Destiny Church leader slams civil union law

The name of the show may have been Nation Under Siege, but it was the Government and the media that were the targets of a 45-minute bagging from Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki in Rotorua last night.

Mr Tamaki addressed a meeting of about 400 people in the Rotorua Boys' High School Hall, in which he left the audience in no doubt about his views on the "evil Government" and its "radical homosexual agenda", as well as the media's practice of "modern-day witchcraft".

Rotorua was the latest stop on Mr Tamaki's Nation Under Siege tour, with Destiny New Zealand party leader Richard Lewis, which is being held to drum up support prior to this year's general election.

Prime Minister Helen Clark's Government bore much of the responsibility for the decline in the nation's moral values, he told the crowd -- particularly since the introduction of the civil union bill, now the Civil Union Act.

"Sodomy had a 10-year prison sentence [in New Zealand] once upon a time.

"You thought it was just so a few people in a corner could practise their homosexuality ... we knew the deeper agenda.

"They ordered it law so they could get your child and your grandchild."

Mr Tamaki also lambasted those Government's MPs who chose not to acknowledge the Bible when they were sworn in to Parliament.

"One even swore on the Koran -- in my Christian nation."

Many of the bishop's pronouncements were met with fervent shouts of "that's right" and "awesome" from supporters interspersed throughout the crowd.

The media were also guilty of perpetuating moral decline, he said.

"[They] give full coverage to everything that's negative.

The media had also been "allowed to get away with portraying us as Nazis and haters and a cult".

- DAILY POST (ROTORUA)