Michael Kirby speaks

I am indebted to Calamity Jane at Pie in the Sky for the following interview.
It refers to a book  "Five Uneasy Pieces" a copy of which Calamity gave me when I was in Sydney at Christmas.  I was back in NZ by the time of the Sydney launch where parts of this video were filmed.
I think I have written before about how much I admire Michael Kirby who is a retired Justice of the High Court of Australia.
We grew up in the same suburb, he was five years older than me and his brother, also a judge, was in my class.  We went to the same 2 primary schools (North Strathfield and Summer Hill) and high school (Fort Street) then to Sydney University where he studied law and rose to great heights and I specialised in education. Parish boundaries meant that I mainly worshipped in a different Anglican church to him.  I purchased a book he wrote "A Private Life: Fragments, Memories, Friends" when I was back in Sydney in April but left it there for my sister to read as she did spend  time in the same parish as him. I found we had some of the same teachers. I hope to bring it home and reread more slowly in August. 


I note Michael refers to worshipping at St James, King Street, one of the few inclusive Anglican churches in the Sydney Diocese. The book launch had to be held in a Uniting Church although written by Anglicans. Michael Kirby refers to those who keep to the old literal interpretations of these texts as being narrow and arrogant. 
That would be one of the more polite terms I would use of Peter Jensen (archbishop of Sydney) who I believe has demanded that his vile diatribe against same-sex marriage be read in all Sydney parishes today. Just as well I am not in Sydney as, while feeling for the rector of St James, I would have no alternative but to object in some way, if he follows this directive at today's services.

Justice Michael Kirby

 I have just watched a video documentary on the life of High Court Justice (now retired) Michael Kirby.

Michael is 5 years older than me. We grew up in the same suburb of Sydney, went to the same primary schools and high school. I then followed him to Sydney university but I studied Arts/Education and became a teacher, he studied Arts/Law and became a lawyer, chair of the Law Reform Commission, a judge, President of the NSW Court of Appeals and eventually a Justice of the High Court of Australia.
We are both Anglicans although we lived and worshiped in different parishes. We are both gay but he has had a partner for the past 40 years.

The summary of the documentary follows:

Filmed before, during and after his final days on the High Court of Australia this documentary explores the personal, moral and spiritual convictions of Michael Kirby – one of the country’s greatest legal minds. It charts his formative years, his Christian faith and his 40 year relationship with his partner Johan van Vloten. Although publicly outspoken on an enormous range of social, political and humanitarian issues, for the first time Michael Kirby reveals his private side. 

If you have an hour, please watch, The documentary is copyrighted and at first I could not watch it from outside Australia but then I was successful with this link.

http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s2916163.htm

There are scenes from St James. King Street  where I use to worship,  strangely juxtaposed on a description of the Sydney Diocese. Strange because St James is not typical of the Sydney Diocese, not only due it its "bells and smells" but also it inclusiveness. I have seen Michael there at special occasions but not on a regular basis.

A lot of the commentary is given by his brother David, also a judge, who was in my class at school. There is much humour throughout the documentary.

Some notes I jotted down.
Michael compliments the Anglican church as being one church which is trying to grapple with sexuality and calls it a church of compromise.  He, himself, never had feelings of being wicked or hated by God. His soul was always at peace but knows he was postponing reality.

He loves the smell, beauty, music and language of the Anglican church but believes in the secularism of Australian Society.  Religion is private and he is not to be guided by a bishop in robes.

In the late 60's he defended students involved in the desegregation campaigns.

He believes real mischief is done when society forces a young person at a critical moment in their life to hide reality from those who should be a source of love and strength. "Don't ask, don't tell" lasted too long in Australian society.

His own family recognised his right to achieve justice and love.  In one of the most poignant moments in the film, Donald Kirby, Michael’s 94-year-old father, leads the camera through a series of photo frames sitting on a hallway cabinet in search of a single picture. “There’s Johan,” he says. “They’re inseparable; absolutely. He couldn’t manage without Johan; I don’t think any of us could.” He proudly shows photos of Johan with Michael's mother not long before her death.

Michael believes the Foundation of Human Rights is Love.  His brother says Michael will never take a backward step in defending his own rights and other people's rights?

Michael fought for AIDS/HIV as a human rights issue and became the UN representative on AIDS/HIV rights to Cambodia.  This and his participation in advocating Gay Law reform in Tasmania meant that his sexuality was not much of a secret.

