Time that Church met its Destiny

The recent attack by Destiny Church front groups on a Drag science show at Te Atatū library crossed a line. This wasn’t the first time that Brian Tamaki, the multimillionaire self-appointed ‘apostle’, has ordered acts of aggression against the queer community. Last year, Drag Story Time events were targeted, and the Rainbow Crossings in Auckland and Gisborne were vandalised, at Tāmaki’s direction.

Last Saturday, members of Destiny front groups Man Up, Legacy, and Radical Youth stormed Te Atatū library, attacking library staff, Auckland Pride organisers, and members of the public, including children. One teen was concussed, with other injuries also reported. About 30 people, including parents and children, had to barricade themselves inside a room while members of Destiny battered at the door.

It’s time to bring Destiny Church to heel.

The difficulty is in how Destiny Church can be stopped. It is well-funded, with an asset base of property including its South Auckland compound. This gives Destiny the resources to mobilise politically, as with its participation in the far-right Freedoms and Rights Coalition.

It’s also rich, meaning it can meet people’s real material needs. Destiny volunteers provide food parcels and accommodation. Destiny social services provide court support and social workers. Destiny front groups run ‘rehabilitative’ programmes, to which government agencies refer clients. These front groups then groom their members to act as Destiny’s foot soldiers.

Destiny has flourished this century during which neoliberalism was consolidated as New Zealand’s governing philosophy. The state, once the guarantor of ordinary New Zealanders’ living conditions, has retreated from social life. The state no longer provides housing on the scale necessary, nor at a cost Destiny’s base can afford.

Unemployment is high, and the Reserve Bank sets interest rates with the goal of keeping it high. This is what the American penal geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls ‘organised abandonment’ – the state’s deliberate withdrawal from providing the things people need to live full, dignified lives. Destiny steps into this gap, promising those subjected to organised abandonment the prospect of safety and security if they join Destiny in attacking gay people, trans people, and left-wing social movements.

Destiny’s violent escalation cannot be halted by conventional policing. When Tamaki ordered his organisation to vandalise the Karangahape Road rainbow crossing, only the operative who carried those orders out was criminally charged. Already, some have called for Destiny’s front groups to be targeted under the Gangs Act 2024, including banning their insignia. This won’t work. Destiny is targeting and recruiting alienated and vulnerable populations. Arresting people won’t make this base disappear, and charging people as individuals leaves Destiny’s organisational infrastructure in place to recruit their replacements. This is doubly true when government agencies continue to treat Destiny front groups like any other service providers, feeding them people to be radicalised.

Destiny will not stop following this course of its own accord. After Destiny’s attacks last year, the loudest voices in the community favoured lying low and hoping that Destiny left us alone. The assault on Te Atatū library has shown us that it won’t. A strategy of non-confrontation or appeasement just invites Destiny to keep escalating. We must instead take a two-pronged approach.

First, we must pressure the Government to adopt lawfare against Destiny Church’s organisation. Destiny Church-affiliated charities must be removed from the charities register, ending the tax-exempt status that supports the organisation’s operations.

Statutory agencies including the Department of Corrections and Te Whatu Ora must sign memoranda of understanding with Auckland Pride divesting from Destiny Church, affirming that their workers and workers of any agencies to which they sub-contract are forbidden from making referrals to Destiny Church front groups. Destiny’s leadership, not their subordinates, must be held legally accountable for their actions.

Second, Aotearoa must rally to show that we will not fold to Destiny’s strategy of terror. Knowing that I was queer – recognising who I was, what I wanted, how my life could be – was a profoundly beautiful moment for me. I have fought through hatred, internal and external, to remain truthful to that beauty. I love being a lesbian. I love being a transsexual. I will live to see a future where all of us can love being who we are. Destiny Church wants the fear of violence to drive queer people out of public life. Queers and the people who love us have to turn out to say that we don’t care if Destiny Church hates us, we will remain truthful to ourselves.

This Sunday, at 2pm in Albert Park, Auckland’s queer community will hold ‘DEFYING DESTINY: DAY OF QUEER POWER’. We are gathering to issue our demands and our warning. We will demand the deregistration of Destiny Church-affiliated charities and commitments from statutory agencies that they will divest from Destiny Church front groups.

We will be warning Destiny Church that queer people and our allies are not free targets. Destiny Church cannot attack, abuse, and assault us with impunity. Man Up’s foot soldiers may think that they are bigger and stronger than us, but we will defend ourselves. And there are more of us than there are of them. Death before the closet.