The Gay Blade

MP Jan Logie floated the idea of a Rainbow Ministry or high-level agency in 2019. Her claim is that we need representation at this level, in the same way other minorities have it to help ensure their voices are heard. It's election season, so these ideas are worth airing. On the surface it might seem like a good idea, but I’m not entirely convinced. In Auckland we have the Rainbow Advisory Panel, one of a number of Auckland Council Advisory Panels that are supposed to somehow view Council moves through an LGBTI+ lens and feed back how we might be affected. Or so I assume. Many queer people in Tāmaki Makaurau are unaware this panel exists. While I’m sure that the members of it are trying their best, the selection and appointment process seems somewhat opaque. Apparently you express interest in the role, attend a half day workshop, then get interviewed, and get appointed or not. Just who appoints and under what criteria is unclear, I couldn’t find the details on the websit...

Published in 1978, Larry Kramer's "Faggots" is still one of the Great Gay Books, and every young homo should read it. As we are so often reminded, how can we know where we are going if we don't know where we're coming from?                   'The novel does describe a certain kind of social behaviour, but it is not      recommended for lovers of Jane Austen' as one reviewer put it. The book outraged so many when it was published, gay and straight, but it continues to tell a story that resonates. It's outrageous in so many ways, hilarious, edgy still, and has a lot to say to the world of gay men today I reckon. One of my oldest friends gave it to me in 1979, when I was 18, and I still have that copy. At 18, I was too young to understand what he was saying, and I was bewildered by it then. Now I think it's a masterpiece. Kramer today can't be spoken of without thinking of his AIDS activism. He drove the founding of both the ...

I went to a book launch at The Women's Bookshop the night before we moved back to Level 3 lockdown here in Auckland. It was packed, a great night, a celebration. And deservedly so.  The books is "Crossing the Lines" by Brent Coutts, and it's excellent in so many ways. Just look at that cover!We've been doing this stuff way before Ru Paul. Crossing the Lines is a book that adds hugely to our understanding of the world of gay men in New Zealand, and it does this by giving us a rich historical context and background to a world few know much about or have thought of. If you think "gay history" seems a bit forbidding, don't be put off. This is fascinating, and more than that, it is in places deeply tender and moving. He is telling real stories of real gay men who might seem distant in time but whose lives I believe are familiar in so many way to our own. He shows us what it was like to be gay, more accurately to be homosexual, the term they used, in New Z...

Why Ban Poppers?  Amyl. Poppers. Rush. Jungle Juice. Leather Cleaner. "Room Deodorizer" (That one always puzzled me in my teens when I'd see that description in gay magazines - why did gay men need to deodorise their rooms so much?). They've been part of gay men's life from before I was around, and I've been around a while. From dance floors to bedrooms, we've had a lot of fun with them, one of the most innocent of all recreational drugs. The rumour is that they used to pump them through the air-con at Alfies in the 80s, but I don't know if that is true. We certainly used to take them out dancing, and of course for sex after dancing. Some dancefloors stank of them. Getting your arm jostled as you had the bottle up to your nostril and getting a dose up your nose was a hazard. I worked on Craccum a bit when I was at University, and I remember another volunteer was a chem student and brought a marmite jar full of his own pure product made in the universit...

The term "homosexual" really seems to have fallen out favour these days, and I think that's a pity. I've noticed it for quite a while, but it really came home when I saw someone comment on a post on Facebook that attacks a right-wing politician's views on us, asking "Who uses that word to describe us anymore?" I admit it's not my go-to term, but I think the word deserves a bit more love. "Homosexual" as a term to describe same-sex attraction and activity was invented in 1869, by Karl-Maria Kertbeny , an Austrian novelist.  He coined the word at least ten years before anyone came up with the word heterosexual.  Kertbeny was protesting a proposed anti-sodomy law. Imagine how brave you'd have to be to even raise that topic back then.  It was a revolutionary term at the time.  It was the first time in Western culture (and many others) there was a term to describe us that wasn't linked with judgemental and derogatory religious and social...

Something strange is happening in Manurewa. Labour MP Louisa Wall is being challenged for selection to the seat she currently holds there, and she’s being challenged by some in  her own party. This is the sort of thing that usually only happens when there’s been a scandal of some sort, but in this case there isn’t even the tiniest whiff of one.  It seems that some group in the Labour Party organisation has taken against her, but it’s hard to see why. Looking at the Spinoff’s 2019 list of MPs who are flops she doesn’t get a mention, but a couple of Labour Cabinet Ministers get rated as under-performers by a range of different commentators. No mention of Louisa. Some say that there is discontent in her electorate, that she’s not seen as doing enough for it, but from her social media she seems to be a busy and engaged local MP. It's hard to believe, but there are also some young Queer activists who think she's not radical enough and are hoping she's...

