Not a single dollar for years of torment

Hundreds of Kiwi men who’ve lived with criminal records for gay sex will now graciously accept the Crown’s apology and probably not even ask for a single buck for their years of torment.

If you think ‘‘torment’’ is a flowery choice of word, think instead of Lisa, who phoned in to my radio show on Thursday. She told me her father was jailed for having sex with a 24-year-old man back in the early 1980s, was released for good behaviour around the time it was decriminalised in 1986, then deported to Canada. Lisa was 11 at the time, and has seen her father about twice since.

Last night she was looking forward to calling her Dad, and giving him the good news. Lisa was quite emotional about Amy Adams’ announcement, as you can imagine.

The quashing of gay (consensual and between adults) sex convictions has been praised by every political party. Luckily we no longer have to care what Colin Craig might have made of it.

This is not ‘‘lefty, liberal’’ stuff. And although we like to think New Zealand often leads the world on these human rights issues, we really don’t – we’re around the middle of the pack. Gay sex was decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967, Scotland in 1980. Even Northern Ireland beat us by five years.

We are hot on the heels of Britain with this latest legislation but Australia is ahead of us with four of the States getting round to it by the end of 2015.

Never mind, it’s here and we’re all happy. Or are we? Every time the subject’s been raised in the past I’ve heard plenty of boneheads wailing ‘‘what about when I was convicted for under-aged drinking when the age limit was 20 and now it’s 18?’’ and ‘‘I was pinged for speeding in a 50kmh zone that’s now a 70 zone. Where’s my pardon? Not fair!’’

Which of course is a classic false equivalence. We know that same sex attraction is not a choice. Therefore the argument that New Zealanders should ever have been criminalised for their sexuality is a nonsense. Congratulations to the National Government for putting the final nail in the coffin of a law that never should have existed in the first place.