Rainbow Over My Electorate Speech New Zealand Parliament
Speaker, I too will be taking a split call with my colleague Jami-Lee Ross. It is sort of the young and the vibrant versus the old and the boring. And so I knew, yeah and members of the House will be forced to choose which one is which, sir.

Sir, I want to first of all congratulate Louisa Wall for this bill, and I want to say sir that the good news about the years in this Parliament is you learn to deflect all of the dreadful sort of fire and brimstone accusations that are going to happen, sir. I’ve had a reverend in my local electorate call, the gay onslaught will start the day after this bill is passed. Sir, we are really struggling to know what the gay onslaught will look like.

We don’t know if it will come down the Pakuranga Highway as a series of troops, or whether it will be a gas that flows in over the electorate and blocks us all in. I also say I had a Catholic priest tell me that I was supporting an unnatural act. I found that quite interesting coming from someone who has taken an oath of celibacy for his whole life.

I always say celibacy, okay, we will go with celibacy. Okay, I haven’t done it, so I don’t know what it is about. I also had a letter telling me I would burn in the fires of hell for eternity. And that was a bad mistake, because I’ve got a degree in physics. I used the thermodynamic laws of physics. I put in my body weight and my humidity and so on. I assumed the furnace to be at 5,000 degrees and I will last for just on 2.1 seconds. It’s hardly eternity, what do you think?

And some more disgusting claims about what adoption would be? Well, sir, I’ve got three fantastic adopted kids. I know how good adoption is, and I’ve found some of it just disgraceful. I found some of the bullying tactics really evil. And sir, I gave up being scared of bullies when I was at primary school.

However, a huge amount of the opposition was from moderates, from people who were concerned, who were seriously worried, what this might do to the fabric of our society. I respect their concern. I respect their worry. They were worried about what it might to do to their families and so on.

Let me repeat to them now sir, all we are doing with this bill is allowing two people who love each other to have that love recognized by way of marriage. That is all we are doing.

We are not declaring nuclear war on a foreign State. We are not bringing a virus in that could wipe out our agricultural sector for ever. We are allowing two people who love each other to have that recognized, and I can’t see what’s wrong with that for love nor money. So I just cannot, I cannot understand why someone would be opposed. I understand why people don’t like what it is that others do, that’s fine. We are all in that category. But I give a promise to those people who are opposed to this bill right now. I give you a watertight guaranteed promise. The sun will still rise tomorrow.

Your teenage daughter will still argue back with you as if she knows everything. Your mortgage will not grow. You will not have skin diseases or rashes, or toads in your bed, sir. The world will just carry on. So don’t make this into a big deal. This is fantastic for the people it affects, but for the rest of us, life will go on.

And finally, can I say sir, one of the messages I had was that this bill was the cause of our drought. This bill was the cause of our drought. Well, if any of you follow my Twitter account, you will see that in the Pakuranga electorate this morning it was pouring with rain. We had the most enormous big gay rainbow across my electorate. It has to be a sign, sir. It has to be a sign. If you are a believer, it’s certainly a sign. And can I finish, for all those who are concerned about this, with a quote from the Bible. It’s Deuteronomy. I thought Deuteronomy was a cat out of catch, but never mind. It’s Deuteronomy Chapter 1 Verse 29 “Be ye not afraid.”