I think one of the darker cultural values that we have as a people is negative egalitarianism, the ‘so you think you are smarter than me’ mentality that is deeply rooted in our collective psyche.
New Zealanders despise being told how to live their lives by people who think they are smarter than them.
It was this loathing of social engineering that saw the anti-smacking legislation ignite for the right in 2007 and saw Key elected in 2008.
The idea that Aunty Helen was invading the sacred space between parent and child felt like an enormous over reach and was manipulated by the Right into being Nanny State gone mad.
Now let’s be clear, I supported the repeal of section 59, it was insane that parents who had beaten the bejesus out of their own kids could use this loophole discipline defense and get off assault charges.
The Court is there to protect the kid who has been assaulted, not the parents who are doing the assaulting.
Sadly Helen couldn’t articulate this response and poor Sue Bradford was dumped to the wolves so the Left got outplayed and the triggered negative egalitarianism saw a change of Government.
I think this Gay Conversion legislation and Hate Speech laws could trigger the exact same cultural knee jerk.
Labour are attempting to cauterize Gay Conversion by ramming it through before Christmas and will simply rely on woke lynch mobs to smear anyone who raises concerns as Transphobic and Homophobic, but I suspect the Hate Speech laws can’t get rammed through without enormous political backlash.
Meanwhile 190000 kids are in poverty, 4000 in motels, 22512 are on emergency housing wait lists, generations are locked out of homeownership and the planet is burning.
We need to spend far less time strangling free speech and criminalizing parents and way more time on the real issues.
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Now that there’s little discernible difference between Labour and National, it doesn’t matter if Labour crashes on this. They have enabled the collective madness of the Green’s identity politics, watched silent from the sidelines as the Green girls garrotted Pakeha New Zealanders and demonised them to the Muslim community, seen cisgender on the backfoot for nothing in particular, and botched the presentation of this issue, including letting the self-absorbed Greens politicise it as all about them, which it never ever was. As usual, the kids miss out, but that’s the Kiwi way.
Now that there’s little discernible difference between Labour and National,…”
Same as it ever was.
This and the hate speech mess are sure bizarre and wasteful things to burn up your political capital on.
But Jacinda is hell bent on it.
I just cannot get over what a waste her government is, so much promise and a majority squandered with nothing to show for it but poorly thought out laws no one wanted.
Why should she care, she as much as her green handmaidens will never have to live the consequences of their actions. A few hundreds / thousands of sterilized and castrated kids in the future is just the price to pay for the identity politicians of today. Besides, its easier then actually doing the things they said they would do.
This is the worst term of govt ever in nz history.
What a waste- they got the majority, and are faffing round with woke crap from twitter as kids starve, eduction declines, and housing spirals out of control.
It won’t be long before people are demanding a general election. This government is starting to feel like Clark’s last term the only difference is the others are just as despised and have no answers or an electable leader.
I wonder what John Luxon is up to ?
As a gay man I don’t support this bill and wouldn’t vote for it.
Criminalizing parents for five years is a big no no for me and every working class lgbt person I know is against this…
This is a bill for middle class people
And I wouldn’t vote for it to go to select committee because this govt needs to stop sending bad bills to select committee… Select committee is where bills are ironed out not rewriten govt deserves a huge embarrassment on one of these badly written laws
It’s sad cos everyone supports the basic premise of the bill but adding the criminal aspect is nonsense.
And to top it off the upper middle class lgbt+ who six years ago were singing the praises of John Key are now woke because being woke is popular and while they reject any economic reforms that would all poor and working class people including poor lgbt people, are politicizing the LGBT+ community and making any conservative lgbt people unwelcome at rainbow events and banning the national party whose leader is a big standard neolib but voted in favor of gay marriage abortion etc and pretending she’s some kind of monster despite openly supporting the trans community and the intent of the bill but won’t support the jailing parents part this bodes badly for the community
The upper middle class neolib woke lgbt shutting out dialogue with the tories and swaths of the community is a disgrace
The LGBT community is not a monolithic community we are people and have loads of different opinions and by saying that all lgbt people have to agree on a political ideology it makes us enemies of anyone of a different ideology instead of being a community who accepts anyone and encourages differences. It’s bad.
And also the max tweedies of the world don’t give a flying f about poor lgbt people they hate poor lgbt people… Bugger us… These woke neolibs only care about PR and appearing hip and the second a john key type liberal Tory gets in they’ll be singing the rights praises
The majority of lgbt people have nothing to do with the community and feel uncomfortable being labeled as apart of it… It’s just a bunch of rich snobs and rich kids
And the working class and middle at whole support the bill until they are told about the jail part and then they go “wtf”
I’m not a member of any community… I’m not rich enough to be a member of the LGBT community
I’m a working class economic leftist who just happens to like men.
Corey H My gay middle class friends and family are ordinary normal sort of people too. It’s the Auckland exhibitionists and a few egotistical politicians who have polarised this issue to a ridiculous and socially destructive extent. The Nats are currently unhappy about criminalising parents who don’t follow the careless prescriptions of the feather-brained politicians, and if they also oppose the anti- free speech legislation, I could vote Nat for the first time ever, regardless of who’s leading them. But there is also Winston in the wings I suppose.
Hey well written Corey.
A real issue if you are a gay youth in a conservative environment.
No.
Hitting kids is much more popular.
There already is a law for protecting children from parental decisions
The medics go to the court, they win, the kids are made ward of court only for that issue and the treatment given. ( used for JW kid’s in accident needing blood for example)
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