80 More Gays Around the World: Part 25) Friends and Betrayal

Last time on “80 More Gays”: 68) Bruce Voeller (1934-1994) was the person credited with coming up with the name “AIDS”, and names form the basis of the AIDS Memorial Quilt created by 69) Cleve Jones (b.1954), for which many companies have raised funds, including South African wine companies, one of which is owned by 70) Gerard Holden (b.1964), while another is located on the site of a leper hospital were 71) Dr. James Barry (c.1795-1865) worked.

After over 40 years service in the British army as a pioneering surgeon 71) Dr. James Barry retired to London where he died. His body was laid out in preparation for burial by a woman called Sophia Bishop. It was she discovered that James Barry was physically female and had successfully hidden this secret from the army for decades. When Sophia was refused payment for her services she took the secret to the press.

The revelation that one of the most revered army surgeons was born a woman caused quite a stir. The army were so embarrassed that they tried to suppress James Barry’s military records for a hundred years. Their attempt failed and the world got to know James Barry’s secret.

James Barry was baptised Margaret Ann Bulkey in Ireland. From adulthood he lived as a man. This suited James’ father who managed to enrol him into Edinburgh University as a medical student in 1809. Women were not allowed to study medicine in those days.

James qualified as a doctor in 1812 and enlisted into the army a year later. He rose very quickly to become Assistant Surgeon to the Forces in 1815. This position gave James the chance to travel the world. His first posting was to Cape Province in South Africa where he became Colonial Medical Inspector. In this role he went to the leper hospital at Hermanus (the location of the present Hamilton Russell wine estate) and immediately set about improving health care and hygiene practices.

James had a reputation for voicing his opposition to many established medical practices wherever he went. He even had a big row with Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War over hygiene (she then stole his ideas and passed them off as her own).

By the time of his death James Barry was well-known and respected, and all because his father enrolled him into Edinburgh University all those decades earlier. Others also kept his gender a secret. One of the family friends was a Venezuelan revolutionary called Francisco de Miranda. The original plan may have been for James to act as governess to Miranda’s children, perhaps in Venezuela, before he made his decision to become a doctor. James wouldn’t have become such a famous figure in the medical world if he had gone to Venezuela because South America was in a state of turmoil as colonies began revolting against their Spanish and Napoleonic rulers. Francisco de Miranda laid the foundations for the liberation of much of South America, assisted by compatriot revolutionaries such as a Simón Bolivar and 72) Carlos de Montúfar (1780-1816).

Carlos’s relationship with the German explorer Alexander von Humboldt is mentioned here. After he and Humboldt went their separate ways Carlos entered the Spanish army and fought in several battles against the Napoleonic French. In 1810 he sailed back to his native Ecuador, a Spanish colonial province then called the Quito Audiencia. There he joined the independence movement with his father, the Marques de Selva Alegre.

In 1812 independence was declared under the name of the Autonomous Government of Quito with Carlos’s father as President. However, a few months later Spanish loyalist troops took Quito city and the revolutionary government, including Carlos de Montúfar, fled. Eventually Carlos joined Simón Bolivar in his independence campaigns in Colombia but was captured at the Battle of the Cuchilla de Tambo in June 1816. The following month he was executed.

Simón Bolivar went on to become the big hero of South American independence, even having the country Bolivia named after him, of course. Strangely, Bolivia attracted many German settlers. Their descendants are recognised as a separate ethnic community to this day.

In the 1920s Bolivia decided to call upon Germany to help them reorganise their army. One of the military instructors that was sent was 73) Ernst Röhm (1887-1934), one of Adolf Hitler’s close friends.

Ernst arrived in Bolivia in January 1929. He was disappointed that a recent conflict with Paraguay has been resolved before he arrived and he was often at odds with his commanding officer, Gen. Hans Kundt. Shortly after his arrival a coup supported by Kundt deposed the Bolivian president. Ernst was rumoured that the new president had chosen him to replace Kundt, but before that could happen Ernst received a letter from Hitler ordering him to return to Germany. If only he had stayed in Bolivia.

