A day after the Government revealed its proposed hate speech laws would no longer include protections for the queer community, headlines trickled through from the US about a mass shooting at a gay bar in Colorado Springs.

The juxtaposition of those two events on opposite sides of the Pacific over the weekend was disturbing, LGBTQIA+ advocate Shaneel Lal says.

“I thought it was jarring and quite telling that hours after the Labour Party announced that they will not protect queer people from hate speech that incites violence, there was a mass shooting at a bar in the United States,” they say.

Lal says New Zealand has itself seen a rise in attacks on the queer community over the past two years.

Those include two New Plymouth teenagers who were allegedly called homophobic slurs as they held hands, and an attack on Auckland gay man Ray Gardiner during Pride Month last year that left him in a pool of his own blood.

In September this year, two men pleaded guilty to burning down the Tauranga Rainbow Youth building.

And Lal says these are “only a fraction” of the incidents they have heard about.

“But the more frightening part is that the Labour Party is refusing to make illegal [the] hate speech that incites violence against queer people in the face of well-documented violence that is happening against queer people,” they say.

Shaneel Lal has launched a petition urging the Government to include protections for the queer community, women, and disabled people in its hate speech law reforms. Photo by Katherine Brook.

Anti-queer groups ‘will be emboldened’

Lal says this latest hate speech law development is a dangerous one.

And they have launched a petition urging the Government to include the queer community, women, and disabled people under the law changes.

“I think that religious communities need protection, particularly the Muslim community after the terrorist attack in 2019,” they say.

“However, I think it's dangerous to leave queer people without protection.”

“You know, people do not simply wake up on a random day and decide to mass murder a group of people; they are encouraged by the normalisation of hatred towards [a] community,” Lal says.

“The Labour Party's failure to prohibit anti-queer hate speech will embolden anti-queer groups, extremist religious groups, and right-wing groups to incite violence against queer people.”

Lal says the Government is aware of the situation facing Aotearoa’s queer community.

“I personally believe that the Labour Party believes protection is necessary for queer people, but they will not waste any more political capital on queer lives,” they say.

“But Labour needs to stop hiding behind the opposition from the National Party and the ACT Party for failing to protect queer people. Labour needs a simple majority of 61 MPs to pass the hate speech law. Labour has 65.”

The Government’s watered-down reforms

The Government’s proposed hate speech laws have been controversial ever since they were recommended as part of the Royal Commission into the Christchurch terror attack. 

Last year, then-Justice Minister Kris Faafoi revealed Aotearoa’s hate speech law proposals would expand to include religion, as well as other grounds protected under the Human Rights Act, such as sexual orientation, gender, and disability.

However, after “strong” feedback during consultation, current Justice Minister Kiritapu Allan recently revealed the proposals will now extend to cover religious belief.

The other reforms will instead be referred to the Law Commission for review. 

Allan says that review “will include whether further protections should be afforded to specific groups, including the Rainbow and disabled communities”.

Hate speech laws a ‘difficult issue’

Allan told Re: News drafting the hate speech laws has been “a significant challenge”.

“We are in no way ruling out further protections for these groups, but we need this to be done right, which is why we’ve asked the Law Commission to undertake an independent and thorough first principles review of legal responses to hate-motivated offending, and of speech that expresses hostility towards, or contempt for, people who share a common characteristic.”

“This will include whether further protections should be provided to specific groups, including the Rainbow and disabled communities,” Allan says. 

She says the Law Commission will provide more information about this review by the end of the year. 

The Government is yet to put forward the hate speech bill for its first reading and Lal hopes it will reconsider the protections it includes.

Lal says: “I would hope that the Labour Party go away and have a hard look at the kind of harm they are creating by leaving out queer people, women, and disabled people from protection.”

But if those groups are still not included in the law, Lal says people who are concerned about the issue should get involved after the bill’s first reading.

“I would encourage people to make submissions to the Select Committee telling the Labour Party to include queer people, women, and disabled people in that legislation.”

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