However it was Johan who suggested in 1995 that they owed it to the younger generation to be more open and they changed Michael's Who's Who entry to show Johan as his partner. The Newspaper headline was "The biggest non-secret is out"

Michael believes the church needs to look again at the texts and uses the example of the Jewish people asking for the release of Barabbas and declaring that "His (Jesus) blood be on us and our children" as a foundation for the long anti-Semitism in the church. Similarly they should look at the texts on sexuality in light of modern scientific knowledge.

The event is covered when Senator Heffernan used Commonwealth Car documents to claim under parliamentary privilege that the Judge was procuring young men in these cars. These documents were found to be fraudulent and Senator Heffernan was forced to apologise. The documentary points out that Heffernan was close to that viper, Prime Minister Howard, who of course appeared to remain above the affair.
As Johan says "If they had been true, Michael should have been hung for stupidity."

O Most Excellent Judge

Justice Michael Kirby of the Australian High Court will be retiring in the next few months. While I wish him all the best in retirement, it will be a huge loss to the nation.
I have always felt a particular affinity with him. He is 5 years older than me (exactly less one day), we grew up a few blocks away, went to the same primary school (his brother, also a judge, was in my class), the same high school, the same university where he did Arts-Law and I did Arts-Education from where his career went into the stratosphere and mine plateaued but we are both Anglican and gay.

I have found this speech given by him in 2004 at the Pitt Street Uniting Church. It is titled:
Even in the darkest days, my hotline to God was never disconnected

It is fairly long but I would encourage you to read it.
Some of it refers to the neighbouring parish to that in which I grew up. (Although living nearby we were on opposite sides of the parish boundary.) However there was a period in which my family attended that church and my sister was a Sunday school teacher while I was in the kindergarten. We cannot remember why we went there as it required a bus journey and it is too late to ask Mum now.

Some excerpts follow:
When did you first meet God? For me, it was in kindergarten: Mrs Church's school attached to the Anglican Church of St Andrew at Strathfield in Sydney. In between the plasticine and interminable concerts, I was introduced to God. Generally speaking, we have been on friendly terms ever since.

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When I eventually grew old enough to attend Morning Prayer in St Andrew's Church, it was like moving into the Big School. Out of the church hall where the kindergarten had been conducted and Bible stories taught in Sunday School, I moved into the church itself. It was then that I found that, almost certainly, God was an Englishman. Above the altar (or did we call it that in the Sydney diocese?) hung the Australian flag. But in pride of place was the Union Jack. This, after all, was the Church of England. In the 1940s the word "Anglican" never crossed our lips.

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We were not the first, or the last, to invoke God in war and to create him in our own image. At that time the British Empire still flourished. In the school map, a quarter of the world was coloured red. We felt pretty sure that God looked on British subjects with special favour. White British people had a civilising mission. But we did not really want Asians or black people in White Australia. We wanted to remain pure white - just like the images of God's son shown in the stained glass windows. God was certainly not Asian or black. If he was not an Englishman, at the very least he was white like us.

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As a young boy on the brink of my teenage, I was pretty comfortable that I had the inside running in the matter of God. Things were fairly cut and dried. I used to look at the red on the map and feel mildly irritated by the little section of yellow where Thailand severed the link between Burma and Malaya. No doubt, I thought, an imperial war would, in due course, fix this up. Mr Dillon would go with the troops and, as usual, the British would win the last battle, for truly God was on our side.

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I returned to the fold of the Church of England at Fort Street High School. That great preacher, Dr Stuart Barton-Babbage, taught Scripture to the huge Anglican class. He presented me for confirmation at St Andrew's Cathedral. That is where my relationship with God might have been arrested. It was a solid, competent, somewhat prideful superiority of mixed racial, cultural and religious beliefs. It was not a bad grounding for a spiritual life. But it kept God in a proper compartment. The English were never obsessively religious and neither was I. In a sense, surrounded by love at home with parents and siblings and close relatives, God was an other-worldly phenomenon of the same type of love extended universally. But then a very strange thing happened to me. I reached puberty.

When I realised that my sexual attraction was to people of the same gender, and did not change, I knew that this was not looked on as a good thing. My knowledge did not come from the Reverend Dillon. If ever he read the passage from Leviticus , I must have missed it and all the other strange injunctions appearing there. Nor did it come from my family. But at school, the occasional denunciation of "poofters" led me to know that I should treat my sexual orientation as something very, very bad. The newspapers would occasionally report on famous people entrapped by the police and tried for crimes. The Police Commissioner, Mr Delaney, was always going on about it. At first, I shed a few tears. I felt embarrassed and ashamed about myself. But I got on with my studies; kept speaking to God; and continued with life in a state of denial.

