Between a hard rock and shifting sands: Churches and the issue of homosexuality in New Zealand, 1960-86

Journal of Religious History

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 61-76

  Guy, Laurie ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND   (New Zealand)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 43249157432     PISSN: 00224227     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9809.2006.00388.x     Document Type: Article

References (117)

1. See my Worlds in Collision: The Gay Debate in New Zealand 1960-1986 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2002) for an exploration of the earlier phases of this mindset shift.
2. M. King, Being Pakeha: An Encounter with New Zealand and the Maori Renaissance (Auckland: Hodder & Stoughton, 1985), 9
3. See also K. Sinclair, A History of New Zealand, 2nd ed. (London: Penguin, 1969), 305
4. Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents (hereafter The Mazengarb Report), Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives (AJHR), 1954, Vol. 4, H-47: 48.
5. S. G. M. Glazebrook, "The Mazengarb Report, 1954: Impotent Victorianism" (M.A. research essay, University of Auckland, 1978), 3;
6. "Juvenile Report for Parents," Evening Post, 23 September 1954, 20.
7. New Zealand Department of Health, Sex and the Adolescent Boy (Wellington, n.d. [1955]), 5;
8. also New Zealand Department of Health, Sex and the Parent (Wellington, n.d. [1955]), 5.
9. R. Yska, All Shook Up: The Flash Bodgie and the Rise of the New Zealand Teenager in the Fifties (Auckland: Penguin, 1993), 109.
10. B. Jesson, A. Ryan, and P. Spoonley, Revival of the Right: New Zealand Politics in the 1980s (Auckland: Heinemann Reed, 1988), 27.
11. Such a view was still reflected in Roberta Page's comment in 1975 that "New Zealand law and society is, in general, opposed to premarital sex and the use of contraceptives by single young people." R. A. Page, "The Sexual Behaviour and Attitudes of Young People," (M.A. thesis, University of Auckland, 1975), 156.
12. J. T. Watts, New Zealand Parliamentary Debates (hereafter NZPD), 232 ( 1960), 669.
13. "Memo from the Editor." Thursday, 4 September 1969, 3.
14. M. Gee, The Plumb Trilogy (Auckland: Penguin, 1978, 1981. 1983), Plumb, 200.
15. Gee, The Plumb Trilogy, Meg, 174, 180.
16. G. Ngaei, "Homosexuality (And It's [sic] Social Implications)" (5th year preventive medicine dissertation, University of Otago, 1967), 2, 31.
17. Ngaei, "Homosexuality," 31, 17.
18. S. Dawson, Appointment on Sunday: The Calling and Craft of a Preacher (Auckland: Methodist Publications, 1993), 157.
19. L. Geering, "Homosexuality: Punitive to Positive," NZ Listener, 110 (25 May 1985). 48, col. 1.
20. Public Questions Committee meeting 8 July 1960 (Presbyterian Church of New Zealand archives, file 2000/0009/62 AE 6/8).
21. Homosexuality: A Report by the Provincial Committee on Public and Social Affairs of the Anglican Church, 1967.
22. See Church and People, 22 September 1967, 12.
23. Report of the Commission on Education in New Zealand [The Currie Report] (Wellington, 1962), 683.
24. The Mazengarb Report, 13.
25. "Helpful Report on Moral Delinquency," Auckland Star, 22 September 1954, 2.
26. S. C. Francis, Report on Maladjusted and Anti-Social Youth (prepared by the Special Committee of the Assembly's Social Service Committee, for presentation to the meeting of the General Assembly at Invercargill 1959 (Stuart C. Francis: convenor)) (Christchurch, n.d. [c. 1959]).
27. I. Cross, "The Homosexual," NZ Listener, 7 September 1974, 6.
28. Cross, "Homosexual", 6.
29. M. King, After the War: New Zealand since 1945 (Auckland: Hodder & Stoughton, 1988), 91.
30. The oral contraceptive pill was approved by the American Food and Drug Administration in 1960, and introduced into New Zealand in 1961. See J. D'Emilio and E. B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 250;
31. D. C. Moreau, "Living with the Pill: Oral Contraceptive Use in New Zealand, 1960-1975" (M.A. thesis, University of Auckland, 1997), 4.
32. For a more general viewpoint on shifting sexual values in New Zealand in the 1960s, see D. Thomas, "Some Aspects of Premarital Sexual Behaviour," Science Record 16 (August 1966): 31-33.
