<&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies <&>Victoria University of Wellington <&>side one <&>0:57 i wanted to <.>d take a different direction with my life tut and i had both a personal interest in what the aids foundation does because i'm gay and also i believed that i had some professional background and experience that would be useful to the organisation tut er i had been a teacher tut <.>f since er i left <.>sch school university and er i had left teaching in nineteen seventy <.>f five um to do community work and i found that very fulfilling but also er got pretty burnt out and went back teaching because i really wanted to go back to a job with a career structure and <.>a and a system so that if you took a sickie you know the whole thing didn't fall apart but i really was not happy it was a mistake for me to go <&>2:00 back teaching i'd er i had changed and i'd really didn't want to do what a teacher does every day <,> it was <.>somehow it <.>didn't it lacked the magic that it had had before it lacked the sense of direction <.>and and i learnt something important about myself and that was that i didn't want a career i wasn't prepared to go through the ropes in order to get to the top of the hierarchy i had no real interest in that tut <,> and in deciding to change direction <,> i also realised that there was something very important about my life that was not fulfilled and that was my er rights as a <.>human as a gay man my rights as a human being <&>3:00 and the need in fact to <.>create to contribute to the creation of a gay community instead of working for a group i didn't belong to although much as i made very dear friends and was <.>very felt very accepted in that community in otara in a way it wasn't MY community i hadn't grown up there it was my adoptive community there was another community that i really needed to go and face up to and work out where i fitted in with tut and that was the gay community so i got involved in the work for homosexual law reform in nineteen eighty five as a member of the gay taskforce in auckland tut and at the same time they were setting the aids foundation up <,> and at first i didn't think i wanted to have anything to do with aids i wasn't really <&>4:00 interested in sickness i was interested <.>in in community development <,> but after um working with the gay taskforce and meeting some really stimulating people <.>and and discovering that the aids foundation wasn't really about sickness at all laughs it was really about health i thought <.>that and <.>the the job was there um and i thought i have some experience that i could turn to the you know to the benefit of this other community that i had <.>b been on the edge of really <.>a and that i should make that central to my life and see what it meant and where it led <,> so <.>i'm i got the job and here i am i wonder if there is some sense of vocation in you the need to serve the community to work for others is there <&>5:00 yes there is um my father who's eighty has just resigned from being secretary of his last committee his first committee was the local rugby club <.>i when he was sixteen years old so for sixty four years of his life he's gone along and done his duty by his community and that was the <.>c the world i grew up in i grew up in pukekawa which is a small rural community and everybody knew everybody and everybody knew everybody else's business and but <.>everyb tut it was <.>or fairly isolated too i mean going to tuakau once a week was an adventure going to auckland once a year was a BIG adventure and sometimes the river flooded and you couldn't go anywhere um <,> and it just was the natural thing to do to participate in community activities and to contribute <.>your <&>6:00 your skills to <.>the the common good so both my parents always had that very strong sense of involvement <.>a so that just seemed to be natural to do that <,> but also i think because i'm gay and because i haven't got married and had children and created that other um voc little <.>ne closeknit and very demanding network <.>i've i've wanted to attach myself to groups of people <,,> i want <.>t i've wanted that kind of belonging <,,> and also when you're gay you have a lot <.>of you have <.>a an enormous struggle with where you belong <,> er there was never any doubt in my mind that i belonged with my own family and my own family has always stood by me um and embraced me <.>and and supported me but <.>y you still grow up in an <&>7:00 environment in which you have a dark secret and so you're on the edge you never quite belong because you're never quite going to fulfil the community norms getting married and having children and owning a house and a car and a dog and a cat and <,> in my youth there were only two possible futures for a homosexual person prison or a mental asylum <,> and for me it wasn't a question of if but when tut when was it going to be discovered that i had this terrible dark secret and when would i just be locked away <,,> so <.>i i guess <.>i the <.