I’ve already lived through one plague that killed so many friends and pretty much upended the world we’d built and taken for granted. I didn’t think I’d have to do this twice in my life. But here we are. There are some parallels  and differences that strike me as an HIV+ gay man from the wealthy developed world. One thing is how the public health message around Covid has been handed down here in New Zealand, calmly, kindly even, but firmly handed down from authority. With HIV/AIDS, the response,(condom use, safe sex) was driven by the community.  It was gay doctors in the USA, watching what was unfolding in their communities, in the face of offical indifference or hostility,  who led the charge on this, and it was a huge piece of behavioural change to push. We gay men had created a culture that celebrated sexual freedom, to put it mildly, so to try and get gay men to change our behaviour in such a fundamental way was an amazing feat. Because the voices urging...

I take a real pleasure in reading other people's diaries. After they're dead, of course. The Diaries of Virginia Woolf are still one of my favourites. Diaries of gay men hold a particular fascination for me, and I've been following one on Facebook called Mr Lucas .  Follow it - it's fascinating. As the pinned post at the top of the page says :  " Mr Lucas has been buying sex since the 1950s. An unremarkable man, he led a rather remarkable life. Born in 1926 in Romford, he lived a quiet unassuming life as a civil servant in the department of trade (I think he did something with contracts, but that’ll become clearer as we go on). But, by dint of his sexuality, he also lived a very active life in the sleazy streets of 1960s Soho. That is, when he wasn't cottaging. Or paying guardsmen for sex. Or pining for a normal life." They are a treasure trove of a side of gay life largely gone from most Western countries, but still, I imagine, very similar to the...

There's an old line that straight men are afraid of gay men because they're worried we'll treat them like they treat women, and I think there's more than a grain of truth to it. I've been watching the #MeToo movemen t arising from the  fury so many women have at the way sexual assault has been used against them, and as in the case with Anthony Rapp, we see Kevin Spacey also accused of doing this to men. I have felt  invisible in all the commentary on this topic that I've seen reported, the assumption is simply that what applies to heterosexual women around consent applies to all. I don't think it's that simple. It doesn't resonate with my lived experience. I want to explore that disconnect, between things that are so real for so many of my female friends and women in general, and my own experiences. If I think of my own sex life and the encounters I've had. I estimate I'd had sex with around 1,000 men by my early 20s, and maybe 2,0...

I think it was Chateaubriand who said that trying to imagine our own death is like trying to stare into the sun.We can't do it. Death is the one human experience that we will all go through, but the one that nobody can describe. Nobody has come back from death and said "It feel like this" 'This is what happens". Some do tell us such stories, but the fact they have "come back" means they have not died, and their knowledge is as limited as ours. In the '90s when I was expecting and expected to die from AIDS, I thought about death a lot.I'd been diagnosed in '87 or '88, I can't quite remember when now. Nothing really happened to me after diagnosis, years of just going on as before. But then it started, I began to get sick, weak. And as I got sick,  I became angry, bitterly furious. My body that engine of pleasure, this sack of meat that is me, no longer did what I wanted. My body had betrayed me.That's how it felt. I spent...

There has been a fair bit of anger and upset in certain LGBTTI+ circles this week, after express writer Sarah Murphy published a report on long-time community stalwart Paul Heard's racist comments after he and his partner were gay-bashed on K rd as they were finishing a night out. I've known Paul for many years, he's a friend and someone I know as a good and decent man. But as soon as I saw those comments I knew he was in trouble. Paul's comments were racist and offensive, nobody has ever said they weren't. But he had just been gay-bashed, for the third time in recent years, on K Rd, a space that we do tend to view as our own. Getting gay-bashed is traumatic, to put it mildly, and unlikely to elicit a calm and reasoned response. Yet the event had happened nearly two months ago, and had been reported on the now closed Gay.com very soon after it happened. Just why Sarah Murphy decided to dig up the story and present it again at this time is strange. The tone ...

I ran into an old friend a few weekends ago. We were both at the wonderful Fāgogo exhibition at the St Paul Street Gallery. Pati Solomona Tyrell, the artist, has created something truly intriguing, evocative and beautiful. It's nearly over now, but if you can, go see it.It is worth your time. The works by themselves are beautiful pieces of art, If this exhibition were in a dealer gallery there would be red stickers by them all. And in a wider context, the entire exhibition tells a story. To put it simply, going by what I've read, Fāgogo is a form of story telling in Samoan culture that builds and holds community heritage and history. Stories told "in a shared context, with an expectation to share the story." He brings this alive in the biggest piece, projected on a wall with a running narrative. The work is intimately tied into the Fafswag scene that is getting more attention, as we see different queer Pasifika voices make themselves heard. It's th...

Clunky, quirky,  and not exactly easy on the eye, but I'm going to miss it. Long-time editor Jay Bennie announced  that he and his business partner Neil Gibb have decided it's time to retire, which looks like it means the end of Gaynz, the only site of genuine journalism and news that focussed on NZ's LGBTTI+ world. And as a disclaimer, it's only fair to note that I've been published there many times, as well as in Express when Jay owned and ran that so well. The website was definitely past its best-by date. It would seem to go against every cliche there is about what wonderful flair for design gay men are supposed to have. And Jay was generous in the way he covered so many smaller events and gave free publicity to many smaller community groups and efforts. And most importantly, underneath the plain front was real journalism, not just empty puffery for advertisers. Jay is a trained journalist, and he hired trained journalists over the years to edit the...