[Intro Music]
[Applause]
Dear TED people, if I want to wear a tie, I'll wear a tie [applause and laughter].
Defy the stereotypes, down with stereotypes.
I got myself ready for you by going to see a performance of, "Hair" in New York, and I feel in the mood.
My thesis for your consideration is that the God botherers are at the door again, and that
we, in Australia, and in America,
and in other countries, must stand up for the secular state, for the separation of Church and State.
My proposition is that this is a dangerous time and that it depends upon people like
TED people and the message from Sydney 2010, to go out to every country, that secularism is a protection
for spirituality, it's a protection and a space for the beliefs of everybody,
and, only by secularism, will we maintain respect
for every belief, and for people who have no belief,
for the people of the here and now, and it is in danger,
it is at risk, and we've got to do something about it.
Now, this time last week I went up to Hong Kong,
it was for a one-day conference and I travelled economy
down the back of the plane, it's amazing what happens
when you leave high office, you lose your Commonwealth car,
everybody should have a Commonwealth car,
and you're put down the back where you belong.
Well, I went up there for a conference to mark, "World Anti-homophobia Day",
and the day was chosen because it was the day in 1972 that the World Health Assembly,
which is the governing body of the World Health Organisation
in Geneva, decided to remove homosexuality from the list of the World's madnesses.
And so it was removed,
and we commemorate this day by the recollection of it,
and of our need to make changes and improvements,
and present at the meeting, in the first of the big meetings
that UNDP had ever held in Asia were mostly straight people,
some gay people and some of the straight people were people of high office.
One of them was Justice Ajit Shah,
recently retired as the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court.
It was Justice Shah who wrote the decision of the High Court
of Delhi in the Naz Foundation case, which is the case that
struck down the 150 year old rule of the Indian Penal Code,
which penalised consensual adult private same-sex relations.
And Justice Shah was there. I declared that he was a liberator.
He had lifted the scourge of that colonial law, which still exists in 41 out of 53 countries
of the Commonwealth of Nations,
the old British Empire. It still exists in those countries to blight
the lives of gay people, but Justice Shah was the liberator.
But the God botherers are at work even in India.
The God botherers have appealed the decision of the Delhi
High Court to the Supreme Court of India. The Government of India has not, the Government
accepts the decision,
but the God botherers will take it to the Supreme Court of India,
and we must hope that that great court will affirm
the right to equality and dignity which was the foundation of Justice Shah's decision,
of the decision of his court.
Another participant was Dame Carol Kidu, widow of the late Chief Justice of Papua New Guinea,
the only woman in the parliament of Papua New Guinea, and she's foremost in endeavouring
to get rid, in that country, of the inheritance from Australia,
from the Criminal Code of Queensland, which Queensland's
got rid of, but which still blights the lives of gay people
and sexual minorities in Papua New Guinea.
She's endeavoured to get rid of it, sweep it away, by legislative means,
but, uh, she's constantly troubled by the missionaries,
the Protestant Churches out there which attack the notion
that Papua New Guinea, which for eons lived without it,
can live without it again. So this was the meeting,
and it was a rather uplifting meeting, as you'll understand,
then as I got back into the QANTAS jet on the long way home,
I felt uplifted, but then, over the last week, I've felt a bit depressed and I've tried
to analyse well why do you feel depressed?
Why do you feel depressed when there are such good people struggling to get rid of this
baggage of the past, of injustice and humiliation? Well, if I analyse it, it's because of events
that are happening far away and close at home.
Far away, uh, in the last week, or little more, the Pope spoke in Portugal, which, like
Spain, is considering a provision for gay marriage.
And His Holiness declared that one of the two greatest evils in the world was same-sex marriage.
One of the two?
You can disagree about same-sex marriage, you can think,
you know, that you should get by with just sort of living in sin,
an awful lot of people do it now. But, to call it the greatest evil,
one of the greatest evils? Well, give us a break.
You'd think that those who are close to the thing would know a few larger evils,
more recent evils, that they should be concentrating on, but that is what the Pope thought.
I asked my partner Johan, who's put up with my for 41 years,
do you think we would get married, and he said it's definitely
too early to tell. And then I thought about it, and I thought,
well, even if it was available, which it's not, even if it was available,
I don't think that we would get married,
after 41 years you've got to be very careful about the magic of it, you know, you wouldn't
want to do any harm to it, and if it came unstuck it would be an awful lot of moolah,
I'd have to cough up.
So, it's not a personal thing, ladies and gentlemen,
it is not a personal thing, I am not making a personally involved,
anxiety here. But, one of the greatest evils, well really.