What attracted Ernst back was the promise of becoming Chief of Staff of the SA (Sturmabteilung, the Storm Battalion, known as the Brown Shirts), the Nazi’s paramilitary wing which Ernst had helped to found in 1921. By 1934 the general reputation of the SA had deteriorated to the status of armed thugs and Hitler decided to scale back its powers.

Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, the Chief of the SS Security Service, fabricated documents against Ernst Röhm, suggesting that the SA were planning to overthrow Hitler. Most of this evidence centred on the alleged activities of the many known gay members of the SA. Hitler knew Ernst was gay and was at first reluctant to believe the evidence. What resulted was the “Night of the Long Knives”, a pivotal event in the history of the rise of Hitler.

On 30th June 1934 Hitler and SS troops arrested Ernst Röhm and the SA leaders in a surprise attack. After some procrastination Hitler ordered the execution of Ernst two days later. Following the Night of the Long Knives Hitler strengthened Paragraph 175, the law criminalising homosexuality, and Hitler assumed more power.

Reinhard Heydrich, the co-author of the fake documents, became Protector of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia (modern-day Czech Republic). Czech rebels murdered Heydrich in 1942 and Hitler retaliated by ordering the execution of every man in the village of Lidice, where he claimed the assassins had been harboured. The “Lidice Massacre” horrified the world. Some places still commemorate it to this day. One commemoration was a verse-play called “The Murder of Lidice” and it was written by 74) Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950).

Next time of “80 More Gays”: How a village was destroyed, how reputations were built, and how civilisations were revealed.

80 More Gays Around the World: Part 24) Naming Names

Last time on “80 More Gays”: 64) Hubert Lyautey (1854-1934) was probably part-inspiration for a character created by 65) Marcel Proust (1871-1922) who was an orchid lover, one of the botanical crazes which began in the 19th century, like fern-fever which formed the basis of a nursery founded by 66) Steven Fletcher (b.1959) and 67) Kerry Robinson (b.1965) and which was a specialist area of study by 68) Bruce Voeller (1934-1994).

The name of 68) Bruce Voeller is best known within the lgbt community for coming up with the name AIDS, but in scientific circles he is also remembered for something else. Bruce studied the structure of ferns and related plants. He wrote many academic articles and papers on the subject and a few general text books on botany. In 1962 he was appointed an Assistant Professor of botany at the Rockefeller Institute (now the Rockefeller University) and became an Associate Professor four years later.

Bruce married and had three children. He decided to come out as gay in 1963 and the subsequent child custody battle after the divorce attracted a lot of coverage in the press.

Bruce then became a gay rights activist joining several protests and co-founding the Gay Activists Alliance in 1969. However, he disliked the Alliance’s reliance on “zapping” – high-publicity protests that we see today in organisations such as Extinction Rebellion. In 1973 Bruce left the Alliance to form what is now called the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

In 1978 Bruce moved to California where he founded another organisation, the Mariposa Education and Research Foundation, whose aim was to conduct research into human sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases. Thus Bruce and the Mariposa Foundation were ideally placed when a deadly disease suddenly appeared in the 1980s. At first scientists varied in their choice of name for the disease, the most popular being Gay Related Immune Defence Disorder (GRID). Some doctors refused to use this name because some patients with the disease weren’t gay men.

It is believed that it was Bruce who came up with the alternative name for GRID. His suggestion was Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome – AIDS. Bruce attended the meeting of the Centre for Disease Control in July 1982 at which the name AIDS became the official name for the disease. Bruce continued to campaign for AIDS education and carried out research into the disease right up to his own AIDS-related death in 1994.

Names figure prominently in awareness campaigns for HIV and AIDS. Perhaps no other disease has so many named sufferers who are personally memorialised in something akin to the names on war memorials. The biggest collection of these names is the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt founded by 69) Cleve Jones (b.1954).

The idea for the quilt came to Cleve during a march in 1985 in remembrance of Harvey Milk, the gay San Francisco politician murdered in 1978. Cleve asked people to write the names of loved ones who had died from AIDS-related causes on cardboard signs. These were then taped to the walls of the San Francisco Federal Building. To Cleve, the taped signs reminded him of a quilt. And so an icon of the modern lgbt community was born. This year the quilt came into the care of the National AIDS Memorial organisation. Sections of the quilt were unfolded at the National AIDS Memorial Grove in a ceremony on 10th July 2020.

