AIDS, Love and the Law: From the Human Rights Act to Marriage Equality in New Zealand

Abstract

The terrain of debate over lesbian and gay rights in New Zealand changed markedly between 1993 and 2013. This article compares parliamentary and public discussion of the 1993 amendments to the Human Rights Act, about which very little has been written, and the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill of 2013, to track a range of ideological stances and discursive positions over a 20-year period. Those sceptical about lesbian and gay rights fashioned a changing set of discursive frames that spoke to HIV/AIDS and then the trope of “political correctness”: their arguments, which draw upon a range of international influences, fractured and became more complex as time went on. There has been a shift towards a politics of love since the start of the new millennium, and a rapidly increasing acceptance of the lives of gay and lesbian New Zealanders.