Call to limit gay presence on TV
Producers say they will comply with Culture Ministry's request


The Culture Ministry will next week ask all television stations to cut down on images portraying homosexual behaviour, a senior ministry official said yesterday.

Dr Kla Somtrakul, deputy permanent secretary for Culture, said some television programmes clearly showed homosexual behaviour and if unchecked some of them could cross the line to obscenity. Kla also dismissed as misquotes recent press accounts reporting him saying that no homosexuals would be hired at the ministry.

Next week, the ministry would send a letter requesting television stations not to air "sexually deviant" homosexual messages but leave the final decision to the stations' own judgement.

Television producers said they would cooperate, although they played down the ministry's concerns.


~

Top bishop's vision - a world without gays
By CATHERINE MASTERS

The new head of the Anglican Church has a vision of a world without homosexuality.

Bishop Whakahuihui Vercoe, 75, is a controversial replacement for Archbishop John Paterson, who has headed New Zealand's largest church for seven years.

Bishop Vercoe is a staunch supporter of the Treaty of Waitangi and has been outspoken over the years on homosexuality, immigration and the place of women in the church.

In his first big interview since his appointment, he told the Weekend Herald he believed that homosexuality was unnatural and not morally right.