Sandra Paterson: A voice hard to ignore

At 6am today, a woman with long dark hair and brown eyes is due to arrive at Auckland Airport from Los Angeles.

The name on her passport is Tammy Bruce. I don't know what she will write on the customs form under "occupation", but here's how she describes herself: an openly gay, pro-choice, gun-owning, pro-death penalty, voted-for-President Bush progressive feminist. One hang of a contradiction in terms.

She is also the author of two books - The New Thought Police and The Death of Right and Wrong, which quickly became a New York Times best-seller; and she will be speaking at two public meetings later this week in Hamilton and Christchurch.

I sat in front of the fire and read both books over the past few days, exclaiming both "ouch" and "yeeha" at various intervals. "Ouch" because much of what she says is so fabulously unpolitically correct; and "yeeha" because it is refreshing to find someone so brutally honest who cheerfully ignores the stereotypes she is supposed to fit.

Openly gay, yes, but Bruce has harsh words for gay extremists, whose agenda, she says, is not about tolerance but about seeking to sexualise society's children. She is not religious, but acknowledges "the extraordinary value of Judaeo-Christian ethics" and uses old-fashioned words such as decency and temperance.

She is a pro-choice activist who says, at the same time, that the concepts of right and wrong have taken such a beating they're no longer recognisable. And she is a grassroots feminist who deplores the fact that today's feminist leaders are more concerned with pursuing a socialist agenda than actually helping women.

Oh yes, Tammy Bruce is the lesbian version of John Tamihere. As she says herself, keeping her mouth shut has never been one of her strengths. Thank goodness for that. Because although I do not agree with everything she says, New Zealand needs to be having the kinds of discussions she will no doubt provoke. And you just can't argue with her credentials.

Who better to talk about the contemporary feminist agenda, for example, and the mindset of minority activist groups, than someone who was the youngest president of the LA chapter of the National Organisation of Women (NOW) and spent a good part of the 90s battling for gay and women's rights?

Bruce spent seven years in the trenches, as she calls it, of the feminist world, before becoming disillusioned with the movement's aims and tactics.

"I have seen first-hand how the agendas of feminism, black power, multiculturalism and gay advocacy have been consciously used to break down morals and values that the activists saw as obstructions to their achieving, first, cultural acceptance and, ultimately, cultural domination."

Now in her early 40s, and persona non grata to many of her former colleagues, her radio show is syndicated on more than 150 stations across the United States.

She still considers herself a liberal - but wants to rescue that label from the people she calls the Left Elite: that is, the decision-makers in feminist, gay and civil rights movements as well as many of those in the judiciary, the entertainment industry, the media and American university faculties.

In the world of the Left Elite, Bruce says, sex addiction and promiscuity aren't problems if you're gay - they're part of an "alternative lifestyle". Mocking the symbols of a religion is only a hate crime if the object is Islam or Judaism. If the target is Christianity, it's "art".

In their world, cheating on your wife isn't a sin, it's a sport; murdering your children isn't murder if you're a woman - it's post-natal depression; and priests molesting adolescent boys are the fault of the church, not of the "reprehensible gay men who betray their vows, their church and their community".

Bruce talks about how people are increasingly afraid to say what they really think, lest they offend someone or be branded homophobic, racist or sexist. Unless of course the topic of conversation is the religious and/or conservative, who she describes as the new, approved target. And she says "group rights" are fast becoming a threat to individual rights and the freedom of expression.

"As a lesbian, I have a special duty to expose the hypocrisy of those who claim to be the defenders of minorities and the marginalised, who then use our issues to stamp out individual freedom and increase government control."

So who invited this dynamo to our shores? Destiny church? The Maxim Institute? No, Joanne Reeder - a Hamilton grandmother who leads a relatively quiet life helping to run her husband's medical practice.

After reading Bruce's books, Reeder decided the rest of the country needed to hear what she had to say - so she set about finding like-minded individuals to help to fund a speaking tour.

"I was blown away that someone with such different life experiences from me could come to the same conclusions about what is happening in society," she said.

According to Bruce, the Left has thoroughly intimidated the media, so it will be interesting to see what kind of coverage she gets.

A couple of outlets have already indicated they are not interested - but I think, in the end, she will be hard to ignore.