Exciting Fundraising Update for July
We are delighted to be able to celebrate a wonderfully successful fundraising effort in June. You will remember that a generous supporter pledged to match every June donation, dollar for dollar, up to a total of $30,000. In June we raised $24,748.85, which, when doubled, equals $49,497.70. Add that to the money we raised in the previous months, and we now have a grand total of $89,514.96 towards our target of $100,000. HOW GOOD IS THAT!!
When we decided to take Pride to the Human Rights Review Tribunal, we were working on an estimated cost of $20,000, which we thought was a tough ask, but manageable! We didn’t dream that Wellington Pride thought so little of us and our supporters – that’s you! – that they would ask no fewer than 18 experts to support them in their view that we are bigoted and hateful and transphobic, and that the decision to exclude us from the ‘Out in the City’ fair was the correct one.
Those 18 experts need their time in Court and need to be cross-examined by our lawyer. The Hearing was therefore set down for four weeks, which was a much longer time than we had expected and this extended time brought with it all sorts of additional associated costs on top of the legal costs. Photocopying alone is over $4,000!
Pride’s lawyers are acting pro bono, so they don’t need to fundraise except for small amount to support their expert witnesses and for other legal costs such as printing. Their fundraising target is $5,000 which they have not yet reached. (https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/wellington-pride-festival-hrrt)
The battles against gender ideology are taking place on different fronts and others before us have decided to take up the challenge on the legal battlefield. The one thing we all have in common is that we are doing this to ensure that the issues are given airtime and get to be talked about, and we want to clarify and confirm the legal protections we have in place as lesbians and as women. Mostly, but not always, we have won – from Maya Forstater and ‘For Women Scotland’ in the UK to Skrmetti in the US and Deeming and Devin in Australia. Some fights are still underway – ‘Lesbian Action Group’ and Sal Grover in Australia are two of the high-profile cases where the initial decision ruled against the right of a lesbian group, and a women’s group, to single sex spaces, declaring that the right to such spaces discriminated against men who identify as women and/or lesbians. The rulings referred to trans people – we prefer to describe them more accurately.
While groups fighting on many fronts are fighting the different manifestations of gender ideology, the LAVA case is not about the rights and wrongs of what we believe – it is not about convincing the ‘unenlightened’ that we are right and they are wrong. Nor is it about convincing the Human Rights Review Tribunal of the rightness of our position. It is simply about our right to believe what we believe and to demonstrate to the Tribunal through our expert witnesses that many, many people throughout the world have these same beliefs, that these beliefs are reasonable, they are not hateful or harmful and they are deserving of protection in law.