The New Zealand gay and lesbian community is in a quagmire.

I would now forgive you for assuming that ‘gay and lesbian’ has morphed into ‘queer and trans’, which is now the default descriptor of ‘our’ community, and that ‘gay and lesbian’ is old hat. That we all support the push for the ‘right’ for people to change their sex on their birth certificates by self-declaration, and calling anyone who calls for any kind of assessment an evil bigot. Despite the perception, such evil bigots opposing that nonsense have included gays and lesbians, left-wing straight women, trade unionists, and surely as I write this, common sense itself will be inducted into the Bigot Hall Of Fame. Other priorities include ‘gender affirming healthcare’, where children as young as ten are put on off-label chemotherapy drugs like Lucrin/Lupron to prevent ‘unwanted changes’.

Two major organizations are promoted heavily in the media for the movement these days. Those organizations are RainbowYOUTH and InsideOUT, which share employees and volunteers and are de facto functioning like a singular organization. They are consulted on news articles on the bathroom debate to recent gender critical protests at the 2018 Auckland Pride Parade. They receive government funding to further their aims.

At the same time, RainbowYOUTH, purporting to represent ‘LGBTQI+’ doesn’t even mention ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ on its website’s article about sexuality. InsideOUT’s education resources don’t even have a definition of ‘homosexual’ in their glossary. RainbowYOUTH’s former executive director now works in the health sector, project managing ‘gender-affirming healthcare for the DHB’. But it’s not just these two organizations — the entire transgender rights movement has hijacked gay and lesbian events and gay and lesbian organizations to further its aims. Like an unwelcome parasite, it leeches off our culture and community, and tries to establish itself as the core of our community. No better example would be No Pride in Prisons, which hijacked multiple Pride Parades for the rights of transgender sex offenders.

What the hell is going on, you might ask? I’ll tell you what’s going on: these two organizations have done nothing but strive to erase the homosexual from the communities they supposedly ‘represent’. and received government funding to do it.

And almost all of those doing this have huge conflicts of interest. For example, InsideOUT’s evaluation of its government funded education resources? That was assisted by someone who designed and presented the materials, including that person gathering data for the studies performed. The Auckland DHBs had the RainbowYOUTH executive director running their ‘transgender health project’ at the same time he was still executive director and running an online shop selling a line of gender neutral-bathroom signs. Lexie Matheson, chair of the Pride Board and No Pride in Prisons activist, used their Council position on the Rainbow Communities Advisory Panel to support Pride Board business — while in charge of that organization.

Don’t believe me? Read on.

FOR THE CHILDREN

Of the primary LGBT youth groups in New Zealand, the two most prominent, and the two that receive the most media attention (RainbowYOUTH even measures its media attention in its returns to the Charities Commission) and government funding are RainbowYOUTH and InsideOUT. What do these groups actually do, first? I checked their Statements Of Service Performance in order to get a handle on what they tell the Government they do.

A Statement Of Service Performance is required to be filed by New Zealand Charities to the Charities Commission every year. It is intended to give performance indicators to the Charities Commission and the public on what a charity is actually doing.

Here is InsideOUTs:

And Rainbow Youth’s:

As we can see, despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars donated by banks, the Lotteries Commission, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in government funding (receiving $110,000 in MSD funding to provide anti-bullying resources in the year ending 2018), or the $300,000 spent on the InsideOUT resources, very few people actually use the services of Rainbow Youth and InsideOUT. There were only 11,000 hits on their ‘I’m Local’ website that’s supposed to find ‘queer and gender diverse youth’ community support groups. They actually printed less resources than last year. InsideOUT registered 21 schools to its ‘support network’ in 2016. There are 2,530 schools in New Zealand. Despite National coordinator Tabby Besley being met by the Queen, her organization is propped up by Government and corporate money and has no organic demand for its services.

If we take a look at RainbowYOUTH’s it is easy to see a problem. For a start, it’s ‘positive outcomes’ including counting its instances of ‘positive media presence’. After all, if you were only looking through the lens of the media, RainbowYOUTH does seem like a big organization. Yet the figures sent to the Charities Commission like this demonstrate it’s a paper tiger organization at best — and incredibly top heavy. They had an average of 9.8 people attending each support group, and only 1,731 total attendance over the year. The Blues have better attendance that RainbowYOUTH. It’s attendance and number of ‘one on one support cases’ are actually declining year on year.

