The background to the decision to define sexual orientation related to gender and not sex

Jan Rivers made this Official Information request to Human Rights Commission

The request was successful.

From: Jan Rivers

Dear Human Rights Commission,

I note that the definition of sexual orientation in the Human Rights Act - the act that the HRC administers is 'sexual orientation, which means a heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual orientation' referring to the sex of the persion.

In contrast the Human Rights Commission has defined sexual orientation in recent years as referring to each person’s capacity for emotional and sexual attraction to, and intimate and sexual relations with, people of the same or different gender or more than one gender.

See Conversion Practices Guidance - https://tikatangata.org.nz/our-work/conv...
Prism Report https://tikatangata.org.nz/our-work/pris...

Please provide the background papers that paved the way for this change away from the legal definition including meeting minutes, reports and legal advice to this decision to create a definition of sexual orientation for use in the HRC's policy work that does not comply with either the definition or the spirit of the law. Please explain the decision not to explain that the effect of this change is to render sex attraction and therefore lesbian and gay meaningless. (To be clear the effect of this change is to assess non-transgender people by reference to the gender of the person who is the object of their attraction as if people are attracted to gender identities and not to sex. To be clear I understand that the work of the private Canadian transgender advocacy group ARC International succeeded in creating the Yogyakarta Principles adopted this erroneous defintion in 2007)

Yours faithfully,

Jan Rivers

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Attachment 227432 Response to request for information Jan Rivers.pdf
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Tēnā koe Jan Rivers

 

Please find attached our response to your request for information.

 

Nāku noa, nā

Joanne

 

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