National MP: Bishop Tamaki's quake comments prompted me to come out
A day-after-the-byelection revelation.
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First-term National list MP Paul Foster-Bell says recent comments by Brian Tamaki about homosexuality causing the Kaikoura earthquakes were among several factors prompting him to ‘come out’ as a gay man.
“I think in terms of the damage to young people, perhaps young people in provincial New Zealand who are questioning their sexuality, questioning their own self-worth, it’s actually throwing petrol on a fire when you send out a message that gay people are very similar to murderers, they’re sinners, and they’re creating natural disasters,” he told One News political reporter Andrea Vance on Q+A.
“You and I can dismiss that as intelligent adults as just being ludicrous but, for those kids, that’s actually a really hurtful thing at an already difficult time in their life. And we’re talking about young teenagers who have actually a four-times higher risk of depression and of suicide. So I think we had a moral obligation to speak up as a society.”
Mr Foster-Bell says there have been times in his career he has had to be discreet about his sexuality, including when he worked abroad as a diplomat.
“My overseas postings were in the Middle East in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia, where if you were an openly gay diplomat there, you’d risk perhaps being made persona non grata; that is, put on the next plane out of the country, booted out and lose your job," he said.
“But worst still, the person who you were with is a criminal. That person could be executed, have parts amputated. It’s horrific the treatment of gay people in some countries of the world. So that was a challenge, and that’s why for that part of my career I was discreet. That was a necessary level of discretion."
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National MP: Bishop Tamaki's quake comments prompted me to come out
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