This, presumably, is what was expected of me by religious people. So far as I knew, my own Church said nothing about the subject. Perhaps that was because, in an English type of way, a former Supreme Governor, King George V, had declared: "I thought people like that shot themselves".

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When I reached law school I learned of the stern punishments meted out for "the abominable crime". For an adolescent, full of hope and spirit, these were very frightening times. Especially because you were frightened into silence about your deepest feelings even with those family members closest to you.

Do not think that these times have passed in sunny Australia in a new millennium. Violence against people for reasons of their race, gender and sexuality are daily occurrences. Youth suicide is extremely high, especially amongst boys and young men. Last week I learned of the funeral of a highly talented young man, rejected by his Italian Australian family because of his sexuality, driven to suicide. At his funeral, after all the prayers and the music, all that could be heard was muttering: "It doesn't matter. He was just a poofter".

So how did my relationship with God survive this experience of self-discovery?

First, I never doubted for an instant the surrounding love of my parents, my brothers and sister. I knew, in my heart, that they would always love me as I was. For years we did not confront the subject verbally. We did not really need to do so. When we did, it was exactly as I expected. No big deal. Not everyone is so lucky.

Secondly, I was greatly blessed by having many loving friends and companions, homosexual and heterosexual. Especially in finding a loving partner, Johan. He is not here tonight. He has very little time for religion and churches. He has often said to me: "I don't understand how such an intelligent person can take seriously religions that all oppress women, people of colour and gays". He prefers to be out there helping his Ankali. He volunteers to clean and cook and scrub the toilet-bowl for a patient living with HIV. That is his "religion". He has utter contempt for what he calls "the Bishops in their frocks, spouting words of hate". For thirty-five years, despite the impediments of the world, we have been together. Not everyone is blessed with such relationships. Not everyone wants them. But they are not evil or disordered - just loving, kind, loyal and mutually supportive. To deny humans such love is truly disordered, unnatural, some may even say evil.

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Truth is a tremendous weapon. It is the truth that sets us free. First, a small group, then more, and eventually most citizens came to know the truth that some people are homosexual. To deny them love and companionship is just plain cruel. To deny them equality as citizens is unjust. To punish them for private adult conduct is oppressive. I was fortunate to live through a time when these truths became gradually, increasingly and overwhelmingly accepted in Australia and other civilised countries. Remnants of the old disordered view linger on, including in God's churches. Doubtless in some places they will last longer than others. But in the end, scientific truth will prevail.

I was greatly strengthened in my approach to these issues by my religious upbringing. The Anglican Church in Sydney has its faults. As we all have. But it is part of a denomination that grew out of the Elizabethan settlement in England. After the terrors against Catholics of Edward VI and against Protestants of Mary I, it was imperative to establish a Church of many mansions. Thus, in Sydney to this day, we have the Cathedral, the Church of St James and Christ Church St Lawrence. They represent the low, middle and high church traditions. There is always a space for diverse opinions. It is not, I think, coincidental that it is the Anglican Communion that has witnessed not only the worldwide move to the ordination of women (an absurd exclusion from the ministry of God). But also the ordination of openly homosexual priests and the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson as elected Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire.

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I have never been cut off from God. Never in the darkest days of secrets, fear and alienation have I felt removed from the loving presence of God. Not for an instant did I feel cast out of the temple. It may be a presumption, but I never felt myself "intrinsically evil". I never felt guilty of "grave depravity". Never. I knew that this was just the way that God and nature meant me to be. It had a purpose.

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To be brought up in a spiritual belief with a personal God is a mighty comfort. It helps you get through the problems of life. God was with me in bereavement and in moments of pain and of success. To be brought up in a Church of Jesus is specially comforting for minorities. As Bishop Spong said from this pulpit, Jesus was actually a revolutionary. The universality of his church was a new message for religion to that time. His instruction to love one another, to forgive enemies and to seek reconciliation is one specially relevant to the dangerous contemporary world. His New Covenant undoubtedly extends to gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender, intersex and all queer minorities. In fact, it extends to everyone. But many in the world, including many still in error in his Church, are not listening.

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Their anthropomorphic, contorted, nasty little view of God is totally incompatible with my notion of the enormity of God's presence, as the universal being. It is humans that stamp on God their own petty conceptions. It is humans that try to reduce God to their own paltry and often mean imagination. The notion of God as a bearded prophet or as an Englishman or as a Protestant or Catholic or as an Islamic, Hindu or other human possession is, frankly, absurd. But the notion that around us, "immortal, invisible and divine" is a loving God is one that millions of humans cling to and believe in. It is a notion that is not incompatible with science. It is unproved. But it still exists.

