with Stephen Meyler

#TuslaHIV

#LondonPride

#GCN30

NANNY STATE OR BIG BROTHER?

A recent court case showed an unusual legal side to how attitudes to AIDS have changed, now that it’s a treatable disease. The state agency that looks after vulnerable children, Tusla, wanted the right to tell the 17-year-old girlfriend of a boy, also 17, who has been HIV-positive since birth, about his status. Tusla believes the boy, who has been in the agency’s care all of his life, is having sex with the girl and that she has a right to the information, so she could be in control of her own sexual health.

The judge turned them down, largely because it would have been a breach of the trust between doctor and patient that was unwarranted, given the low risk of the girl getting HIV from the boy and the fact that it is no longer a life-threatening disease (in Ireland at least). This was despite a leading sexual health specialist appearing for Tusla, to argue that he and other doctors should breach their patients’ confidentiality in such cases.

The judge said that to grant Tusla its request would be an inappropriate interference in the bedroom, which people of a certain age will recall, was one of the core arguments used by David Norris and other campaigners during the long struggle to decriminalise homosexuality.

Apart from the judge’s dismissal of AIDS as a not very dangerous disease (we’re sure he based that on evidence presented during the case), other questions are raised by all of this. Is the state’s duty of care for the girl in this case (and all other girls in such cases) of lesser importance than preserving the boy’s expectation that his doctors won’t reveal his medical history? At 17, the girl is at the age of consent, so has the state’s duty to protect her now been reduced and it’s up to her to mind herself?

GCN saw us through, all the milestone moments, good and bad. Now, its challenges are the same as those faced by all media.

PRIDE BEFORE A FALL

The UK’s venerable gay rights organisation, Stonewall, pulled out of London Pride this year because it said the event doesn’t reflect the ethnic diversity of the city’s LGBT+ population. The implication is that Pride in London is a mostly white, mostly middle class (and probably mostly male) event. Coincidentally, that is the profile of most of the bosses of the global companies that lend their financial support to Pride. Seems obvious though: if Stonewall is right, then London Pride is just giving its backers what they want – a colourful, but not too colourful event to parade their social awareness flags at. I wonder if there is a dress-code for participants too?

For many older gay people, Pride is now a bust; sold out to corporate sponsorship years ago. What was once a protest where all the disparate members of the queer family made themselves visible and powerful for one day at least, is now a carnival open to all. Or in the case of London Pride, is it open to all but some more than others?

YOU’RE AN OTTER NOW!

GCN is celebrating 30 years with this issue, a hard to believe milestone for a publication that was pretty much defined by its outsider status, almost always teetering on the edge of a funding cliff. Despite repeated threats to its existence, it recorded and sometimes created the story of Ireland’s gays for the past 30 years.

It began with an outrageous murder, an even more outrageous failure of justice, but from this darkest of starts, went on to report the development of the gay rights movement from raw emotion, through polite chats in the corridors of power, to a call that the country eventually answered. It has outlived the influence of the gay community’s most powerful opponent, the Catholic Church. It also recorded all the great nights and social experiences that only an emerging but still clandestine-feeling gay scene could create.

GCN saw us through the first AIDS crisis, the changes in the law, all the milestone moments, good and bad. Now, its challenges are the same as those faced by all media: how to pay its way when we expect our news to be free? How to be heard in a world of echo chambers, mirror media, fake news and one-click oblivion?

In the past, GCN relied on the kindness of strangers, whether it was forward-thinking civil servants or billionaire American philanthropists. That help is going or gone, leaving GCN’s staffand publishers with the same existential problem they have always faced. To them it possibly seems like nothing has changed; despite 30 years of unimagined progress for the LGBT+ community, GCN is still always just about managing to survive. I don’t doubt that it will.