“They’d have to kill me before they could make me ashamed of who I am.”

Nexus asked Emmy Rākete some questions regarding the Defying Destiny Day of Queer Power she helped to organise in protest against Destiny Church’s attempted silencing of Pride demonstrations. Emmy is a critical Marxist scholar working in the activist-academic tradition and also a co-founder of and spokesperson for People Against Prisons Aotearoa. Here are her answers:

Why was the Defying Destiny counter-protest organised? How successful was the counter-protest? What were its aims and were they achieved?

We organised the demonstration because of our long connection to Auckland’s queer community and because of the role the justice system plays in funneling people to Destiny Church’s front groups like Man Up. We had two demands to make, and one warning to issue. The two demands were for the state to deregister Destiny Church’s charities, and for statutory agencies like Police and Corrections to make commitments to cease any relationships they have with Destiny Church front groups like Man Up. The warning was that queer people won’t take this abuse lying down, and will fight back however we have to in order to defend ourselves.

How do you feel about Destiny Church’s charity status?

Destiny Church’s charitable status is farcical. The purpose of registration as a charity is to enable community organisations to serve the public good – it’s a way for the state to outsource the tasks the welfare system used to fulfill. Destiny Church carrying out targeted gay bashings isn’t in the public interest, and so there’s no justification for it to enjoy tax-exempt status.


How does Brian Tamaki use rhetoric to incite anti-queer actions?

Brian Tamaki certainly uses a lot of public rhetoric to attack and slander the queer community, but it’s important to understand that these attacks aren’t the result of Brian Tamaki’s oratory inspiring independent attacks. Destiny Church has a chain of command, running from Brian Tamaki personally on down to his foot soldiers in Man Up, through which the order was given to attack the Te Atatū Library drag event. Brian Tamaki is not inspiring a homophobic and transphobic hate campaign, he is personally directing it. This is, in the classic sense, fascist. Tamaki is a millionaire, and he uses a paramilitary force made of un- and under-employed working-class people to try to purge society of so-called ‘degenerate’ elements.

How dangerous can hate such as this be for the targeted community?

Destiny Church’s campaign is escalating in terms of how violent it is willing to be. At the same time, for instance, the ACT Party took to social media to attack our Defying Destiny rally because they thought our community’s commitment to self-defence was too frightening. The real threat to the community isn’t actually Destiny Church’s foot soldiers, but complicit bourgeois parties who are willing to legitimise Destiny’s fringe beliefs in order to build a base of support. Resisting this means joining organisations and being disciplined, using our coordinated action to show the rest of society how ugly and self-interested our enemies are, and mobilising the masses against them. Despite their fear of violence, 1200 people turned out to Albert Park for Defying Destiny. The enemy has money, but we have the people. The enemy wants to make us too afraid to be queer in public, but all of us know that we love ourselves too much to go back in the closet just because Brian Tamaki and his parliamentary supporters want us to. They’d have to kill me before they could make me ashamed of who I am.