Kerre Woodham: Brian Tamaki needs to look at the Church's history

Well after a wonderful weekend, a fabulous weekend, the incidents on Saturday afternoon and Saturday night were really disappointing. 

Increasingly, New Zealand is starting to feel like 1970’s New Zealand, but without the good bits. We've got the racism, we've got the homophobia, but we don't have the housing affordability and the excellent education system. It's the 70s gone wrong.

What is it with some people? Do we have to fight the good fight every single generation?

A group of smug, righteous, deluded members of Destiny Church, led by that oleaginous, self-aggrandising, self appointed bishop Tamaki, pushed, shoved, and punched their way inside the Te Atatu Community Centre where a drag artist was hosting a child's science show. Nobody had been forced to take their children to the drag queen’s science show. Classrooms weren't herded up and put on buses and made to go. This was a free choice made by parents who knew their children would enjoy seeing a Unicorn on two feet. Which is what drag artists look like.

The children were not frightened by sequins and rainbows and colour, but they would have been terrified by thugs and yelling, shoving and crashing their way into the building. About 30 toddlers, young children and their parents sought refuge within the community centre by barricading themselves inside. Hours later, the same group broke through police barricades at the Auckland Rainbow Parade. There they made a complete nuisance of themselves and held up the parade with a haka.

Destiny Church are perfectly free to protest. If they want to ignore the teachings of the New Testament, as I understand them - we all have our different readings of the Bible – but as I understand it, if Tamaki wants to instruct his followers to follow some interpretive dance version of the fire and brimstone Old Testament according to Tamaki, they want to hold up their signs and chant their slogans, fill your jackboots, do what you will.

Everyone has the right to protest peacefully but storming into a community library, imposing their own version of how to live on others. No. Tamaki said there may have been some pushing and shoving, but that he would smack anyone who was trying to pervert his child in a room.

Oh really? I wasn't going to go there, but seeing as Tamaki has, you'll have probably seen the posting that's been doing the rounds for some time now, the post that shows a chart: Two different groups have been convicted of sexually abusing children in New Zealand between 1990 and 2022. Drag Queens on one side, church leaders and members on the other. Number of drag Queens have been convicted of the sexual abuse of children over 32 years. None. Not one. Number of church members have been convicted of the sexual abuse of children over 32 years. 22.

That is the tip of the iceberg. So yeah, when it comes to perversion, Tamaki might want to have a long look at the history of church groups over the past few years. 

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