33. Pseudonymous ("Scientist"), "The Pill," New Zealand Monthly Review 6 (September 1965): 7.
34. Anon., Living with Sex, 2nd ed. (NZUSA Publication, n.p., 1971), 32.
35. This was a major emphasis of the thesis of Danielle Moreau. It rebutted views of people like Linda Grant that a sexual revolution would not have occurred without the availability of the contraceptive pill. See D. C. Moreau, "Living with the Pill: Oral Contraceptive Use in New Zealand, 1960-1975" (M.A. thesis, University of Auckland, 1997), 120-21;
36. L. Grant, Sexing the Millennium (London: HarperCollins, 1994), 18, 60;
37. H. Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex, and Contraception, 1800-1975 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 282.
38. "The Sunday Times Says", editorial, 6 September 1970.
39. J. E. Ritchie, "Morals and Social Habits: N.Z. in the Sixties," NZ Listener, 16 January 1970, 6, col. 1.
40. See also M. H. Holcroft, "After Liberation," NZ Listener, 16 July 1973, 5, col. 2.
41. Ritchie, "Morals and Social Habits," 6, col. 5.
42. However, the elderly B. L. Dallard was still using this argument in 1980: B. L. Dallard, Fettered Freedom: A Symbolic Society or Anarchy? (Wellington: Department of Justice, 1980), 104-5.
43. Dallard was Controller-General of Prisons in New Zealand 1925-49. For comment on the implications of the birth-control pill for attitudes to homosexuality, see V. Burgmann, Power and Protest: Movements for Change in Australian Society (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1993), 152. '
44. Dr Evelyn Duvall quoted by L. Kirkendell, "Teen-Agers Sex Attitudes," in Foundations for Christian Familv Policv: The Proceedings of the North American Conference on Church and Family, ed. E. S. Genné and W. H. Genné (New York, n.d. [1961]), 84.
45. Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution [hereafter The Wollenden Report], (London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1957, reprinted authorized American edition, New York, 1963), 48 (para. 61).
46. The Wolfenden Report, 23, para. 13.
47. For example, H. J. Wily and K. R. Stallworthy, Mental Abnormality and the Law (Christchurch: N.M. Peryer, 1962), 239, 242;
48. R. W. Medlicott, "Sociopathic Personality Disturbance," in Mental Health and the Community: The Proceedings of a Conference for Professional Groups Organized by the Canterbury Mental Health Council as a Contribution to the World Mental Health Year, ed. P. J. Lawrence (Christchurch: The Canterbury Mental Health Council, 1961), 375.
49. M. H. Holcroft, "Sex outside the Law," NZ Listener, 25 July 1958, 10.
50. For other early New Zealand newspaper comment on or allusion to the Wolfenden Report, see "Homosexual Law Reform Society Appeals for World Support," Press, 23 June 1959, 10;
51. "Discussing Perversion," Press, 28 September 1959. 10;
52. "Wisdom of Second Thoughts on Crimes Bill," NZ Herald editorial, 23 September 1959, 12.
53. See P. F. Blizard, "The Law, Homosexuality and the Wolfenden Association," Comment, 3, June 1967, 7-8;
54. letter J. Goodwin to Allan Pyatt, bishop of Christchurch, 16 February 1967, Lesbian and Gav Archives of New Zealand (LAGANZ) MS Papers 083, Series 1. File 1;
55. also I.AGANZ MS Papers 295.
56. Provincial Committee on Public and Social Affairs, Homosexuality: A Report (Wellington, n.d. [19671).
57. Minutes of the Annual Conference of the Methodist Church of New Zealand 1960, 94 -96.
58. Letter Ian Breward to Laurie Guy, 24 November 1997 (original held by Laurie Guy).
59. Admission of several of the accused youths: see court file in Christehurch Regional Archives: Accession CH131/50, criminal index Feb 1953-Jul 1965: accession CH273/22. 23, 24, 25, 26 & 27.
60. Letter Ian Breward to Laurie Guy, 24 November 1997.
61. Reported in "Moderator Critical of Homosexual Law," Christchurch Star, 30 October 1975.
62. Letter Erie Gowing bp Auckland to J. W. Goodwin, 21 August 1967: LAGANZ: MS Papers 083, Series 1/ 1. The bishop of Wellington similarly accepted a vice-presidency only in his private capacity: Letter Right Reverend Henry Baines, bishop of Wellington, to Jack Goodwin. 7 July 1967: LAGANZ MS Papers 083, Series 1/ 1.