You've got to get a bit more clear thinking. And then I came back to Australia, and I saw
on the television, a picture
you probably saw it yourself, of the two young men in Malawi, their hands were bound,
they are life partners.
One is 23, one is 27, one is Steven and one is Tiwonge,
they're not actually two gay men because Tiwonge
is a transsexual, and they've had a celebration, they had the hide to have a celebration,
they were arrested with heavy handed uniforms, they were charged under
this old British law, and they have been convicted and sentenced
to 14 years imprisonment. 14 years imprisonment.
I saw them bound together, they just showed their two hands in manacles, bound together.
So this is a world-wide thing.
And it's the Protestant Churches in Malawi that say that the government must assist,
we must ignore outside, this is against our morality, it's against African traditions.
Well it's not against African traditions, it's something that was brought
with the colonial baggage, but there it is. And in the United States of America they've
nominated a, uh, President Obama
has nominated, uh, Elena Kagan, a very distinguished academic, Solicitor General, but what can
they talk about for a life
appointment to the highest court in that land. Not her experience, not her scholarship,
not even her views and her values,
but her private sexual existence. It's a great world of infotainment out there,
and this is what we are debased in discussing.
And if you think of Australia, well things haven't been all that good in our country
in the last, uh, short while.
Now, there's a, a footballer in Victoria, his name is Jason Akermanis,
he doesn't know me and I don't know him,
but I saw his reported statement, which gets huge coverage, because he is a guru for young
people, saying, young people,
in sport, have got to hide their sexual identity, must never, never tell it,
i.e. he's not too disturbed that it exists,
just don't tell it because we don't want anybody touching
another person's bum, in good, uh, in a good sense,
in the showers, and not knowing whether that other person might just react, uh, and uh,
Jason Akermanis is listened to solemnly
by huge audiences with his views on this subject. And then, last week, in this state,
legislation was introduced for a civil relationships registration.
And I looked through the reports of the politicians, uh, in this
state, who solemnly said this must
not be allowed, this endangers and damages the institution of marriage, uh, and people
who might, uh, with the change
of government, be in office and with responsibility for law, came forward and said this is something
that we just cannot have.
A relationships register. We're not talking about marriage with confetti, we're talking
about a register, like registering your dog,
that's what it is, it's a second class status of citizenship. Not marriage, not even civil
partnership and civil union,
that's been banned by the Federal Government, this is, in the State Government, a registration.
Well I don't think I'll be going anywhere near that. Equality and dignity.
One of the Members of Parliament said we don't really mind giving, we don't mind now though
they fought it like hell before,
we don't mind giving the pension and money, but the dignity of recognition of relationships
is not on. Well, that is a great sadness,
I think, and we've got to get over it. And thirdly, you may have seen, in the last day
or so, something which, in a week,
in a month, in a year, most of us will have forgotten. The humiliation, uh, of a Minister.
The destruction of his career.
The damage to his family, to his wife, and to his children. The revealing that he went
to a gay sauna. Dr. Kinsey taught me,
back in the 1940's, that human sexuality is not a matter of two boxes, there are the
straights and the gays, the homosexuals
and the heterosexuals. It is a spectrum, and in all people's lives it is part of a spectrum
of nature, and it's not a big deal.
But, the exploration of it, is just not acceptable to the newsroom of Channel 7. Channel 7 Sydney
should hold its head in shame;
they are serial anti-homophobes. Don't forget that it was Channel 7, it was Channel 7 that
hounded, the first openly gay president
of the Law Society of this state, hounded him to his death. I saw him deteriorate and die.
Uh, homophobia, you can have
your world days, you can have your meetings in Hong Kong, but it is endemic, it is endemic
in Australia and America,
it's not so, such a big deal. Spain, for goodness sake, Albania is discussing gay marriage,
and if that is so everywhere else,
we've just got to get with it and people who've got a problem with it have to take
an aspirin, they've got to have a lie down,
and they'll all feel better in the morning. [laughter]
And the churches have to look at their scriptures and learn the lesson that text is ambiguous,
holy text is a metaphor
and a poem and you have to look at it and text cannot be inconsistent with science,
they've got to look again.
And so, uh, fellow citizens, uh, this is a time when we have to say in a very clear voice,
not only in our country but let it go forth
from TEDx in Sydney 2010, secularism is the defence of spiritualism. Secularism defends
your right to have your beliefs,
and to have no belief, to accept God, or to not believe in God. It is the reason for the
success of the English constitutional principle,
and we have to guard it and defend it in our country, and in all countries.
It is the way in which in the end we will get rid of these horrible laws, we will establish
equal justice under law for every citizen,
and we will respect the dignity of all of us in this great, continental country.
[Applause]
Captioning services provided by Michael Lockrey