Auckland Pride Parade on Ponsonby Rd. Photo / Getty Images
Auckland Pride Parade on Ponsonby Rd. Photo / Getty Images
Opinion
OPINION:
Auckland's month-long pride festival is entering its final week. The coronavirus lockdowns have caused a rescheduling of the associated parade for Saturday, March 27, from 6pm to 7pm, on Ponsonby Road.
The rainbow flag has been usurped somewhat by the flag-waving associated with the America's Cup yacht race. Sportsevents are simple models: A binary win-lose scenario driven by a conscious socially accepted bias favouring one team.
The Auckland Pride Festival and its parade have morphed from an original 'straight'-forward message of safe sex. The Pride festival is on the complex, challenging socio-cultural coalface of post-modern notions of sexuality and gender performance, carrying as many touchstones as the eight colours of the rainbow flag. The 2021 pride festival titled 'Karanga Atu, Karanga Mai' highlights activism, celebration, inclusivity, and representation.
'Pride' itself is a complex concept. It has had a semantic shift, much like contemporary attitudes around LGBTQI+ communities. 'Pride' is a polysemous word (not to be confused with polyamorous); it is a word that carries a good and bad sense. Ironically, 'pride's deep etymological roots are embedded in one of the most ferocious current opponents of LGBTQI+ celebration, inclusivity and representation: Religion. The ancient Hebrew Bible (Proverbs 16.18) has pride going before a fall. Pride was the character trait considered behind the fall of angels and the first humans from the garden of Eden. It's an association picked up by Jewish Talmudic writing which concludes 'God and the proud man cannot reside together in the same world.'
Thus pride finds itself as the radix omnium malorum or root of all evil and the first of the seven deadly sins. In 15th century 'prede' became used in association with other meanings, including groups of lions. Pride's English meaning was on a journey back to the future. Aristotle recognised that to think oneself worthy of great things is the first step in doing great things. Thus, according to the ancient philosophers, 'proper pride' was a necessary element of greatness and magnanimity. Rather than being the first of the deadly sins, Aristotle had pride as the crown of virtues.
Russell Hoban. Photo / Michael Craig
Whether it is considered a sin or a virtue, notions of activism celebration, inclusivity and representation become most powerful when linked to real-time issues. In July 2017, Westcity Bible Baptist Church pastor Logan Robertson made headlines in 2017 for preaching that gay people should be shot. The police and the human rights commissioner at the time did not take legal action. There was no united religious voice challenging the statement.
New Zealand ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1978. This multilateral treaty, adopted by United Nations General Assembly on December 16, 1966 was in force from March 23, 1976. Article 20 of this covenant was critical because it engaged in limiting the right to freedom of speech.
The covenant required signature nations, of which New Zealand was one, to develop laws to prohibit the advocacy of religious hatreds that constituted an incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence. Rather than enact such laws, New Zealand chose to enter into a formal reservation of this Article, effectively releasing the country from being bound by it. The issue has languished in the too-hard basket. Such a situation remains a challenge to our national pride.
• Russell Hoban is a Doctorate in Theology student at the University of Auckland.
