Can We Talk?
Because there is something we're not really dealing with in Homoland . It's not HIV, but I'd argue a lot of our new HIV infections are caused by it. I'm talking about the generally poor state of gay men's mental and emotional health. Britain's Attitude magazine recently did a story on it, which got picked up by The Observer . I see no reason to doubt the situation is any different here, in fact what I know of my own life and the scene I move through confirms this for me. A few weeks ago I was talking with a gay man here in Auckland about the same problems. Gay men have higher than average rates of depression, of drug and alcohol dependency, of STIs, of emtoional and mental health issues in general, and, tragically, of suicide. Yet it's a topic we don't seem willing or able to address. I've been to far too many funerals of friends who have committed suicide. And I confess, it's something I've thought about often myself. That began for me as a...