Complaint on 'gay’ TV programme rejected

Press, 27 November 1986, Page 6

Complaint on 'gay’ TV programme rejected

PA Wellington The Broadcasting Tribunal has rejected a complaint from the Society by the Promotion of Community Standards over a television programme on homosexual adolescents. The society's secretary, Miss Patricia Bartlett, said the programme, “Growing Up Gay in Godzone,” was a “blatant misuse and exploitation of young people to support the attitudes of the homosexual community who are prepared to use any media to justify their perverted lifestyle”. The programme, screened on TV2 in August last year as part of the “Viewfinder” series for young adults, showed young people talking about what it was like to

be young and “gay” in New Zealand.

The society said the participants were expressing “normal and natural” preferences of young people of that age for members of their own sex and the programme was therefore biased against the truth for claiming “perversion".

The programme lacked a contrary view to show up its “obvious distortion,” Miss Bartlett said in a letter.

The tribunal said the programme explored the feelings of young people who regarded themselves as “gay” and was neither pro-homosexual nor antihomosexual. “There was no definite statement of either side of tfce homosexual debate, arid therefore the tribunal finds that there was no

element of bias in the programme in the way suggested by the complainant," the decision said.

The tribunal said the society's approach to human development was not the only one and what the society viewed as normal and natural might not necessarily be so.

It said that just because the people interviewed were homosexuals did not mean that heterosexuals had to appear on the same programme. “These people were interviewed about their own feelings and such expression is valid in itself,” the decision said. The tribunal said it considered the programme’s handling of a difficult subject was done with "sensitivity and perception.”