Brushing with Destiny Pt 1: Making friends Brushing with Destiny Pt2: Taking the heat Jevan Goulter with his boss and Mana party leader Hone Harawira As we talk in an outdoor cafe on Wellington's Cuba Street, openly gay Parliamentary staffer for the Mana party Jevan Goulter is on a roll. Time and again the words and sentences come tumbling out in gushes and rushes of enthusiasm. When asked about being both a gay man and friends with Brian and Hannah Tamaki - in light of their Destiny Church's frequent and outspoken anti-gay equality positions, including the Enough is Enough marches against civil unions, which have been compared to the intimidating parades of the Nazi brownshirt and Italian fascist blackshirt movements - he makes it clear he believes they are entitled to their own views. “If I picked my friends based on people who have views that are fist-waving and shouting a hundred per cent aligned with mine, then I’d have no friends. I’d have aunties and uncles that feel the same way. The only difference is they didn’t get ten thousand people, make them look pretty and walk down the street with chants. That’s the only difference. They polarised the nation.” In fact, Goulter doesn't think the Enough is Enough marches were anti-gay. “This is going to get me shot but I honestly don’t. Call me deluded or whatever... but I don’t think I am.” He believes they were like the foreshore and seabed hikoi, saying marching is what Maori do when they don’t agree with something. “They believed marriage was between a man and a woman. So what did they do? They marched. “I look at that and I look at ‘why do people get so upset about it?’ Ok, Brian got a lot of media coverage. What he was saying was going all across the country. They had ten thousand people, which is more than most causes can get to roll down a street.” At this point it's probably worth noting that, contrary to general assumption, Goulter says he is not Maori, or part-Maori. His darkish skin and somewhat non-pakeha features stem from American indian ancestry, he says. After their roar against civil unions, the Tamakis were notably silent when marriage equality came around. Goulter, who fronted a controversial music video alongside pro-marriage equality advocate Georgina Beyer, wasn’t. “Well actually I said it a long time ago. I wasn’t a big fan of marriage equality anyway, because I thought civil union was fine. I didn’t get the whole ‘hooha’.” He thinks marriage has been used for “colonisation purposes, dominance, land” and is something which has never appealed him personally. And yet he is also not against others wanting to be married. “This means nothing to me, but if there’s one person out of all of us who wants to go do it they should be able to go and do it. I think they are stupid, but they should be able to go and do it.” Goulter’s view on adoption by same-sex couples is, by contrast, very black and white. As New Zealand law currently stands any glbti individual can adopt a child but an unmarried glbti couple cannot. Goulter, who by some accounts was a troubled teenager, was himself adopted and is glad it was by a man and a woman. “I don’t believe that my father could provide the same sort of nurture and love in the same way that my mother did. And I don’t believe that my mother can provide the same guidance, assertiveness, male figure in my life that my father can. So yeah, I’m glad I grew up with a mother and a father. I really am.” While he wants to have kids of his own at some stage, he doesn’t think gay couples should be allowed to adopt, only gay singles. This is something he attempts to explain by saying it’s not publicly accepted yet, the kids will be bullied at school. “We might be passing all these laws, but that doesn’t mean that the perception has actually shifted. Until that perception shifts, I wouldn’t bring a kid up in that environment. I would not bring a child up in that environment, to be subject to whatever that entails based on ‘it’s my right, I want to be equal, I’m getting a kid’." He also make another point, one he describes as "nastier" – he thinks adopted kids will be abused by ‘sleazy’ gay men he has met on the scene. “I’ve been out on the scene since I was about fourteen or fifteen. That’s ten years. [I'm] still a baby, but that gives me a right to comment. I’m young and I’ve met all those sleazy old buggers. Would I want to see them and their boyfriends adopt a child? No. Why? Because I would hate to see the statistics ten years later of child abuse quite frankly. And I know that sounds quite harsh and nasty, but look, if it’s going to be a conversation people are going to have, then let’s get the realities out now. There’s all these stories of ‘uncle did that to me when I was younger’, all that sort of shit, and I’m not up with that shit. I can’t stand that crap. So what I’m saying, based on my experience of the gay community is: no, I would not. "That’s why I say ‘am I against one person doing it?’ No. ‘Am I against two people?’ I have issue with that. And my issue comes back to the child. There’s nothing else. It’s about the child. And I mean we could walk down this street right now and I bet you some of the guys would have some experience with a dodgy uncle. And then we refer back to ‘oh why do we have the highest rates of gay youth suicide for males in New Zealand?’ Why. There’s a reason for that as well. I don’t know that reason but I am sure it will point back to a few similarities. “So I am not prepared to say ‘oh yeah let’s give everyone an adoption licence to go out and get kids’, because my experience with a lot of men in our community has been disgusting at best. And I would not want to see them with kids.” He says such ‘sleazy’ older men have tried it on with him, but he was never ‘used and abused’ himself because “I always had a mouth. And it didn’t get used for what they wanted it used for.” Goulter says everything has to come back to the child, and he believes Destiny is doing just that. “They have their own school. They think of the kids." Might his position on gays and relationships and adoption have influenced the Tamakis? "I don’t even think I’ve discussed it with them.” Jay Bennie - 29th June 2014