How bad is this figure? Let me put it this way: if the support groups ran 48 weeks of the year, allowing four weeks for holidays, once a week, there are 36 people turning up once a week to a Rainbow Youth support group — nationally. If we say that there are four support groups, that gives us a number just under the average attendance of each support group — 9.01 people per group.

That’s being very generous with my figures. Should those groups meet more than once a week, or all 52 weeks of the year, the figures get much worse.

Which is bizarre, considering the money that these organizations receive. This is from the report ending March 2017, the latest available. Here we have Rainbow Youth’s general accounts and Statement of Financial Performance.

Where does that $386,000 in donations come from? We can find out from the ‘analysis of revenue’. This lists major donors.

With this analysis, we can see the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) paid Rainbow Youth $110,000 for ‘services’. What services?

Let’s look at InsideOUTs:

Unlike Rainbow YOUTH, InsideOUT does not list its donors. It does list a $100,000 ‘World Of Difference’ grant from Vodafone, of which $60,000 was used to cover the salary of InsideOUT’s National Coordinator, Tabby Besley.

While funded with hundreds of thousands of dollars by the Government to produce resources and support services, very few people actually use those services. Yet RainbowYOUTH is consulted by every media organization every time an issue involving lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender issues comes up in New Zealand. But they don’t actually speak for the community: because despite their charity status, and despite that Government money, their own figures show they are unable to actually engage with LGBT young people.

What did the government actually pay for these organizations to produce, when they don’t actually represent young gay and lesbian people, at all?

I mean, look at the funding of those InsideOUT education resources. This didn’t require much combing — someone had already requested this information through an OIA from the MSD, and that request is on their site. They cost $300,000 to produce, to create an online portal, to have launches (i.e. parties), ‘media relations’, $56,000 in ‘training’, and an $80,000 evaluation.

Here we have a funding breakdown:

We are also told that Rainbow Youth is ‘working in partnership with local organizations to provide training to ensure safe use of the Inside Out resource’. Does that translate into ‘making sure people who use the resource toe the party line’? I mean, ‘safe use’ of a teaching resource? It’s a teaching resource, not 1080 poison.

InsideOUT were contracted to provide the InsideOUT teaching materials and resources for sexual and health education. These materials, despite meeting ‘key parts of the health curriculum’, do not define homosexuality at all in it’s glossary for students and teachers, defines lesbian as a ‘broad term’, and teaches students that sexual attraction is based on gender, which is in ‘our head/heart’, rather than biological sex. It also encourages teachers to ‘break down norms’ like a student’s religion, and ‘call out’ students who do not create a ‘positive, anti-bullying environment’ when they question the material presented in the resources.

Also? That $80,000 evaluation is most likely useless. While the evaluation suggests that the resources are perfect, amazing, and should be a source of professional development — seriously, I don’t think any negative is said in the entire evaluation - the studies performed to evaluate the resources can easily be called into question. Assisting in the evaluation was Aych McArdle, who contributed to the material and was a presenter in the InsideOUT videos. At the time the resources were produced, McArdle was the education director at RainbowYOUTH, and is quoted as such in multiple news articles. McArdle left the position in 2016 to work at the Human Rights Commission. The ‘acknowledgements’ section of the evaluation describes her contribution:

‘provided invaluable assistance in supporting and organization collection of some of the data, literature review, and aspects of the final analysis’.

Because surely that couldn’t possibly bias the evaluation in any way, shape, or form. I’m not a legal beaver — but isn’t her then-employment, let alone her work on the resources, a massive conflict of interest when trying to evaluate said work? Yet no conflicts of interest are listed in the evaluation, even with her providing ‘invaluable assistance’. I mean, this is the same thing as the teacher letting you mark your own homework. Of course, you’re going to get Excellence. McArdle assisted with data collection, which mostly consisted of asking people at RainbowYOUTH workshops how they felt about the resources, which at the time, she was running, and ‘an external SGSD support organization’ that gave ‘four consecutive workshops’ to a single secondary school. I would bet money that that ‘external organization’ was either RainbowYOUTH or InsideOUT, and the fact it is not named is suspicious. There was no study that engaged with those that might possibly criticize the resources. That’s not an evaluation, it’s a back-patting session, and it’s a waste of tax-payer money.