Certainly, that notion is incompatible with cruelty and unkindness to one another. There has been altogether too much of this in the name of God. For centuries people of all religions just accepted a contemptible, little view of God. But now, in our age, a new and larger vision is emerging. As this vision gains strength, many of the human cruelties of the past will be seen for what they were. Then Jesus' injunction to "love one another" will take on a new meaning. The trivial doctrines will be discarded. We will all be closer to God, not just to some creation that humans have fashioned in the image of our own prejudices and selfish conceptions.

I honour those in all churches and faiths who reach out in love and inclusiveness to all people. Tonight I specially honour those who reach out to sexual minorities. Those minorities have been cruelly and wrongly abused in the name of God and often still are. In the millennial year 2000, the Pope prayed: "Let us ask pardon for the violence some have used in the service of the truth and for the distrustful and hostile attitude sometimes taken towards the followers of other religions". To that prayer, I would say Amen. But I would add "Let us ask pardon for the violence some have used in the service of the truth and for the distrustful and hostile attitudes sometimes taken towards women, towards people who are different from ourselves and towards sexual minorities" who are a full part of God's creation. That prayer will come one day. Of that there can be no doubt. And when it comes, let us all be ready to say, Amen.

O Most Excellent Judge

Letters to the Herald re Justice Kirby

I will copy here the letters criticising the Rev Lane. I will not besmirch my blog by copying those in support, 2 from his classmates at Moore College where the Gospel of Hate is taught. Any readers who want. can go and find the ravings of these pharisees for themselves
The good reverend: Pharisee or God's messenger?
However the link will not work after a day when the letters are archived.

As a member of the Anglican Church and a recently elected member of the synod, the abuse of Justice Michael Kirby saddens me ("Admit your sins to the Lord, priest tells gay judge", April 10). The Reverend Richard Lane's attack, as reported, is the language of the Pharisees, whom Christ drove from the temple. Unfortunately these attitudes and language are typical of the Sydney archdiocese, as seen in the recent letter of the bishops justifying them not going to Lambeth. Long known for its patriarchal and implacable opposition to the ordination of women, the Anglican Church in Sydney under its current leadership has become obsessed with matters of sexuality and sexual preferences. The church should focus on its real mission of love, compassion and dialogue, extending Communion and the faith to all.
Geoffrey Sherington Willoughby East


I read about Justice Kirby and the Anglican rector - then checked my diary, to confirm not the date, but the century. I thought I must have had an accident on the way to work, suffered a Life On Mars episode and woken up in the Middle Ages.

Harvey Sanders Paddington


As absurd as the entire concept is, I'd rather spend eternity in hell with Michael Kirby than a minute in heaven with Richard Lane. Homosexuality was not invented. It is real and has been around for much longer than religion. Such intolerance is sickening.

Sean Woodland Forestville


Richard Lane should skip calling upon Michael Kirby to "repent" his gayness and urgently beg forgiveness for his own hubris. Somehow, a century of biblical analysis and social observation seems to have passed Sydney's evangelicals by, leaving one wondering about the future of this extremist rump of Christian anachronism. Their obsessions and irrelevancies grow odder by the day.

George Pugh Redfern


Justice Kirby, take consolation in the knowledge that you are a wonderful human being, a gifted jurist and a great Australian. If there is a god, and I greatly doubt it, she will be far more critical of those who preach hatred in her name than those who she obviously made gay.

John Norris Longueville


The thing I find extraordinary is not the ignorance and bigotry of Richard Lane, Peter Jensen and George Pell. It is that someone with the intelligence and wisdom of Justice Michael Kirby would want to be associated with them.

Brad Parry Culburra Beach

Justice Kirby's Accuser

Today's Sydney Morning Herald has a report on the meeting with Justice Kirby described in my previous post.
Admit your sins to the Lord, priest tells gay judge
The priest is the rector of St Stephen's Church in Bellevue Hill, the Reverend Richard Lane.
Never heard of him and certainly do not want to visit that church - very snooty area anyway.

In conversation David Marr and Justice Michael Kirby

Last night at the St James Institute I heard a conversation
between David Marr,Journalist and writer and Michael Kirby,
Justice of the High Court of Australia.
Both men are openly gay.

David grew up in the wealthy North Shore suburbs of Sydney
and went to one of the leading Anglican schools. He also has
a law degree. However he rejected Christianity and any belief
in God while at University apparently as part of coming to terms
with his homosexuality.   Michael grew up in a middle class
suburb, went to State schools and has maintained his faith in
God and is a member of the Anglican church. The contrast in the
area in which they grew up was the source of some banter between
them.

