Contest money still on offer

Press, 19 October 1976, Page 3

Contest money still on offer

The organisers of a transsexual beauty contest to be held in Christchurch on Sunday still intend to give the proceeds to the Cholmondeley Children’s Home, in spite of an announcement by the Cholmondeley board that it would not accept any money raised by the contest. A spokesman for United Sexualities, the organisation behind the contest, said yesterday that the proceeds would still be offered to the children but that if they were again refused then they would be offered to some other charity. On Friday the board controlling the home released a statement in which it gave details of the story behind the offer of the proceeds from the contest. It ended up by saying that the board now publicly dissociated itself from the contest and had advised the organisers that it could not accept any benefits arising from it. The board’s president (Mr C. L. Paterson) said yesterday that the board did not

like the way the organisers had used the home's name! without authority when ad-i vertising the contest He] said that the board was not setting up in moral judgment of the group. In repl J' to a claim by a United Sexualities’ spokesman that the board had accepted gifts from the group in the past, Mr Paterson said that they might have done but had never accepted any under that name. The spokesman said that United Sexualities was an informal group of transsexuals, transvestites, and lesbians formed in Christchprch about four years ago. She said that there were about 15 transsexuals in Christchurch and about 10 times that number of transvestites. The Cholmondeley board claimed that the group had made its initial approach as being “on behalf of university students.” The spokesman said that the group would never have used such a “silly ploy.”