Family first say the men in black

By AUDREY YOUNG

There was no greater certainty at Parliament yesterday than that the two opposing camps on the Civil Union Bill were going to offend each other.

Pastor after pastor exhorted the 5000-strong audience to affirm the place of the family - and family did not mean the women and women, men and men, and friends celebrating same-sexuality under orange balloons in the counter-demonstration next door.

The Christians wore black.

They travelled in buses from all over the country for the rally, to oppose not just the new legal relationship to be established under the bill for any couple, but prostitution law reform, the 18,500 abortions performed last year, and the lowering of the drinking age.

It was part-prayer meeting, part-kapa haka performance, part-political rally - or the combination of Bible-banging, tub-thumping and disciplined chest-beating that characterised a similar demonstration in Auckland two weeks ago.

The leader of the Christian Heritage Party, Ewen McQueen, was invited to speak as well as Destiny Party's leader, former police officer Richard Lewis - and the pair did not rule out an electoral accommodation for next year's elections.

But the biggest welcome was saved for Destiny's founding pastor, Brian Tamaki, who still declares he will not stand for Parliament.

"The cornerstone of any nation is family," said Mr Tamaki, wearing a thick gold bracelet and stylish three-quarter-length jacket. "And the cornerstone of any family is marriage. You cannot touch what God has ordained. You cannot touch the sanctity of marriage."

The roar went up and so did a sea of arms in fundamentalist affirmative fashion.

The protest began with a special Destiny haka from a 300-strong kapa haka group, many of them children wearing only their black-T-shirt uniform in the bitter Wellington cold.

Possibly half the Destiny crowd were Maori.

Pastor Tamaki offered to help Prime Minister Helen Clark draw up a "healthy family policy", an invitation that she later resisted, given that he had described the preponderance of women leaders in New Zealand as "the work of the devil".

After the speeches, two schoolgirls who had travelled by bus from Taumarunui told the Herald they were protesting against "the gays", "children having sex", and "that", said one pointing to a group of young women dancing together holding hands.

"God bless anal sex," one of the dancers had taunted the Christians with.