December 2024 Case Update

Dear friends and supporters

As the year draws to a close, we at LAVA want to say a very sincere thank you to all of you who have donated to the fundraising appeal for our case against Wellington Pride who excluded us from having a stall at the 2021 ‘Out in the City’ Pride event. Every single dollar counts and we are grateful to you for supporting us.

We have been notified that our case won’t now be heard until the second half of next year. It is going to take a lot longer than we originally thought, because Wellington Pride have called on 19 Expert Witnesses to support their view that those of us who do not believe in gender ideology are anti trans, bigoted and hateful and had LAVA been at Out in the Park in 2021, we would have caused great harm to any trans people who were present. They have not addressed the substance of our case which is that our opinions are political and as such are protected under NZ’s Human Rights Act. They simply say that our views are hateful and not worthy of protection.

We have to respond to those 19 people with our own experts in order to show that our opinions are certainly deserving of protection under the law and are widely held by many people, including internationally respected academics, scientists and clinicians, some of whom have agreed to appear for us as Expert Witnesses. All of this of course takes more time – a great deal more preparation and four weeks in court rather than two weeks. As we all know, more time means more money, so in the new year we will have a further fundraising initiative.

Thank you again for your support and we hope you have a restful and refreshing holiday break.

Marg & Hilary on behalf of LAVA