Another thing to note about this evaluation? It doesn’t use the acronym ‘LGBT’ or even ‘LGBTQI+’. It uses ‘SGSD’, or ‘sex, gender, or sexuality diverse’. The homosexuals come last in this acronym. In fact, I don’t think there’s a single mention of ‘homosexuality’ in this entire evaluation. I even tried using the search tool and got a grand total of zero results. Despite supposedly advising the government on gay and lesbian issues, gays and lesbians aren’t even mentioned in the evaluation, nor is homosexuality even defined in the materials.

AUCKLAND PRIDE

Nowhere is hijacking more evident than at Auckland Pride. It primarily involves anti-law enforcement group People Against Prisoners Aotearoa, (PAPA), formerly known as No Pride In Prisons (NPIP).

In 2015, three protesters invaded the parade route to protest the New Zealand prison system, specifically the way trans women were treated in prisons and the presence of Police and Corrections in the Parade. They were dragged away from the route and an oncoming police motorcycle by security staff, with one of the protesters, trans woman Emmy Rakete, having their arm broken in the scuffle. The protest was criticized by onlookers, who shouted that the protest was ‘ruining the parade’. The protest at the parade occurred a day after the ANZ Bank rainbow-coloured ATMs called ‘GayTMs’ were vandalized. A group called ‘Queers Against Injustice’ widely believed to be the same group as ‘No Pride In Prisons’ took credit for the vandalism, claiming they were fighting ‘pinkwashing’, and fighting ‘homonormativity’ of the ‘queer subject’. They protested the parade again in 2016 but did not in 2017 due to their objectives having been met.

Where did this group come from? Levi Joule, former Queer Rights Officer at the Auckland University Students Association wrote a controversial article in Express that discussed the groups emergence from Auckland University student politics. Joule states the group was formerly known as ‘Petty and Vindictive’ a ‘fringe collective responsible for the pride protests and paint splattering of Auckland’s GayTMs and police stations’. Joule claims the group emerged from the inaugural university pride week in an attempt to ‘radicalize it’.

Interesting also is the former Co-Chair of Pride, and the co-chair at the time of the protests, Lexie Matheson, an AUT lecturer on ‘event management’, and an out trans woman who identifies as a ‘lesbian’. Matheson is a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to theatre and ‘LGBTQI+ people’. Matheson has been on the Pride Board twice, resigning from the board initially in 2014 after disputes with other board members. The divorce from the Pride Board didn’t take though, and Matheson was back in the board by August 2016, which met with criticism from former board member Phylesha Brown-Acton in (now sadly defunct) news website GayNZ in an article by Sarah Murphy, accusing Matheson of pecuniary conflicts of interest due to Matheson’s position as an Auckland Council Rainbow Communities Advisory Panel member (and occasionally acting co-chair of that panel), along with racism and transphobia, as well as unprofessional behaviour. Matheson is also an admitted PAPA activist, discussing it with The Herald.

Indeed, at the time Matheson was chair of an organization that receives Council funding, they were also on the Rainbow Communities Panel of the Council — surely a conflict of interest? Matheson doesn’t seem to have cared, voting on Pride business as an Advisory Panel at least once, as we can see in the minutes of the panels July 2017 meeting, where Matheson voted to ‘support the Pride board’, without declaring that at the time, they were a co-chair of the Pride board.

“11 Consideration of Extraordinary Items Pursuant to Standing Order 2.4.6, the Rainbow Communities Advisory Panel agreed to discuss its ability to formally support the Auckland Pride Festival Board. Lexie Matheson, panel member and Auckland Pride Festival Board member, led the discussion. The following points from the discussion were noted: · The support sought is non-monetary and could be in the form of a letter of support for the board and its activities. · The panel agreed that any formal support for the board should come from the Liaison Councillor with the panel’s endorsement.”

