Social justice is a human right

Life, liberty and the dignity of human uniqueness

Marriage in New Zealand

April13

equal rights

Next week will be momentous. The marriage amendment bill is due for its third reading in the coming week and looks certain to pass through parliament as legislation. The bill’s sponsor, Labour MP Louisa Wall, declared in the amendment’s second reading back in March that:

“It is not about gay marriage, same-sex marriage, or straight marriage; it is about marriage between two people. There is no distinction to be made—that is equality…to deny trans people, intersex, lesbian, and gay people the right to marry is to deny them recognition as a person” (1).

No I’m not a Labour voter, but I would definitely agree with what Wall postulates. Regardless of religious, political or cultural worldviews, at the core of humanity is the freedom of determination. Everyone has an innate right to participate fully in life, and who am I or anyone else to stop someone from entering into marriage just because they are part of the GLBT community.

Family first director Bob McCoskrie has gathered more than 15,000 web-based pledges against “any electorate MP who supports the bill, and against any party whose leader supports it” (2). Clearly some Kiwis would like to keep marriage in NZ the way it is; though in light of most political polls it is obvious that next week New Zealand will become the 13th country to ‘legalize love.’ Family first (strong advocates for the Conservative party), proclaim that marriage should consist of ‘one man – one woman’ (3), in which I acknowledge that everyone has the right to freedom of speech.

In light of McCoskrie’s crusade for ‘traditional’ marriage, the efforts will go down in history as nothing more than another evangelical barrier to the GLBT community feeling God’s love. Though, he was the guy that blamed Māori disadvantage on statistics of Māori births out of wedlock (4). It is a shame that so much hurt has been caused by people standing for ‘the greater good’. Though I myself can think of no greater good than to love and accept people as people, I kind of thought that’s what Jesus was about too.

 

Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

T.K Lewis

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KahuMartin Luther King Jr. once said that “the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition is not the glaring noisiness of the so-called bad people, but the appalling silence of the so-called good people.”

I don’t see myself as a ‘good person’ nor would I register myself as a so-called ‘bad person’, yet one thing I know for certain is that everyone should have the liberty and dignity to be treated humanly. Social justice is an existential fundamental of what it means to live in community. Whether it be New Zealand’s atrocious record of child abuse or the epidemic of suicide (500 people per year commit suicide, that’s 6 times higher than NZ’s annual road fatalities) or even the blatant lie of having the best race relations in the world; New Zealand is a country in which deep societal issues remain blanketed by the norms of individualism and the generational loop of miseducation. I am only a person, writing for the advocacy of authentic and politically meaningful social justice in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Te Kaituhi Lewis