LAVA (Lesbian Action for Visibility in Aotearoa)
CoAL has received an appeal for support from LAVA (Lesbian Action for Visibility Aotearoa), and here is a link to the LAVA website.
LAVA is embroiled in a human rights stoush with PRIDE in Wellington, where they are being subjected to similar misogynistic treatment as LAG (Lesbian Action Group) has received from the Victorian Pride Centre.
Below is a copy of the LAVA appeal email that we received on Sunday 16 March 2024.
“Dear friends and supporters
This email is to update you on where things are currently at with the LAVA case against Wellington Pride. We now have the dates for our hearing. It will take four weeks over the following dates: 21-25 July; 1-5 September; 15-19 September & 6-10 October.
It’s been a long time since it all started so here’s a reminder of the background in case you’ve forgotten what it’s all about.
Everything began in March 2021 with LAVA being told the Pride organisers were cancelling our booking for a stall at Out in the City – one of the main events in the Wellington Pride calendar. They were cancelling our booking because LAVA believes that sex and gender are different, that people can’t change sex and that lesbians (and gay men) are same sex attracted. Attending a Pride celebration while holding such views would, they said, make any trans people who might also be there feel unsafe, and the Pride organisers believed they had a responsibility to ensure the “most marginal of the marginalised” were safe and not harmed. It is important to realise here that the cancellation was nothing to do with the purpose of our stall which was to display a map of Wellington places of historical interest to lesbians – it was because of what we believed. This is a key part of our case – can what we believe cause harm and make people feel unsafe.
You may recall that we subsequently made a complaint to the Human Rights Commission (HRC) and following that attended two mediation sessions with the Wellington Pride Board. We didn’t reach a resolution through mediation and after much discussion and deliberation, LAVA finally decided to lodge a complaint with the Human Rights Review Tribunal alleging that, in excluding us from Out in the City, Pride breached the Human Rights Act (HRA).
We were aware of course that New Zealand was not the only country where lesbians were being banned from Pride for holding these same beliefs, and felt outraged that lesbians, many of whom had worked to set up Pride in the beginning, were now banned because we don’t subscribe to the belief that gender is more important than sex. We thought speaking up about this and challenging Pride’s decision, was critical in the ongoing effort to ensure that lesbians remain visible and that young lesbians (and gay men) know that they have choices and that being gender non-conforming does not mean that they were born in the wrong body and are really the opposite sex.
There are two grounds to our case: firstly, that we have been discriminated against because of our beliefs which, as political beliefs, are protected under the HRA; and, secondly, that we have been discriminated against as lesbian,s who are protected as same sex attracted women under the HRA. We have one expert witness, who has addressed the issue of our beliefs being political and therefore protected under the HRA.
Pride’s expert witnesses (19 in total) have not addressed this issue at all. Essentially, they have taken the line that our beliefs are hateful and bigoted and therefore not worthy of protection. It is this large number of witnesses who have pushed out the hearing time to four weeks. We have to respond to them, otherwise it seems as though there is no one with expertise in this area who agrees with us and that we are out on a limb. Fortunately, we have a number of high profile New Zealand and international experts who are supporting us and showing that we are not alone in the views we hold.
A four week hearing costs money – a great deal of money – probably upward of $100,000. As well as preparing for our case we are also starting to fundraise in earnest.
If you can help, even a little, please donate via our website https://www.lava.nz/our-case, or donate directly to LAVA’s ANZ account 06-0730-0417676-50.
You can also help by forwarding this email to others who you think may be interested or able to help, by talking about the case on social media and by talking with your friends and family and generally raising people’ awareness about what has happened.
Thank you for reading and supporting us in the ways you can.”