During their time as Chair of the Pride Board, Matheson was also subject of a glowing profile on the Auckland Pride website as a ‘change-maker’, which was included in the Pride Programme for 2017.

Why was a government department banned from a Council funded event? Supposedly, this was because of the treatment of transgender women in men’s prisons. However, the primary limitation on transgender women transferring to women’s prisons is if they have committed a serious sexual offense. PAPA, and its activists, and Pride Chair Lexie Matheson, who identified themselves as a PAPA activist, did all that protesting and banning Corrections from the Parade for the rights of a dozen serious sex offenders. This is a cause for concern — the UK is also having this debate about the presence of transgender-identifying inmates in women’s prisons, after rapist Karen White identified his way into a woman’s prison, then committed multiple sexual assaults while there. He was later convicted and moved to a men’s prison. Half of trans prisoners in the UK are in for sex offenses. Making one vulnerable population become more vulnerable to serve the needs of another is not progress. It’s misogyny. Despite being ‘vulnerable’ in men’s prisons, these are men with higher rates of predating on females. That’s not the only thing PAPA demands. It is an extreme anti-law enforcement group that in their manifesto, also called for the NZ Police to be defunded, for ‘LGBTQI-positive literature’ in prisons, the removal of police tasers, and for people under the age of eighteen to not be charged with a crime for any reason, among other similarly batshit things you can find in their manifesto.

I doubt the majority of gay and lesbian New Zealander’s support these things, yet their good name is being sullied by a pair of heterosexual men identifying as women and hijacking their event to use as their own. Gays and lesbians have not only been erased from their movement — their movement’s largest event was hijacked in service of sex offenders.

Yet this meets with no condemnation from the media or the gay media, particularly compared to the way feminist protesters at Auckland Pride 2018 were treated. When Renee Gerlich and Charlie Montague gatecrashed the Auckland Parade in 2018, they were met with universal condemnation from Rainbow community groups, and the Green Party, of which Montague is a member.

DISTRICT HEALTH BOARD

Now the Auckland Region has transgender health services. Called, ‘Hauora Tahine’, the service offers ‘gender affirming healthcare services across the Northern Region’. This includes hormone treatment, and child transition, along with ‘cosmetic surgery’.

Yet much of the evidence for this kind of treatment is lacking. Treatment for children is severely lacking in evidence: most children who present with gender dysphoria grow up to be gay and lesbian. Yes, the Auckland district health boards are now offering transition to children. Gender non-conforming children that are overwhelmingly more likely to grow up gay than trans. There is plenty of evidence for this. Like this article, ‘Gender Identity Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence’ which concludes that ‘children with GID only rarely go on to have permanent transsexualism’, and ‘Multiple longitudinal studies provide evidence that gender-atypical behaviour in childhood often leads to a homosexual orientation in adulthood’.

It is extremely worrying that the DHB would fund and support children being transitioned for their gender dysphoria, when most childhood gender dysphoria resolves, and most gender non-conforming children grow up to be gay and lesbian adults.

The DHB now provides consent forms to people, including children, that are considering transition. They warn children that they wind up completely sterile, but that this is worth it to reduce ‘unwanted bodily changes’. Lucrin, or Lupron, the drug the DHB is using to ‘block puberty’, has been linked to osteoporosis in later life, and the DHB warns of this possibility in their consent letters. These consent letters also advise underage females taking puberty blockers, that if sex hurts, that they should use lubricant to fix the vaginal dryness caused by the drug. The DHB even warmly welcomes patients with mental health issues that may underlie their gender dysphoria telling them ‘having mental health problems doesn’t stop you getting started’. School counselors can even refer children to the DHB’s new transgender service, without the knowledge of a child’s parents.

The 2017 Northern Region Transgender Health Work Plan also references efforts to get laser hair treatment covered as ‘gender-affirming treatment’. Nurses are underpaid, and Middlemore is full of asbestos, but some men with gender dysphoria need better access to laser hair removal. That this is even being considered for DHB funding is an absolute scandal.

How did this all happen? How did the DHB’s transgender health project morph into providing almost the exact wish list of transgender activists?

You only need to look at the people in charge.