63. Letter Bishop E. Gowing to Jack Goodwin, 24 July 1974: LAGANZ, MS Papers 083, Series 1, Folder 11.
64. Letter Bishop Gowing to Jack Goodwin, 4 December 1974: LAGANZ: MS Papers 083, Series 1, Folder 12. Also subsequent letter Bishop Gowing to Jack Goodwin, 13 December 1974: LAGANZ: MS Papers 083, Series 1, Folder 12. When Gowing was talked into staying on as a vice-president, Goodwin wrote to him, commenting inter alia: "Some of our critics may be confounded by the 'Gay is good' slogans of the groups with whom we have an uneasv alliance .. .". Letter Jack Goodwin to Bishop Gowing, 13 March 1975: LAGANZ: MS Papers 083, Series 1, Folder 13.
65. Letter Bishop Gowing to Jack Goodwin, 19 March 1975: LAGANZ, MS Papers 083, Series 1, Folder 13.
66. Minutes of NZHLRS annual general meeting 29 October 1980 and 26 November 1980: LAGANZ, MS Papers 083, Series 4, File 2.
67. Letter from the Rev. Canon T.M. Barton on behalf of Bishop Gowing to NZHLRS, 8 August 1980: LAGANZ, MS Papers 083, Series 1, Folder 19.
68. "Theology: Toward a Hidden God," Time, 8 April 1966, 84.
69. J. Veitch. "1961-1990: Towards the Church for a New Era," in Presbyterians in Aotearoa 1840-1990, ed. D. McEldowney (Wellington: The Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, 1990), 151.
70. For the particularly rapid decline in the decade 1967-77 see F. Hayman, "Church and Faith in Today's World," Forum 30, No. 6 (June 1978): 4.
71. M. N Garing. "Against the Tide: Social, Moral and Political Questions in the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand 1840-1970" (Ph.D. thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1989), 75.
72. J. B. Elkind, "Christian Ethic in Serious Trouble on Contradictions," Auckland Star, 9 May 1978, 6.
73. Quoted in NZ Methodist, 24 November 1966, as reported in Evans, "Church State Relations in New Zealand 1940-1990 with Particular Reference to the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches" (Ph.D. thesis, university of Otago, 1992), 90-91.
74. This type of classification originated with Ernst Troeltsch who identified churches as "church-type" and "sect-type" in part on the basis of their response to society: E. Troeltsch. Religion in History, trans. J. L. Adams and W. F. Bense (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 324-26.
75. M. Hill, "Religion and Society: Cement or Ferment?" in Religion in New Zealand, ed. C. Nichol and J. Veitch (Wellington, 1980), 205.
76. Hill, "Religion and Society," 206.
77. Hill, "Religion and Society," 209.
78. See also B. Wilson, The Social Dimensions of Sectarianism: Sects and New Religious Movements in Contemporary Society (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 46-47 and passim.
79. See similar views of J. J. Mol, lecturer in sociology at the University of Canterbury in "Religion and the Needs of Society," Forum 14, No. 9 (1962): 2-7. Mol at p. 6 noted that the present-day Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist Churches in most parts of the world tended to align with the ideals of society rather than maintain religious perspectives over against society.
80. This term was used by R. A. Evans, "Recovering the Church's Transforming Middle: Theological Reflections on the Balance between Faithfulness and Effectiveness," in Understanding Church Growth and Decline, 1950-1978, ed. D. R. Hoge and D. A. Rozen (New York: Pilgrim, 1981), 290.
81. Evans saw the middle ground as lying "between liberalism, that is basically culture affirming (a Christ-of-culture model), and fundamentalism (a Christ-against-culture model)." See also "Sexuality: New Ethics and Lifestyles" in Accent (October 1986), 9;
82. Geering, "Homosexuality," 48;
83. D. Kettle, "Bearings on the Sea of Faith," Stimulus 5, No. 1 (February 1997): 3-6.
84. L. Geering. "New Zealand Enters the Secular Age." in Religion, ed. Nichol and Veitch, 238, 252.
85. See his Christianity without God (Santa Rosa: Polebridge, 2002).
86. J. Fletcher, Situation Ethics (London: SCM, 1966), 26.
87. Fletcher, Situation Ethics, 70.
88. For a similar focus on the quality of homosexual relationships rather than their appearance, see D. Rhymes, No New Morality: Christian Personal Values and Sexual Morality (London: Constable, 1964), 91.
