“That is false,” it said. “We organised the protest in response to a bill that affects the rights, dignity and legal recognition of all New Zealanders and especially trans, takatāpui, intersex and rainbow communities and other women.”
The letter went on to say Peters’ response to the protest portrayed those attending as “inauthentic, unintelligent and dishonest”.
It urged Peters to delete the post, apologise and donate $100 to RainbowYOUTH.
“This letter is written in the hope that the matter can be resolved promptly and proportionately,” the group said.
“We reserve all rights, including the right to seek legal advice and pursue any remedies available to us if the defamatory statement is not corrected.”
Peters then wrote on social media that he’d welcome a showdown in court, while noting that his original post criticising the event attracted 1.7 million views.
“I won’t be deleting it with all the positive responses it is receiving from kiwis with common sense who are backing our stance,” he said in the post.
If Rainbow Action Tāmaki wanted to take him to court, it should “go ahead”. He claimed the court process would allow emails between the group and the Green Party “and whomever else you co-ordinate with” to be revealed to “find out who is really behind all this”.
Peters took a jab at the rainbow community in general, saying he did not care if people identified as “they or them or a lamp-post”.
Rainbow Action Tāmaki declined to comment when asked if it would pursue legal advice after Peters’ reaction.
However, it labelled Peters a hypocrite and a bully in a statement to the Herald.
“The hypocrisy of a rent-a-politician who took a donation from a fossil fuel company and takes them from the mega-rich trying to paint a grassroots organisation as paid for is staggering. We don’t want your culture war.”
Its reference was to a $100,000 donation to NZ First in February from GMP Environmental, which provides services to the fossil fuel industry, including oil waste cleanup.
Thousands of people attended protests across New Zealand opposing the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill, which has passed its first reading and is open for public submissions until July 2.
When approached for comment, a spokesperson for Peters referred the Herald back to his Facebook posts.
Thousands of protesters attended Saturday’s Defy Definitions protests, held across the country in a bid to stop the bill progressing any further.
The Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill seeks to define “woman” as “an adult human biological female” and “man” as “an adult human biological male”, regardless of gender identity.
The author of the bill, NZ First’s Jenny Marcroft, has argued that, to protect women and single-sex spaces, New Zealand must follow the lead of the United Kingdom and clarify definitions.
“When words lose meaning, the law that depends on them becomes unstable,” she said during the first reading.
Saturday’s Mana Irawhiti: Defy Definition protest.
“Since Adam and Eve, people have known what a woman and a man are and, even if you’re not a person of faith, people have known this since the dawn of time.”
Marcroft claimed there had been confusion since a Crown Law opinion in 2006, which suggested that transgender people could be protected from discrimination on the ground of sex, “but it did not say that sex and gender identity are the same thing, and it did not suggest that sex-based exceptions in the law should be reinterpreted to include the opposite sex”.
Marcroft also claimed that a “woke contagion” had infected the Ministry of Health because it used trans-inclusive wording, such as “people with a cervix” instead of “women”.
“My leader, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, declared a ‘war on woke’, and so I ask this Parliament to vote for reality in law. I’m hearing an echo ripple across the generations. I’m hearing the words of our suffragist forebearers: vote for women.”
The bill passed its first reading last month and is open for public submissions until July 2.
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