Destiny Church protesters and counter protesters from the rainbow community outside the Gisborne library on 26 March 2024. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Destiny Church's protests have brought up a rhetoric many thought was dead and buried, from a time that some have not forgotten
The protest by Destiny Church at an Auckland Pride event has revisited a rhetoric that many in the rainbow community thought was dead and buried.
Much of the response from the general public has been a lashing out against Bishop Brian Tamaki's ManUp.
Josiah Pasikale says the protest is "years behind the current conversation, and I think that the rainbow community is past that".
"I think Destiny Church is being recognised more as a cult, in that they don't actually represent all churches, all of Christianity."
After a decade of struggling to accept his sexuality, Pasikale no longer hides that he's gay.
"I'm in such a different space from when I last talked about my gay journey," he says.
With a Tokelauan father and Fijian-Chinese mother, Pasikale grew up in a household that valued church and God, and a culture that didn't acknowledge or accept being gay.
"See the thing with the Pacific language is that there's no word for gay. So, you have fa'afafine… [which is] a male performing duties of a female. They normally help the mother out in the home, and they often have feminine qualities, [but] they're still recognised as males," he explains.
Towards the end of high school, Pasikale became heavily involved in a church where the rhetoric of pastors only further ingrained that being gay was wrong, pushing him towards conversion therapy to try and "cure" his homosexuality.
"I really believed that my gayness was some type of sickness or sin and that all I had to do was love God more, pray to God more.
"My sexuality was something that I did not want, I didn't want to be attracted to men. I really wanted a wife and kids, I wanted to be like my friends who were attracted to women and getting married," he says.
Pasikale is open about his sexuality to set a good example for younger men and women, saying it's something that would've changed things for him.
"If only I had really good role models of being gay, I wouldn't have dreaded the acceptance of a faith," he says.
The Detail also speaks to abuse in care survivor Joan Bellingham who grew up in Christchurch during the seventies, where being gay was something you didn't talk about publicly.
"The first gay pubs were downstairs, and you had to have a pass to get through," she says.
Bellingham knew she was a lesbian from a young age and despite prevailing social views never tried to hide it while she was training to become a nurse.
"I got picked on by the tutors at Burwood Hospital and consequently got put into Princess Margaret Hospital," she says.
Bellingham was about 18 at the time and spent the next 12 years in and out of hospital being treated for what doctors called a 'neurotic personality disorder'.
The care included "excessive medication", electroconvulsive therapy and uncomfortable discussions with a male doctor.
"He would ask me all sorts of questions about being a lesbian, he would ask me questions like, 'how many times a week do you have sex with your partner?' and 'what is it like?'," she told the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care in 2022.
Bellingham eventually left the hospital in 1982.
She remains open about her sexuality to set an example for young people. She doesn't want them to go what she went through.
"The more we speak out, the more we're showing people that it's normal, it's okay, we're okay.
"We've got to be out there, we've got to be, and I know it's not easy for some people, but I think the more we do it and the more out there we are, the better it's going to be."
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