I have a particular interest in Justice Kirby as we grew up in
the same suburb, he is 5 years older than me. We went to the
same 2 primary schools (his brother, also a judge, was in my
class) and high school (Fort Street) and then onto University
where his trajectory far eclipsed mine. I learnt last night that
he went to the neighbouring parish to mine as we lived on the
border.

I want to stress that I did not take notes and David Marr taped
the conversation as both men have been the subject in the past
of scurrilous attacks by right wing persons. These comments are
from memory and not to be taken as literal quotations. 

The existence of the tape  also caused some amusement as in  a
discussion of the monarchical system (Michael Kirby is also a
monarchist, another point of comparison with me) David described
our present Governor-General as bland and while Michael
disagreed he referred to the problem when a Governor-General
becomes too activist by just pointing to one of the many photos
around the wall of the Banco court of past Presidents of the NSW
Court of Appeal rather than commit to tape. My Australian readers
will be well aware of the name of the Governor-General to whom
he alluded.  Justice Kirby believes that a monarchical democracy
is one of the best forms of government where the head of state
who swans around in limousines opening activities and buildings
has no real power. No argument from me there.

There was discussion of the influence religion would have on
the determinations of a judge and Michael said he could not
divorce his general religious beliefs from his decisions but it
would be wrong for him to impose any narrow denominational
belief. Remember he is working with constitutional laws and on
cases where appeals have already progressed through the other
courts of the land and so he works on the cutting edge of the
law.

However of most interest to me,naturally, was the discussion of
religion and homosexuality. Michael Kirby considers it a good
thing that the world Anglican church is involved in discussion.
I am not sure he is fully aware of the angst and heartbreak
that it is causing but I guess it is better than pretending it
does not exist. David began by asking his opinion as a judge on
a case where a younger son (call him Jacob) deceives his blind
father (Isaac) to steal his older brother’s birthright. Wasn’t
this an obvious case of fraud which the Bible does not condemn.
Michael wanted to move straight to Galatians 3.13  where Paul
states that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. His
belief was that the new covenant had removed the old. He stated
that almost no-one believes the earth was created in 6 days a
bit over 5,000 years ago as we must use our modern scientific
knowledge and rational thought in our bible study. David
retorted with the sermon on the Mount where Jesus said that
“not one jot or tittle of the law will pass away”.  I did not
feel that anything was solved theologically but these were
lawyers not theologians. Michael did stress that the law cannot
just deal with words alone, they must be put into context.

David accused Michael of hiding his gayness in his
conservativeness. Michael pointed out that while he did not
openly declare his gay status until after he became a High Court
Judge, it was no secret in the profession. He has had the same
partner for 39 years and they were seen together, he never
committed the ruse of attending functions with a token woman.
He said he had been hurt when he hadbeen told some of the gossip
going the rounds of the profession. Although he thinks his
progression was slowed, he feels a young lawyer would not find
his gay status a barrier today. I am not so sure.

He stated he has regular correspondence with Archbishop Jensen.
He sends a polite letter to which the archbishop always replies
politely and he then replies in turn politely.  I guess this is
to be expected between two men at the top of their very
respected professions. However after a question from the
audience by a gay man, David Marr read out a letter sent last
December by a leading Anglican clergyman in the Sydney Diocese.
Michael had not given permission for the author’s name to be
revealed, which I found disappointing, except tosay he is the
Rector of one of the wealthiest parishes in the diocese.

The letter would have done justice to Phelps and his mob
stating that Justice Michael Kirby need to repent of his sinful
ways or face the fires of hell etc. etc. The full letter was not
read out, just as well, as I am sure my blood pressure was rising
in anger and shame that this should come from an Anglican
clergyman.

Justice Kirby had passed this on (without revealing the writer’s
name) to Jensen who replied that while strong the writer
probably meant well and there might be something for Justice
Kirby to learn from it.

Justice Kirby continued his polite approach and hoped that people
would leave room for discussion even as Jensen goes to Jerusalem
for GAFCON. He claimed his good health is because he does not
bear grudges.

If I was more confident in public I would have liked to comment
that, while such a letter can be treated with disdain by a
learned High Court Judge, what effect would such an attitude
have on a young person worshipping in that man’s parish who is
struggling to come to terms with his sexuality.   He might,
like David Marr, reject his faith. He might, like me, after many
years of unhappiness and stress find that is not the Christian
truth and somehow manage to keep his faith and his sanity. Or
he might like one of my friends at university decide to take
his own life unable to reconcile his faith and his sexuality.