>habit it just became a habit that i was always on the edge of things i never gave myself completely <&>8:00 to any group of people in case they found me out so my friends are not the friends i made at school or at university they're friends i made later in life when i knew who i was and where i belonged did you accept society's judgement of your homosexuality <.>a at <.>that in <.>tha in those early stages in other words that you were a bad person for being like this always ambivalent because i was good at some things and i got lots of rewards for those i <.>was i was <.>b academically er successful <.>and and got lots of reward for that i was also successful at sport and got lots of reward for that and um so those provided a great sort of cover <,> but deep down yes i accepted society's <&>9:00 judgement that there was something deeply wrong with me homosexuality was a sin a crime and a mental sickness and <.>the my struggle was with those three things that i was going to <.>be er i mean if <.>i by some miracle i should escape prison or a mental asylum i suppose then all i had left <.>was was the jaws of hell so yeah i did accept that inside and believed that i was not a fit person to participate and <.>yet you see i was successful at everything i took on at school um and so i was sort of impelled <.>into into teaching because well what else did you do you know you <.>just <.>y you went with the flow and the flow said well you'd be a good teacher <&>10:00 so off you go and be a teacher and in those days too you got quite good money for going to teacher's college <.>and and doing a degree and becoming a teacher so i did that but in some ways my heart was never in it <,,> <.>i i think <.>i i was a good teacher i did well um particularly when i was <.>at at hillary college and i <.>was and <.>th and there was the opportunity to explore and to dig deep and by that time i had come to terms with my sexuality to a large extent although i still kept fairly reserved about it publicly <,> mm when did you first become aware that you were homosexual at the age of three both laugh laughs mm but <.>r but really er <.>n no really later on um <{><[>i <[>can you tell me how this happened i mean <&>11:00 yeah er well two things i was always aware that i was fascinated with other boys' bodies and that i longed to be loved by um by other boys and i had a lot <.>of i had a real struggle with that especially at secondary school where i was sleeping in a dormitory with sixty or so of them um tut but it <.>p particularly sharpened at the age of fourteen when my mother sat me down and asked me if i knew about homosexuals and i said yes and she said well you know <.>th i think that what they do is really <.>d dirty and disgusting and i hope you will never ever do anything like that tut and <,> just at that <&>12:00 moment i realised well that IS what i am and this is something that i can never tell my mother tut <,> and <,> so from that point on i identified myself as homosexual and as undesirable in some way <.>y <.>y you came to a time i guess when it was okay to be homosexual when was that i think that i began to accept it as um not such a dreadful thing when i had my first lover i was twenty one and he introduced me to the gay scene in auckland there was a gay bar it was a great little bar it was in the occidental in vulcan lane and er and a whole set of people who weren't voc my stereotypes of lunatics or <&>13:00 criminals they were polite well dressed they had good jobs they were interesting fun company <.>o um it wasn't all sex it was to do with just being good friends and people who were very supportive and caring <.>and and er er and suddenly i realised <.>w <.>w well this is not all that bad you know what we do is sexually is unconventional but it's actually not harmful tut i'd also by that stage i had DARED to pick up a couple of books and to read about it <.>w it took enormous courage i can remember going into pauls book arcade week after week and scanning the shelves and looking very hard at dickens and tolstoy and george eliot <.>and and every now and again glancing at a book about homosexuality er which was a <.>s a <&>14:00 scientific study that had been carried out <.>in in the united kingdom at that time and trying to pluck up the courage to take that book off the shelf and buy it i did eventually i think it was at a sale and as i began to read <.>i i began to understand that what <.>the the whole phenomenon of homosexuality is er i mean there <.>is it's <.>a it's a norm it <.>that it occurs in every society there is a proportion of the population that's homosexual tut um that this has been the case in <.>all in all times and in all places but the way in which society deals with that is socially constructed the way in which <.>it's it's responded to the way in which we um are taught to believe is all a social phenomenon and at that time of my life <&>15:00 in my twenties i tended to accept society as it was but as i <.>exp experimented with change in education at hillary college and change <.