Youth section calls for liberal gay laws

Press, 12 May 1981, Page 1

Youth section calls for liberal gay laws

PA —Wellington The youth section of the Labour Party would want a Labour government to legalise homosexual acts between consenting adults, and to lower the drinking age, the Labour Party conference heard in Wellington yesterday. It also advocates more restrictive firearms laws. These were among measures urged yesterday in the report — which was adopted by conference —

of the Labour Youth Council, presented by its president, Mr Gary Williams. He told delegates that

hundreds of young homosexual men and women had been subject to “unjustified police harrassment, blackmail by people they know, and forced to terminate their employment because of prejudice against them.”

Homosexuality between consenting male adults should be “decriminalised,” Mr Williams said. However the call met with some opposition from a few conference delegates. Mr Williams urged the next Labour government to amend the Crimes Act to provide that homosexual acts between consenting adults be legal from 16. “Why is it,” he asked, “that in our supposedly humane and caring sociey that the majority of our political, trade union, and community leaders, along with our teachers of knowledge, say that it is morally wrong for two human beings who may be of the

same sex, to show love and feeling between each other?” Mr Williams was heckled by delegates from the floor of the conference.

Mr Williams also urged a Labour government to lower the drinking age from 20 years in a package designed to change New Zealand drinking habits. It included the encouragement of the development of more restaurants and bars —possibly converting existing “booze barns” into more intimate centres—stricter controls on liquor advertising, and increasing Government funding for organisations involved in research and help for victims of alcoholism.

Lowering the legal drinking age, and a policy, change towards alcohol, would “help to break down primitive attitudes in New Zealand towards the consumption of alcohol and the mystique of drinking,”