11 November 2005
“Fiji’s gays don’t need ‘saving’” says NZ AIDS Foundation
Programmes aimed at trying to turn homosexual people into heterosexuals in order to “save” them, risk causing severe
psychological harm to the individuals who participate in them, the New Zealand AIDS Foundation says.
The Foundation was reacting to a statement from the Methodist Church in Fiji, which has been campaigning to change the
human rights protection provisions in Fiji’s constitution to remove reference to sexual orientation.
The church - which has organised anti-gay marches and publicly called for homosexuals to be put to death - says the
constitutional changes are needed to prevent gay marriage in Fiji. Its most recent statement on Radio New Zealand
International claimed that homosexuals can be “cured” through reparative therapy and has claimed to have “saved” a small
number of gays through this process already.
“Authoritative medical and psychiatric organisations the world over have condemned these so-called reparative therapies
as dangerous, unnecessary and likely to produce harm rather than good,” NZAF Executive Director Rachael le Mesurier
said. “They are based on assumption that homosexuality is an illness or aberration. It is not. Since 1973 homosexuality
has been recognised as a naturally occurring variant of human sexual orientation, not chosen, and not something that
that requires treatment or cure.”
Ms Le Mesurier noted that the American Psychiatric Association (one of the world’s leading representatives of
authoritative psychiatric thinking) says this of reparative therapies:
“Potential risks of reparative therapy are great, including depression, anxiety and self destructive behaviour . . .
(they) reinforce self hatred already experienced by the patient.”
Ms Le Mesurier says that homosexual people can experience satisfying, fulfilling lives and relationships and can
actively and constructively contribute to the health and well-being of their communities. Indeed, she said, they held
such places in many Pacific cultures before the advent of Christian colonialism.
She recalled the remarks made by the Speaker of Fiji’s House of Representatives, Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, at the recent
Pan Pacific conference on HIV and AIDS in Auckland, New Zealand, where he said that Pacific leaders and churches needed
to “return homosexuals to their traditional accepted place in society and encourage legislation for equal human rights
for gay men and other minorities.”
Where homosexuality has been associated with negativity and destructive lifestyles it has nearly always been the result
of the pressures created by social isolation, discrimination and prejudice, Ms Le Mesurier said.
“A more inclusive and accepting attitude from the Methodist church will do far more for the health, emotional and
spiritual well-being of Fiji’s gays than will any scientifically shoddy and prejudice-based attempt to “fix” what
doesn’t need fixing,” she said.
ENDS