On 23 August 2004, a little-known pastor from the central North Island’s backblocks led a flock of black shirts to the steps of New Zealand’s parliament. The “Enough is Enough” rally saw thousands of uniformed Destiny Church members, almost entirely men, march through central Wellington protesting against civil unions, an arrangement granting same-sex couples the same rights as if they were married.
The protest left a scar on Wellington’s collective consciousness. LGBTQI+ people were abused on the street. Georgina Beyer, an MP in the governing Labour party and the world’s first transgender MP, made her way to parliament’s forecourt to confront the protesters and “stare them in the eye”. Kiri Allan, now a minister in the Labour government but at the time a law student at the neighbouring Victoria University, went out to confront the protesters too (with a righteous assist in the form of a haka from the now Green party MP Teanau Tuiono).
