Did you ever spend hundreds of hours organising, then helping to run, school camps, or more hours coaching kids' sports teams, helping transport them to venues or being a referee? Have you hosted overseas students?
Have you raised children to adulthood and now watch and enjoy them happily married and raising their own children? Do you spend your own time and money to expand the lives of your youthful kith, kin and acquaintances with travel, outdoor experiences, theatrical experiences or visiting museums and art galleries?
Have you spent decades working with and for adolescents, going that extra mile with encouragement, advice or admonition? Have you worked consistently and ethically at a job for several decades?
Did you ever volunteer, and get elected as a chairperson, secretary or committee member for community and work groups; or go door knocking on Saturdays for various political or philanthropic reasons; or take annual leave so you could make your presence and passion felt in Environmental Court hearings? Have you ever prepared and made presentations to a city council to help ensure that precious open land is held secure for future generations?
Have you ever volunteered your time and muscle-power to plant hundreds of trees to beautify neighbourhoods? Have you ever helped run stalls to raise funds for deserving causes, and into the bargain baked cakes or made marmalade to sell on those stalls? Have you lent possessions and extended credit to strangers in good faith?
Or even helped others shift house?
Did you ever give time and labour helping backstage or front-of-house for amateur productions?
Did you ever rearrange songs, involving hundreds of computer hours plus musical and technical skill, into harmonies for a choir with little expectation of praise, or happily travel without charge to sing for folk in hospital or at their weddings, special birthdays or funerals?
Have you ever, with pleasure, given away stuff to children visiting with their parents or to the local school in order to encourage kids to explore the natural world with its hidden beauties?
Have you ever, with the object of promoting world peace and harmony, hosted folk from other countries in your own home for several days without recompense - dozens of times over? Did you ever spend unpaid time witnessing documents for hundreds of folk as a JP, even going to their homes if they were elderly or infirm?
In short, do you have a lifetime philosophy of trying to give back at least as much as you accept from your friends, family and community - and hopefully more?
If you do or have done even half of these things for others, you are perhaps qualified as a peer, and maybe have a right to judge a couple who, between them, have done all these things over their lifetimes.
Which of the labels at the top of this article would you choose to apply to such folk right now?
Could you, now knowing a bit more about this couple, appoint yourself as judge and jury, make a judgment, and then execute it on the basis of local gossip?
Where is the proof that this couple are "dirty trash" and "filth', as was scrawled on the walls of their home in January?
Why should they be told yet again a few weeks ago, in another scrawl on their renewed back fence, that God hates them just because they have chosen to live together? What will be next?
Well, someone out there was arrogant enough to think they had the right to make such judgment, to walk on to private property and carry out abhorrent deeds. Three times, all in school holidays.
And someone else must know of or suspect this person, who is a bad speller, writes a capital Q as a type of 2, and expresses homophobic sentiments.
Nothing, but nothing gives anyone a right, legal or otherwise, to trespass on and deface someone else's property, break into and burn down a business and livelihood and, incidentally, destroy family memorabilia, including portraits, photos, home movies.
Nor has anyone the right to endanger the lives and homes of neighbours, as well as the health and lives of volunteer firefighters who have often to deal with toxic fumes as well as flames and heat.
There is certainly no right to leave suspicion lingering on innocent Christian folk; all just for a label.
If you know or suspect someone who may have committed arson, has voiced such hateful labels and spends time in or around Mangawhai, please call Mangawhai police station. Phone 09 423 1060 or email Graham.Gough@ police.govt.nz. Information could give a lead and prevent further harm to individuals and the community.
