexuality for religious reasons. We’re
certainly not anywhere near offering a formal apology to gays and lesbians for
harsh treatment. (Hell, we can’t even get conservatives in Congress to offer
an apology to African-Americans for slavery!)
I lived in New Zealand for two years, during those heady we-can-do-anything
days of the Internet boom. Actually, I lived both in New York and New Zealand,
shuttling between the two every couple of months, using every kind of
high-tech communications device imaginable so I could be everywhere all at
once. (You’ve heard of "bi-coastal"—I brought new meaning to the
term "bi-polar.") My film-professor boyfriend had taken a position
at a university in New Zealand, and I was mostly writing for online sites,
reporting in my travels. We lived in Dunedin, a Scottish-settled city on the
bottom of the South Island—nicknamed the "Riviera of the
Antarctic."
It was an interesting time to be there since the country had for several
years been transforming itself, ending the failing social welfare state—which
had in decades past made New Zealand a model of social democracy that
surpassed even the Scandinavian countries—and opening its markets
dramatically. New Zealand had basically been an isolationist country with
little class disparity.
Those years of isolation took their toll and the scars are still apparent,
particularly when it comes to architecture and fashion (lots of cinderblock
buildings and no stiletto heels, anywhere). It’s not easy keeping up when
you’re living on a couple of rocks at the bottom of the Pacific, and the
utilitarianism of the welfare state didn’t help. But I was always intrigued
by how far racial equality, women’s rights and gay rights had come in a
short time there. Homosexuality had been decriminalized completely in the 80s,
a national antidiscrimination law was put in place in the 90s and foreign-born
gay partners of New Zealanders and of immigrants to the country are afforded
the same visa and citizenship status that the spouses of heterosexuals are
offered.
During the last national election campaign both chief candidates running
for prime minister were women. Their differences on gay rights? The
"conservative" National Party candidate, the then-incumbent Prime
Minister Jenny Shipley, marched in the gay pride parade in Auckland and
supported full equality for gays and lesbians, but, unlike her
"liberal" opponent, wanted a different name for same-sex unions from
the word "marriage." (The liberal Labor Party candidate, Clark,
won.) That same year, the first transgendered member of Parliament—of any
parliament in the world—was elected. Georgina Bayer [sic: Beyer] had been a
TV soap star—as a man—and then later became a film star—as a woman. (In
between she spent some time as a prostitute in Sydney.) Then she moved to
Carterton, a small farming community, where she was elected mayor; later she
went on to run for a seat in Parliament.
In context it’s thus not so out of the ordinary that Prime Minister Clark
is apologizing to gays and lesbians for the government’s historically brutal
treatment of them. And actually, you’d have to be familiar with the New
Zealand penchant for self-deprecation to understand how utterly predictable an
apology—any apology—is in New Zealand. (Anyone living in the shadow of
flashy and more famous big sisters is always apologizing for her mere
existence.) Just two weeks ago, Clark apologized to the Samoans for New
Zealand’s having seized their islands and wreaked havoc more than 70 years
ago. One member of a small far-right party accused Clark of apologizing to
everyone except straight, middle class, white men, who are "vilified and
made to feel guilty for every wrong."
Clearly, such apologias are the kind of thing conservatives of every stripe
will seize upon as the ultimate in political correctness—and they are a bit
hokey. It’s also true that actions speak louder than words. I’d be happy
enough if laws in this country criminalizing people’s private sexual
activity were stricken, and if gays were protected against discrimination and
had full equality in all areas, including in marriage and adoption. Still,
after all of that is done, in the name of all of those who’ve been fired,
jailed, beaten, attacked and killed for decades, you better believe I’d want
an apology, too.
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