In response to the Law Commission’s invitation to submit to their consultation on potential changes to the Human Rights Act, thousands have used the Free Speech Union’s freespeechsubmission.nz website to insist the law not be changed to make ‘misgendering’, ‘outing’, or ‘deadnaming’ illegal. All Kiwis have the right to live free from discrimination, but anti-discrimination efforts are built on speech rights, not challenged by them, says Jonathan Ayling, Chief Executive of the Free Speech Union.

“The 200-page Discussion Document released by the Law Commission asks 80 questions regarding the experience of discrimination by the transgender, intersex, and non-binary communities, and the steps that could be taken to address this. The majority of these questions are outside the remit of the Free Speech Union.

“However, numerous questions raised in the document are unavoidably linguistic. Proposing amendments to the law that could see the use of the wrong pronoun (misgendering), revealing the transgender identity of someone (outing), and using a previous name (deadnaming) should not be prohibited by law.

“This would be an unjustifiable limitation of Kiwis’ free speech on a contested subject.

“Likewise, requirements for education leaders (such as principals and Boards of Trustees) and employers to implement ‘safe’ environments that compel certain speech would contravene the Bill of Rights Act and New Zealanders’ commitment to free speech.

“Experiences overseas (such as in Canada) show that censoring the use of language some communities find offensive or ‘harmful’ or compelling the use of certain language is entirely counterproductive and causes even greater animosity and opposition to these communities.

“Diverse societies and social cohesion are not built on everyone agreeing. Trying to compel agreement will backfire. Free speech allows for laws to protect communities from active discrimination while also maintaining the right for individuals to express disagreement. Attempts to reform this balance would be foolish and politically costly.”

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