Shaneel Shavneel Lal (born 22 January 2000)[1] is a Fijian-New Zealand LGBT rights activist, columnist and political commentator.
After attending a Christian primary and high school in Fiji, Lal states that they "grew out of" religion and subscribes to indigenous spirituality.
[12][13][11][14] In the summer of 2017, Lal was volunteering at Middlemore Hospital when a church leader walked up to them and offered to pray their gay away.
Lal told interviewer Jenny-May Clarkson that numerous queer people pray to God to "heal them, or kill them".
[2] Following this interview, Massey University lecturer Steve Elers wrote an opinion piece for the Manawatu Guardian, republished by The New Zealand Herald, dismissing the issue of conversion therapy.
[19] David Farrier defended Lal in his blog Webworm, and the subsequent media attention led to Elers's opinion column being cancelled.
[23] Lal worked with the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to deliver a petition of over more than 150,000 signatures to ban conversion therapy.
Lal argued that the Labour Party ignored the voices of queer people and put forward an inadequate and ineffective Bill after the select committee process.
[33] Lal stated that they received a death threat after the passing of the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill.
[34] Lal told VICE World News that the ban on conversion therapy is a gift to future generations of queer people.
[35] In 2022, Vogue magazine published an online article in celebration of Lal's efforts to ban conversion therapy in New Zealand.
Vogue wrote that "Lal's call for New Zealand to reform the laws around conversion therapy have made a major impact".
[36] In 2022, Lal shared an article to their Instagram detailing how Bethlehem College in Tauranga requires all students and their families to demonstrate a commitment to the belief that marriage is only between a man and a woman.
[41] In May 2023, Lal said that New Zealand Blood Services had sufficient international evidence demonstrating it was safe to use individualised risk assessment to determine donor eligibility.
[11] Following a 2021 Green Party event celebrating 35 Years of Homosexual Law Reform, Lal criticised the lack of action by New Zealand's Pākehā queer community to support the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the Pacific Islands and addressed the racism in the New Zealand queer community.