Forty years on: revisiting historical rainbow classification

On July 11th, 1986, New Zealand Parliament passed the Homosexual Law Reform Bill, redefining the course of our history. Appropriately, the anniversary falls within Aotearoa Queer History Month. At the Classification Office, we’re reflecting on our own journey four decades on.

Before the Classification Office was established, censorship decisions in New Zealand followed different criteria. Between 1963 and 1994, approximately 1200 publications were banned by the Indecent Publications’ Tribunal – some solely for their rainbow content. Prior to the law reform, some of these publications dealt with matters that were illegal at the time.

Between 2022 and 2024, we undertook a project to revisit classification decisions made prior to homosexual law reform. We established a dedicated pathway to identify and source as many historical rainbow publications as we could obtain. In our reconsideration, we found the large majority of the material no longer met our legislative criteria and was subsequently unbanned.

Censorship balances the protection from harm with the right to exercise freedom of expression, a right that is factored into all of our classification decisions. We’re really proud that we were able to unban these historical texts, and reconsider past decisions in the context of our current laws.

Do you know of any potentially banned material? Send it to us for reconsideration.

Although the project has concluded, this anniversary serves as a timely reminder of our reconsideration process. Publications banned a long time ago can be hard to source. If you’re aware of any material that was potentially banned during the period homosexuality was criminalised, we’d love to hear from you.

It is illegal to create, possess or distribute banned content in New Zealand.

If you wish to have a historical rainbow publication reconsidered by the Chief Censor please submit an application via our Reconsideration Assessment Form.

We’d like to thank Shannon Novak at Safe Space Alliance for bringing the topic of historical rainbow publications to our attention five years ago.

We honour New Zealand’s queer history and celebrate our rainbow communities past and present.

Further Reading

If you’re looking at ways to acknowledge Queer History Month Aotearoa, Kawe Mahara Queer Archives Aotearoa have developed a digital resource, providing practical tools, upcoming events, and more.