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echochamberlain

(56 posts)
Fri Oct 10, 2014, 07:33 AM Oct 2014

Is New Zealand Ready For A Gay Prime Minister?

New Zealand’s recent election saw the right-wing National government of John Key returned for a third term with a huge majority. The leadership of the opposition Labour party is currently being contested, with the two likeliest contenders being the former deputy leader, Grant Robertson, and the incumbent, David Cunliffe. Robertson seemed relaxed about David Cunliffe’s supporters raising the issue of him being gay.

“I’ll be judged, I’m sure, on my ability to reflect Labour values,” he said earlier this week.

Just how receptive would the New Zealand public be to the idea of a gay prime minister?

Perhaps a more important, initial consideration is Labour’s base. The fears are that, an openly-gay parliamentary leader might fail to connect with the indigenous Maoridom and with socially conservative, church-going Pasifika voters, and add to the disconnect the party is already experiencing with provincial working class voters. The West Coast, one of the few remaining Labour provincial redoubts, is a good example of this. In 2011 the local M.P, Damien O’Connor, described the list MP selection process as being run by “self-serving unionists and a gaggle of gays.”

In many of these demographics, however, especially the latter provincial category, it’s hard to get a proper fix. The breakdown of a 2012 Colmar Brunton poll on same sex marriage showed, somewhat predictably, that 70% of people aged under 55 were in favour of allowing same sex couples to marry, whilst those who identify with a religion were split evenly on the issue. Interestingly though, rural and small town respondents were in favour by 59% to 33% – just slightly less than the overall average of 63% to 31%.

Perhaps the best example of this unpredictable provincial dynamic is Georgina Beyer, who, at the 1999 general election, won the typically right-leaning electorate of Wairarapa, and became the world’s first transsexual MP. As further evidence of New Zealand’s mercurial progressive attitude, it is interesting to note that Beyer, reiterating her support for the Civil Union Bill in 2004, stated that she did not believe that gay marriage would be legal in New Zealand for at least 20 years. (It was legalised two years ago).

When looking at Maoridom, Meka Whaitiri makes for an interesting case study. She was the successful Labour candidate in the by-election held in the Maori electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti in 2013, following the death of Parekura Horomia. An openly lesbian candidate prevailing in a Maori electorate would seem to diminish the narrative that much of Maoridom, a core labour constituency, would be averse to a gay Labour party leader. But again, sociological assumptions in New Zealand are vexing, and it might well be that the same Maori voters who ticked the box for a lesbian Maori woman in a specific cultural and regional context may be completely averse to voting for a gay, Pakeha professional Wellington politician in a national election.

The peculiar dichotomy, between New Zealand’s staunch, laconic character, and it’s socially liberal tendencies, goes almost as far back as the nation’s founding. Settled largely by Victorians, New Zealand seemed destined to be conservative, insular, and parochial in nature, until it saw the emergence, in the late nineteenth century, of the kind of social problems associated with the ‘Old World’. Vocal minorities of secularists, non-conformists, suffragists, teetotalers and rationalists flourished, and New Zealand soon earned a reputation as a ‘Freethinkers’ paradise,’ and ‘The social laboratory of the world’. The nation became the first in the world to grant women the vote, and devised innovations in labour laws and indigenous affairs.

While the Marriage Reform Bill has taken its place as part of that liberal legacy, many issues around orientation and gender remain. The LGBT success stories, outside the comfort zone of the Labour base, have tended to be lesbian, and this is an important distinction, because at the heart of much homophobia is a kind of misogyny. Lesbianism is somewhat acceptable to the homophobe, who is more squeamish about what they suppose to be the mainstay of the masculine variety. To such homophobes and misogynists, in a sexual sense (as well as other senses) the most degrading thing that can happen to a man is to be treated like a woman. By contrast, lesbianism is unthreatening, negligible, almost a kind of blankness. It is this nasty distinction that could, hypothetically, pose problems for Labour: There are a large number of voters willing to tick the box for an electorate candidate who happened to be a lesbian – but who, in the prime minister stakes, would be adamantly opposed to voting for a ‘homo’.

Grant Robertson’s prospects, were he to secure the leadership, would depend to a great degree on how the party itself evolves. Against the backdrop of National’s ascendant neo-liberal tropes of individual responsibility and society as a meritocracy, Labour’s political-correctness, man-bans and quotas seem staid and stultifying. Last year, Labour’s Council proposed that the Party’s constitution be amended so that the Moderating Committee would arrive at a list which “fairly represents tangata whenua, gender, ethnic groups, people with disabilities, sexual orientations, age and youth.” At the time, however, gay representation already surpassed the quota. Labour had four gay M.Ps out of 34, about 12% of the caucus.

If the public perceived Robertson to be a product or a beneficiary of that culture and those types of processes, they would likely see Labour as having failed to adapt and evolve, to be still beset by special interests and political correctness. If, however, Labour goes through a process of rejuvenation and emerges as appealingly mainstream, than voters might be more open-minded about Robertson, seeing his orientation merely as an aspect of his identity, rather than analogous, in any significant way, to the identity of his party.
FROM: http://sheppardpost.com/

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Is New Zealand Ready For A Gay Prime Minister? (Original Post) echochamberlain Oct 2014 OP
Old news but worth a view JDDavis Oct 2014 #1
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