89. Transcript of interview of Wilfred Ford by Laurie Guy. 2 April 1998. 4 (copy held in LAGANZ MS Papers 0608).
90. Minutes of the Annual Conference of the Methodist Church of New Zealand 1970, 141-42.
91. Presbyterian Church of New Zealand Year Book 1975, 115, 130.
92. On this see C. Young, "Queer Versus the Christian Right, 1985-1998." in Queer in Aotearoa New Zealand, ed. L. Alice and L. Star (Palmerston North: Dunmore, 2004).
93. D. Burt. "Bible our Rulebook" (a letter to the editor), Outlook, August 1985, 3-4.
94. J. Marshall, "What's My Line?" Outlook, May 1985, 30.
95. E. Cassidy, "God's Word" (a letter to the editor), Outlook, June 1985, 3.
96. Letter Mary Holmes (office manger of NCC) to Gerard Marks (General Superintendent Baptist Union of New Zealand) confirming vote of NCC Executive meeting held 12-13 April 1985: NCC records: Alexander Turnbull Library Wellington, reference number 87-204, box 55. 79. Letter Gerard Marks (General Superintendent Baptist Union of New Zealand) to Dorreen Hatch (Secretary to NCC), 5 September 1985: National Council of Churches records: Alexander Turnbull Library Wellington, reference number 87-204. box 55.
97. "Comprehensive Statement on Homosexuality". Presbyterian Assembly News, November 1985, 1: LAGANZ: Serials, Stack 2.
98. Transcript of interview of Rob Yule by Laurie Guy, 28 January 1998, 1, 3, 5, 6.
99. Statement under the heading "Sexual Sin," in Outlook, December 1985, 30.
100. For example, C. J. Bacon, ed. The Social Effects of Homosexuality in New Zealand (Christchurch: Coalition of Concerned Citizens, 1985), 40-42: full-page advertisement by Church of Christ (Mt Roskill) in Auckland Star, 15 May 1985, A7.
101. "MPs Told Jobs on Line over Gay Bill", Dominion, 25 September 1985, 1.
102. I. Dunn, " 'Sally Army' Wages New Zealand War against Gays," New Statesman, 110, 16 August 1985, 5;
103. "Group Quashes Anti-Gay pamphlet," Auckland Star, 9 April 1985, 1.
104. G. McBride, "MPs Told Jobs on Line over Gay Bill," Dominion, 25 September 1985, 1;
105. "Righteous and Rowdy Day for Petition", NZ Herald, 25 September 1985, 3;
106. B. Ansley, "The Growing Might of the Moral Right," NZ Listener, 26 October 1985, 16.
107. The only two MPs who articulated their opposition in terms of Christian morality in 1974-75 were Lance Adams-Schneider. NZPD 392 (1974), 3167:
108. and R.L.G. Talbot, NZPD 399 (1975), 2808.
109. A talk given by Dr Judith McMorland at Saint Mark's Church Remuera, 25 September 1985. Text in personal possession of Fran Wilde: "H.L.R Corresp. Churches" box.
110. The title of a Metro article by Rev. Selwyn Dawson, September 1985, 170-76.
111. J. Bluck, "Red Hot or Rock Cold." One World (monthly magazine of the World Council of Churches) 36 (1978): 10-11.
112. Say Yes: Christians and the Homosexual Law Reform Bill, published by Christian Action, Auckland, September 1985, 1: LAGANZ: Pam 729.75 SAY.
113. Homosexual Law Reform Bill: Briefing Paper Prepared for Fran Wilde, MP. [Printed without author acknowledgment but drafted by A. Ivory, Auckland: Campaign for Equality, 1985]. Located in the LAGANZ printed collections.
114. See comments of the parliamentary select committee in relation to the HLRB: reported in "Submissions Show Divided Church", Challenge Weekly, 25 October 1985, 16.
115. See comments by Pastor Barry Reed, media spokesperson for the coalition in "Halting Moral Decay", Outlook, 92, 10 (November 1985), 20.
116. In Riddell,'"The Divine Right," New Outlook, Sept/Oct 1985, 25.
117. In Riddell, "Divine Right," 26.