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Josie Butler is the person behind “a big gay party” in Christchurch which was planned to coincide with Destiny Church’s Bishop Brian Tamaki’s visit to Christchurch.
She is an imaginative social activist with a flair for attracting the media’s attention.
At Waitangi in 2016 she threw a dildo at cabinet minister Stephen Joyce and was heard yelling: “That’s for raping our sovereignty.”
That gained her the attention of the comedian John Oliver who featured the event on his HBO show.
This most recent protest has succeeded. Tamaki had been due to speak at the Haeata Community Campus in Aranui, but the booking has been cancelled.
School principal Andy Kai Fong said the school hired its facilities to a range of community groups – including Destiny Church on at least one previous occasion.
The school also revoked its approval for the “Queer Quake Mardi Gras” event to be held on its grounds.
The issue of which groups could hire school facilities would be discussed at the next board of trustees meeting, Fong said.
A spokesperson for Destiny Church told Radio NZ over the weekend that the event would still go ahead at an undisclosed location. Butler said the protest was on hold until she figured out where Tamaki will speak.
Butler works as a registered nurse in the mental health sector. She received public recognition as one of the life-saving nurses on the front line in the Christchurch earthquakes.
She has led numerous voluntary projects in the health sector both nationally and abroad, and was heavily involved in the anti-TPP campaign.
Her latest project is a suicide prevention campaign aimed at schools.
Butler is currently studying Maori and indigenous studies at Canterbury University. She aims to establish a mental health clinic run by clinicians who have experienced mental illness themselves, with an underlying foundation of the Maori model of health.
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