The Gay Blade

Why are we so invisible? I don't know if you saw, but there was a news report out this week saying a pair of bodies that had been trapped in the lava at Pompeii, and identified for many years as "The Maidens" is in fact two male bodies. This has led to all sorts of speculation that in fact they were two lovers, two men taking comfort in each other's arms at this terrible time. The UK magazine Attitude got so carried away that it claimed that they were. And it's a beautiful and poignant way of thinking about them.Two men, in love, as this terrible catastrophe destroys their world and comes to take their lives, finding some comfort, some refuge in each other, in death as in life. But it's highly unlikely to be true. There is in fact no way of knowing anything about them except they are two bodies whose forms were preserved in lava. Yet so many of us  really, really wanted to believe they were lovers. And that's because we so rarely see an...

Unless you've been living under a rock, you would have noticed the scandalous behaviour last week from a childcare centre in Northland , where they wanted a 4 year-old HIV+ boy, who is on meds, and has an undetectable viral load, removed from the centre until they had "a care plan" in place. Yeah, right. You don't need a care plan for HIV+ children like this. It's also illegal in NZ to discriminate against anyone because of blood-borne infections. It just left me shaking my head in sorrow and anger. The centre has now claimed that they've been slandered by the NZ AIDS Foundation, who, as far as I understand, simply tried to broker an understanding and inform them of the facts, as well as advocate for the boy involved. It's all been horrible and messy. It must have been particularly distressing for the boy and his family, even his HIV- brothers at primary school have been affected. And I imagine it has been difficult on some level for the people...