Over the years many lgbt and non-lgbt organisations, both charitable and commercial, have contributed to the fundraising efforts of the NAMES Project Foundation to help support people who are suffering physically or financially because they have been diagnosed with HIV or lost a loved one.

In 1997 a California wine producer called Clos du Bois began a long-running fund-raising  campaign. They produced “neckers”, little cards that hang around bottle necks, each depicting the AIDS Quilt. Every purchaser would be encouraged to return the necker to Clos du Bois who would donate a dollar to the NAMES Project Foundation.

Clos du Bois advertisement from “Advocate” magazine, November 1998.

Clos du Bois was not the first commercial company to target the lgbt community (e.g. Disney, Skittles and Kellogg’s are “serial targeters”). Let’s stay with wine. Over the years several other wine companies have produced fundraisers for lgbt charities. There are also a few wine companies run by openly lgbt producers. One of the biggest in South Africa is the Holden Manz Wine Estate established by 70) Gerard Holden (b.1964) and his partner Migo Manz.

Gerard came from a coal-mining family in northern England. This inspired him to become a mining engineer and he joined Barclays Bank. He eventually became its Global Head of Mining and Metals. This took him all around the world, and he fell in love with South Africa. In 2005 he bought a winery estate in the Francshhoek Valley in Western Cape Province.

The Holden Manz estate has grown in its reputation, and several of its wines have won awards. It has also hosted tours of the winery, including some organised by Out in the Vineyard, an lgbt wine-lovers tour company in California. The luxury guest house on the estate has also hosted same-sex weddings.

Wine-growing in South Africa went through a renaissance after the dismantling of apartheid in the 1990s. The Holden Manz estate is one example, and today South African wines are very popular. It is one among many vineyards in idyllic settings, surrounded by picturesque mountains. But the scenery can often mask the original purpose of the vineyard, and probably no more so than another leading Western Cape vineyard, Hamilton Russell at Hermanus. The land on which that vineyard sits was once part of a leper hospital. One of the doctors who worked there was 71) James Barry (1795-1865).

Next time on “80 More Gays”: From South Africa to Venezuela, and from Ecuador to Germany, we find that having a friend in high places is both a blessing and a danger.

80 More Gays Around the World: Part 18) Fighting Against AIDS and Art

Last time on “80 More Gays”: Geophysicist 47) Allan Cox (1926-1987) provided proof of continental drift which had been suggested in studies of plants and lichens by 48) Elke Mackenzie (1911-1990), a member of the secret Operation Tarabin sent to the Falkland Islands, where the long-running Anglo-Argentine dispute over them is continued by 49) Gustavo Mellela (b.1970), the most recent openly gay provincial governor since 50) Jared Polis (b.1975).

50) Jared Polis was elected Governor of Colorado on 6th November 2018. Even though 49) Gustavo Mellela is the most recent openly gay governor to take office (as the Argentine Governor of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the Southern Atlantic Islands) Jared is still the most recent who was openly gay when running for office. Before becoming governor Jared was a member of the US House of Representatives.

Jared Polis is Colorado born and bred. Though he is entitled to live in the governor’s mansion in Denver he has chosen to live there only during legislative sessions. The mansion was built in 1908 as the home of a tycoon’s widow. In 1957 it came into the possession of the Boetcher Foundation and they offered it to the state of Colorado. On New Year’s Eve 1959 the then Governor, Stephen McNichols, accepted the gift and it has been the governor’s official residence ever since.

The Governor's Mansion, Denver, Colorado.

Jared Polis is not the mansion’s first gay residence. The son of Governor McNichols spent some of his childhood there. His name is 51) William Hart McNichols (b.1949). Although his immediate family background is in politics, William chose to study art and religion. His dream was to illustrate religious books for children. Since 1982 he has illustrated many books for the Paulist Press and other Christian publishers.