The project manager the DHB selected to manage the transgender health, Duncan Matthews, and his numerous conflicts of interest whilst running the project. Matthews is the former general manager of Rainbow Youth. He left in October 2017 to take up a full-time position with the Waitemata District Health Board. This board covers 576,000 people in West and North Auckland. The position? Project manager for the transgender health programme. Matthews had already been working for the Waitemata District Health Board in a part-time role since January 2017. The conflict of interest between a pro-transgender charity director running a ‘transgender health project’ for a district health board didn’t occur to the district health board. He did however, appear in an article promoting its fundraising gala and either shortly before or after his January 2017 appointment, talking about ‘gender policing’ sex-segregated toilets. However, he does seem aware of the fact he might appear to have a conflict of interest, and the media appearances drop off precipitously for him after his January 2017 appointment, and there are few media comments by Rainbow Youth until the appointment of a new executive director. During 2017, he also shut down the profit-making venture that was the online shop ‘GenderNeutral.co.nz’ that sold a line of ‘gender inclusive’ bathroom signs, donating 34% of profits to RainbowYOUTH, which employed him at the time the shop was opened in 2014. The shop shut down in November 2017, while Matthews was employed at the DHB.

But it does show a very clear conflict of interest — work for the DHB should be neutral and evidence based. Because it is very apparent that the project that Matthews managed was driven by his pro-transgender ideology rather than evidence-based medicine, to the point that DHB materials repeat verbatim RainbowYOUTH material.

Why does gay erasure matter?

Life isn’t getting any better for the homosexual youth that these organizations are ignoring. These groups love citing the Youth’12 stats on transgender students.

I’ve decided to give you a tour of the Youth ’12 stats that these people don’t talk about. You never hear anyone talking about the stats from this study — Young People Attracted to the Same Sex or Both Sexes Findings from the Youth’12 national youth health and wellbeing survey.

This is important. Why? Well, we’ve all heard about the 19.1% attempted suicide rate reported by transgender young people. One in five, they say! This is why the homosexuals must capitulate to all their demands. Otherwise, trans youth might kill themselves. They won’t tell you that the rate for same-sex attracted youth in Youth’12 is extremely similar at 18.3% — one in five. Not very different from the 2000 survey. The suicide rate for young same-sex attracted youth hasn’t declined in twelve years despite all the Government funding come the way of these organizations. They do not serve gay and lesbian youth at all.

A disproportionate number (41.1%) of transgender youth report being same-sex attracted — sexually attracted to other members of their natal sex. 54.6% report being attracted to the opposite sex. Due to the confusing question, and some transgender youth considering themselves ‘straight’ (and therefore ‘heterosexual’, even though they are actually homosexual in behavior), the number of bisexual or homosexual trans youth (i.e. attracted to the same sex)is probably higher. 7% of non-transgender young people identify as same-sex attracted, for comparison.

The Youth’12 says that 39% of transgender youth felt unable to access healthcare. The rate for same-sex attracted youth? 35%

Youth’12 says 53% of transgender students felt that someone at school would hurt or bother them. The rate for same-sex attracted students? 57.9%

Plenty of stats for same-sex attracted youth are very similar or worse than transgender youth. Want some more?

17.6% of transgender youth were bullied at least weekly.

16.5% of same sex attracted youth were bullied at least weekly.

81.2% of transgender students felt safe in their neighbourhood.

45.3% of same sex attracted students felt safe in their neighbourhood.

45.5% of transgender students had self-harmed in the past 12 months.

59.4% of same sex attracted youth had self harmed in the past 12 months. (heterosexual, non-transgender youth reported a rate of 23%)

41.3% of transgender youth reported significant depressive symptoms. The stats for same-sex attracted youth on that one? Identical. 41.3%

How much of those transgender stats comes from their massively disproportionate number of same-sex attracted youth identifying as transgender? Why do I never, ever see prominent LGBTQI+ groups talk about these statistics? Ever? It’s always ‘1 in 5 trans youth’. It’s like they forgot the LGB have a 1 in 5 rate for our youth. Almost like they’ve erased the homosexual from their remit in their laser-like focus on trans issues. Gay youth are being bullied in our schools, are being bullied , are self-harming at a rate of nearly 2 in 3. Maybe it’s time we talk about them too?

