So Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull aka Posie Parker is coming to Aotearoa New Zealand and intends to spread her message.
Wikipedia describes her as someone who “has used posters, billboards, stickers, and social media to promote anti-trans messages, and she has organized events in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia that have been protested by supporters of transgender rights.”
Last week she held a rally in Melbourne which was noteworthy because actual nazis showed up and supported her. She claimed innocence but rather spoiled things by subsequently flashing a white supremacy sign during a video.
And she thinks that Tucker Carlson is “an intelligent, really lovely, welcoming, warmly welcoming man”.
Auckland Council has approved her plan to hold a rally tomorrow at Albert Park.
I am not surprised. To be frank the law relating to events in public open spaces is very permissive. Even self declared actual nazis have had their right to protest protected. A number of them were present at the Parliament sit in last year. The threshold for banning speech is high.
An attempt today to overturn Immigration granting Parker a visa has been declined by Justice Gendall.
Some comment on the decision is in this article by Jonathan Milne:
Human rights organisations applied to the High Court for an interim order to prevent the anti-transgender activist entering New Zealand on Friday afternoon, pending a more in-depth judicial review of the Immigration Minister’s decision.
The groups were unsuccessful. Early this afternoon, Justice David Gendall said he shared some of their concerns about Parker’s potential threat to public order, but was loath to hastily second-guess the Immigration Minister without fully considering the arguments – including giving Parker herself the opportunity to put her case.
He said his reasons for refusing interim orders were largely technical and procedural.
If there had been more time, the decision might have been very different. Immigration Minister Michael Wood might well have been directed to intervene.
“My sympathy for the applicants’ position is grounded largely in the information provided by the applicants and the Crown, which to my eye appears to clearly raise some issues of public order – issues which the minister or the delegated decision maker would have been unable to ignore,” Gendall ruled.
But properly hearing and considering both sides of the argument wasn’t possible ahead of Parker’s anticipated arrival at Auckland International Airport.
The legal challenge the groups took on was always a difficult one because, in the words of ministers, it’s a high legal bar to deny someone entry from a visa-waiver country.
The Government has been criticised but to be frank the law was against them. Ms Parker had no disqualifying characteristics so again I am not surprised although I am sure that Immigration were told to look at the application very carefully.
National earlier nailed its colours to the mast by welcoming Ms Parker to the country.
National Party deputy leader Nicola Willis told First Up Immigration New Zealand would struggle to find evidence to keep Keen-Minshull out of the country and believed she should be allowed entry.
“This is a free and liberal democracy and part of that is that we believe in freedom of expression even when we really don’t like the views of those that are expressing themselves freely.
“We uphold that right. And I’m a big believer that sunlight is a good disinfectant. Where people have views that some of us find abhorrent, sometimes the best thing is to allow others to respond with their counter views.”
The use of “disinfectant” in the argument is a misnomer. It was not that long ago that National objected to Chelsea Manning coming to New Zealand on the grounds it might upset America. This suggests an extraordinarily flexible approach by National to the concept of free speech.
And debates are all well and good but is it actually a good thing to debate with nazis or those who forment hate for social media clicks?
Aamer Rahman nailed it with this speech.
Carmel Sepuloni has I think the perfect response:
I am a woman.
Let me share my thoughts as a NZ woman. Given some overseas woman is trying to make out her views are ours.
Im not worried about trans women sharing the same bathrooms. If they are/were open plan and didn’t have dividers, I’d feel uncomfortable with that if it were anyone! Awkward if that was the case but it’s not.
I don’t feel threatened by or at-risk with trans women – sometimes envious because they often rock things better than I ever could.
I don’t feel danger for my children, my sons or my nieces because there is no rational reason to feel that way.
I don’t question or fight other people’s gender identities because I support and understand we are in so many ways the same and in so many ways splendidly different.
I celebrate and lift up those that still have to fight on the daily, to be themselves.
I don’t want to give any platform to the annoying, angry, non sensical voices that serve to spread hatred, negativity and deny others the same human rights they purport to be fighting for themselves.
I am happy in my life with my circle of straight and LGBTQI+ friends and family. I love them, they love me. We are just intrinsically part of each others world. It just is.
Some weirdo visitor from overseas with stupid views of the world fuelled by misinformation and misplaced anger won’t change that.
There is a potentially much larger trans affirming rally counter protest tomorrow which I can’t make because I will be out of the country. But can I urge people to make it. We should side with our trans brothers and sisters. Not from someone whose shrill rhetoric gets the support of nazis.
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