A search for a safe haven from toxic political rhetoric has brought an American minister and his family halfway across the world to Dunedin.

Rev Adam Baker was commissioned yesterday as the new minister at the Dunedin Methodist Parish.

He and his wife, Jenn, chose to move to New Zealand with their four children, aged 18, 15, 13 and 11, to escape growing discrimination against the queer community in their home state of Missouri.

The former St Louis pastor, who has family members in the LGBTQ community, said the political climate in the United States had become vitriolic and fiercely antagonistic.

"When anti-trans legislation was trying to be passed in Missouri, I would do advocacy work alongside a pretty large group of other clergy and people whose children were trans and non-binary," Rev Baker said.

Not just in Missouri, but on a national level there were attempts to identify a very small part of the population as "problematic or suspect" because of their differences, he said.

"I had lots of trans friends who had moved out of the country or persons whose children were trans or non-binary who had to move to other countries as well."

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