>in in the community in otara i began to understand well there <.>were there were bigger changes you could make too in fact change is constant and you have to decide which bit of change you want to <.>p take part in and do it well and with great care for the people and the future some of the images you've used um are religious words like sin and guilt and judgement i guess there is a religious background there yes <.>i i was brought up in <.>a <.>i in a conventionally rural community where we all <&>16:00 went to sunday school on sunday um it was <.>p er the local little old wooden church was used by the anglicans one sunday and the presbyterians the next sunday um tut and my father <.>had my mother was brought up presbyterian my father had been brought up by an irish catholic mother and a swedish atheist father so we had an interesting heritage um but <.>i and it was a thoughtful heritage you see because occasionally we DID go off to dad's sister's <.>f catholic family um occasions and because dad didn't go to church he'd followed <.>his he'd adopted his father's beliefs um it <.>me it meant that religion was always being questioned tut and at the same time um we were being brought up with conventional presbyterian attitudes laughs and then i went to a methodist church <&>17:00 school er wesley college um er where i in fact won the divinity prize laughs er and i was very interested in religion i actually found sunday school more stimulating <.>th intellectually stimulating than ordinary <.>d school i think i <.>f i think it was <.>b <.>partly partly <.>the the mysteries of religion <,> and partly that it was about <,> me and how i felt <.>a and <.>my and how i cared about things so yes i have a very conventional christian upbringing and as i moved beyond <.>a the literal <.>un understandings of the bible um have adopted <&>18:00 <.>the the fundamental christian belief that god is love and love is the most fundamental value and the value that should um infuse everything we do and that without love there's not much meaning do you believe in a god now inhales not A god no er i mean god is love love is not a thing or a person um <.>l and instead of looking up there in the sky for god i look inside because that's where love comes from tut it's <.>th the <.>s the source of love is actually within ourselves and the source of our strength if love is our strength then the source of our strength is inside ourselves and <&>19:00 in other people and so when i'm feeling down and distressed and overwhelmed then i actually meditate rather than pray in a sense they're the same thing but we were brought up thinking that prayers were kind of pleas to something out there that was remote and hard to reach whereas meditation is to do with looking in <,> so that's where i look <,> and it's amazing what i find laughs what do you find oh i find that i have this er <.>e enormous strength that i keep forgetting about under pressure tut yes we <.>can we can go through anything er that <.>the our limits <.>are are always greater than what we think they are we can always go further than we thought we could <&>20:00 inhales and er we also have enormous strength if <.>we if we know about it and care about it mm tut er <.>a but then i need input i <.>like i mean other people care for me and give me <.>s strength and support er i mean we have the whole <.>of of european culture and literature <.>and and thought that also contributes and i've had the privilege of a good education and <.>i i <.>i my main recreation is reading <.>and and so that's the input you see <.>y i mean well my other recreation's the theatre and the tremendous understandings that one gains from <,> <.>a art and literature <,> of which the bible was <&>21:00 a primary source but which has for me <,> er outlived its usefulness that's for me personally and i've <.>look i look for my inspiration <.>fr <.>i generally from other literature some people of course use the bible to voc beat you over the head with do they not as a homosexual mm yes what do you feel about them i mainly feel sorry for them because i think anybody who's using those er out of date irrelevant criteria for running their life in the late twentieth century are doing themselves a lot of damage <.>and but i also get quite angry when i see what they do to their young there are <.>f there are far too many young people <&>22:00 growing up in an environment in which they er <.>g receive this awful propaganda about how sinful and wicked they are deep down inside and <.>that that leads to appalling selfesteem and quite weird behaviour in response <,> it <.>re many <.>young young people really just shut off and i <.>have i mean to the point of suicide i mean we have cases that <.>have we've been told about of young people who've been told that their sexuality is a sin and that they have to pray to god to be cured and if prayer fails then they may <.>a they'll be going straight to hell and that's an appalling thing to tell a young person <.>it's it's <.>just it's such appalling rubbish <&>23:00