Copeland Gordon: Civil Union Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Copeland Gordon: Civil Union Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:622;Page:17510] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 Yesterday I spoke about this bill in the context of marriage and today I shall speak on Part 2 and the fact that same-sex people also may enter into civil unions under this legislation. I made submissions to the Statutes Revision Committee that considered the Homosexual Law Reform Bill in 1986. I favoured the decriminalisation of homosexual acts. I considered it to be completely wrong that people who engage in homosexual activities should be imprisoned when people who committed adultery for example were not imprisoned. I thought that that was fundamentally unfair. However I asked the select committee whether it could include in the bill a clause to the effect that the passage of the legislation did not in and of itself signal that homosexual activity was moral. I was told in no uncertain terms that such a clause could not be put in a bill before Parliament and that it was only about law. However that is exactly what we did last year with the prostitution legislation. A clause was put in to state that although the status of prostitution was being changed in this country the State was not thereby saying that it in and of itself constitutes moral activity. 
I think that that is at the absolute heart of the issue that is causing so much confusion in this Parliament and we have just had another example from the previous speaker Moana Mackey. Just because something is not criminal does not mean that it is thereby moral. They are two quite different things. I can think of a number of examples and I have already given the example of adultery. Another example I could mention is lying. We all know that people lie every day. That does not make it moral. We know that people commit adultery. That does not make it moral. I give those two examples because they are immoral activities that are quite legal in this country. 
What we did hope would arise from the Homosexual Law Reform Act was that New Zealand would become a tolerant society towards the homosexual community. My position is that we should extend our tolerance to them. That tolerance includes the right that they already have at this time to get married. There is no law of the land that prevents that and indeed a number of members in the Chamber may have already been to ceremonies where gay and lesbian couples have entered into a marriage sometimes celebrated by a person who is a member of the clergy. All that is already happening. 
Therefore the principal concern I have with this bill and the reason why I strongly oppose it is that it is completely unnecessary for the State to take the next step in the process and that is to try to declare that that activity is of itself moral. The State must be making that statement when it decides by legislation to give State sanction and State blessing to unions between two people of the same sex. 
I do not agree at all with Dr Michael Cullen that the State has the power to do that. In my opinion morals do not come from the State. Morals supersede the State; they supersede culture. Moral realities exist independent of the State and the State should always take into account moral principles when passing laws. Some say of course that we cannot legislate for morality. That is interesting. We have laws in this country against stealing murder rape and incest. They are all moral issues and we have laws against them. It is true that every time we pass law in this House we are also addressing moral issues. 
As Moana Mackey has said many families in this country bring up their children with firm moral principles and I want to see my children and grandchildren brought up in that way. The difficulty I have with this bill is that we are removing the signposts. We are saying that morals have now changed and that children can be taught something at school that is different from what they are being taught at home. In fact that is what will happen. We are not looking just at individual marriages. I found the whole discussion on that issue right off the point. We are looking at what is central to our culture and how we are changing this culture for the generations to come.