Kedgley Sue: Civil Union Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Kedgley Sue: Civil Union Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:622;Page:17516] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I think one of the unintended and unfortunate consequences of this bill and the opposition to it generated by certain churches—by no means all—is that it has legitimised the expression of the most unchristian-like intolerance prejudice and even bigotry against homosexuals in our community; and thousands of New Zealanders now seem to feel that it is acceptable to make judgmental derogatory and in my view bigoted comments in public about homosexuals. I am certain that many gays and lesbians must have been deeply hurt deeply distressed and indeed even traumatised by some of the intolerant remarks that have been made over the past few weeks. 
In a letter in the  
Dominion Post  
yesterday a 23-year-old person a homosexual said: “If you told a heterosexual person that they were disgusting and should refrain from falling in love or acting upon their love because it wasn’t ‘normal’ they would feel judged and attacked not only in their sexuality but in everything that they are as a person.” That sums up how people in the community are feeling as a result of the unleashing and legitimising of this sort of intolerance in our society. 
We need to remember that homosexuals are a minority that has suffered huge discrimination and persecution throughout history. We have all heard about how the Jewish people were persecuted in Nazi Germany but how many of us have heard about the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany? About 10000 homosexuals were imprisoned in concentration camps in Nazi Germany and many of them died. We have all heard about the Jewish people who were forced to wear the yellow Star of David but how many of us know that anyone who was identified as a homosexual in Nazi Germany was forced to wear a pink triangle identifying him or her as homosexual? That badge singled out those people for persecution for the gas chambers and even for death. 
So we have a duty in this House as legislators to protect this discriminated against minority—and any other minority—to ensure they are not subject to further discrimination and abuse. I am proud of members like Katherine Rich Heather Roy Clem Simich etc. who have not bowed to what must be very considerable pressure upon them. 
 Our job as legislators here today is to sort out the truth from the fiction the wheat from the chaff and the emotional from the rational. We need to ask ourselves whether there is a rational basis for the claims of the Opposition that this bill will undermine marriage undermine social and moral standards institutionalise immorality—as one letter I have just received has stated—and that it is a slippery slope that will lead to social decay in our society. 
Fortunately we are in a position to make this judgment because we can look at countries that already have legislation that is similar to this. Countries such as Denmark Norway and Sweden have had civil union legislation or its equivalent for 20 years in the case of Sweden and 15 in the case of Denmark. If the claims of our opponents are rationally based rather than just emotional scaremongering and intolerance we would inevitably see in Denmark and in Sweden a steep decline in marriage rates or a slow or swift decline in moral and social standards and immorality and social decay. We would have to see that if their claims are right. We would expect to find in Denmark—which has a population of 4 million; a similar size to New Zealand—that Shakespeare was right and that there was something rotten in the State of Denmark ever since it passed the 1989 civil union or its equivalent bill. So I asked the library to look up Denmark’s marriage rates and I found that they have remained stable in fact they have slightly increased since the passage of the bill there. In 1990 a year after the bill came in the rate was 6.1. Now it is 6.8.