Because they actually have it worse. And the organizations that are supposed to help these young people are telling them they can ‘change gender’ and depriving them of the language to discuss their experiences.

What does it mean?

In essence, the Government over the past five years or so, during which both major parties were in power, decided to subsidize and fund a certain kind of politics in the gay and lesbian movement — queer politics. This is despite the representatives of queer politics having numerous conflicts of interest issues, and the way they have erased gay and lesbian people from their remits.

It is also clear that there is a ‘political class’ in the New Zealand LGBT community that represents itself as speaking for the broader community when it does not. The large swathe of the LGBT community in New Zealand is completely disengaged from these people. Yet the same small group people run organizations and sit on panels, boards, and run the Rainbow section of political parties. They then advise the government on decisions, while not representing any view outside of their small and incestuous social circle. They have built substantial careers out of this, moving between charities and the public sector, always promoting their views on transgenderism. This has led to the Government funding education materials produced by ‘Rainbow Organizations’ that don’t even discuss what ‘homosexuality’ means. These people have carved out careers on the backs of gays and lesbians, and to our detriment.

This political class has queer politics at its core — and it is the ideology they wield against members of the community who dissent, or who believe lesbians aren’t interested in penises. Fundamentally, being part of the ‘LGBTQI community’ is a matter of self identification, not a matter of one’s innate sexuality. It’s endless inclusion and lack of boundaries make it nothing but dangerous to gays and lesbians, who struggle to define themselves as a distinct class of people, with a shared oppression based on our material conditions. It is nothing but homophobia waving a rainbow flag.

Queer politics seeks to erase the homosexual and the distinct homosexual experience and replace the concept of ‘biological sex’ with ‘gender’. As I write enshrining this nonsense into law become closer, with the Second Reading of the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill soon to be on the cards at Parliament. This bill would allow people to change their legal sex by self-declaration, thus obliterating the legal concept of ‘biological sex’.

Many feminists have discussed why this is dangerous. Few gay and lesbian activists have. Let me put it this way: with this legislation, we would be completely unable to exclude heterosexuals from our spaces. We would no longer be able to discuss ourselves as ‘same-sex attracted’, because under these definitions, that would include heterosexual attractions. We would have to describe ourselves as ‘attracted exclusively to other people with penises’, or ‘other people with vaginas’, and even then, we would be attacked and called ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminists’. Lesbians who defend their boundaries receive relentless attacks, as you can see here. The transgender movement has also moved onto gay men, with Grindr now being open to heterosexual women identifying as gay men, and users threatened with being removed from the dating platform if they make it clear that they are not into heterosexual sex.

Entire organizations that represent themselves to the government as representing ‘gay and lesbian’ issues erase gay and lesbian people from the very pictures they paint — on their websites, in their education resources, even in the very events they run that were founded for and by gays and lesbians.

If we can’t discuss our issues, then nothing can be done. The statistics for same-sex attracted young people are as bad, if not worse than transgender youth, yet over the past few years, the gay and lesbian community in New Zealand has been hijacked to service this tiny minority of people, along with their homophobic ideology and homophobic desires. Homosexuals are being erased from their own movement. Even the Gay Auckland Business Association changed its name to ‘Rainbow Auckland’, in order to be more ‘inclusive’. ‘Mr. Gay Wellington’ is now ‘Mx.Pride’ and ‘open to all genders and sexualities’. At what point are homosexuals allowed to carve out our own spaces, to say that yes, we are gays and lesbians, and that this is just for us? Where can we say ‘homosexuals only’ and not be called ‘exclusionary’ for desiring even a small amount of linguistic space to be able to describe our experiences?

At what point do we stay stop? Because if we don’t, we are going to be erased as a class of people. Our hard-won rights will be washed away. The children that will grow up to be gay will be left with broken bodies and a DHB that told them that they signed an ‘informed consent’ form. It is time that gays, lesbians and bisexuals in New Zealand took back our movement.

Before we get eaten alive.

This is an abridged version of the original article ‘ERASED! Kiwi gays and lesbians are being erased from their own movement’.