William was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1979. When AIDS began its devastating effect on the gay community Father William volunteered at the St. Vincent Medical Centre in New York as a chaplain in the AIDS hospice team.

In 1986 he came out publicly. Two factors influenced his decision which, in those days, could easily have meant being fired, both as a chaplain and as a priest. The first influence was his desire to minister to AIDS patients who had a deep-seated suspicion against the church and felt uneasy talking to a priest. He felt that as an openly gay priest he could help to overcome the unease. The second influence was publicity at that time around sexual abuse by priests. By coming out Father William wanted to present a positive gay Christian figure. Both the hospice and the church agreed to let him continue his ministry.

During his AIDS hospice ministry Father William created many religious images, in particular in the style of traditional icons for which his is now famous. In 1990 he went to study icon writing (the official term for icon painting) from Robert Lentz, a renowned icon writer another openly gay Catholic. The result was a series of commissions for Father William to produce icons for churches and clergy. Some of his work, and that of Robert Lentz, has depicted aspects of gay life and gay role models. Many examples of their work can be found online.

Although a Catholic, Father William has excelled in an art-form synonymous with the Eastern Orthodox Churches. But icons were not always popular. In the 9th century the Orthodox Church was split in a controversy that had been going on for some time. Some priests believed icons were idolatrous, forcing their way into churches and smashing every icon they saw (recent attacks on statues of people with links to slavery illustrates the same degree of passion). Other priests supported the use of icons as a means of obtaining a closer communication with Christ. The icon destroyers were called iconoclasts, and the supporters were called iconodules. Eventually, icons were banned and iconodules such as 52) St. Methodios I of Constantinople (d.847) were persecuted.

Methodios was arrested in 821. He was tortured and his jaw and teeth were smashed and after that he wore a cloth bandage abound his jaw for the rest of his life, as depicted in the icon below. He was then banished to solitary confinement on an island.

St. Methodios I of Constantinople

When the infant emperor Mikhael III succeeded to the throne in 842 the tide turned. Mikhael, by the way, was number 39 in my first “80 Gays” series. The regent, Mikhael’s mother Theodora, re-introduced icons and Methodios soon found himself being appointed Patriarch of Byzantium, the highest religious office in the Orthodox Church. His appointment and the return of the icons was marked with a magnificent procession through Byzantium on 11th March 843. This day is still commemorated as the feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy.

Methodios still had his opponents who tried to discredit him. He was accused of sexual assault by the mother of one of his iconoclast enemies. At a tribunal Methodios stripped in front of the judges revealing himself to be intersex. His male sexual organs were not developed enough for him to perform any sexual activity and he was exonerated. Methodios claimed that he had been miraculously transformed by divine intervention during his solitary confinement. This is recalled in his medieval biography which, like most lives of saints from that period, was highly apocryphal to emphasise the saints’ holy character. It is more likely that Methodios was born intersex.

Methodios’s term of office ended with his death in 847. He is venerated as a saint in both the Orthodox and Catholic churches. His successor as Patriarch was a eunuch called Ignatius. The Orthodox Church didn’t reject gender variations from high office of state, church or army.

The Byzantine military had several intersex, third gender or eunuch commanders. One of the greatest of these was 53) Narses (c.478-c.573).

Next time “80 More Gays”:  The blues and greens riot, the blues and buffs go to war, and we get buried on a field of puns.

Quest For A Vaccine

2020 has turned into one of those historic years. The covid-19 pandemic has changed everyone’s life, and they may never be the same in our life time. The lgbt community has some insight into the impact of a sudden appearance of a deadly virus with the effects of HIV in the 1980s. What unites both pandemics is the search for a vaccine and a possible cure. One is also helping to treat the other.

While we hope a vaccine for covid-19 will be found we turn our attention today to the search for a vaccine for HIV and AIDS, because today is World AIDS Vaccine Day, or HIV Vaccine Awareness Day.

World AIDS Vaccine Day has its origin is a speech made by President Bill Clinton on this date in 1997. He was invited to give the speech at the graduation ceremony at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. Clinton’s speech wasn’t solely about the search for an AIDS vaccine. The oft-quoted line within it which launched the World AIDS Vaccine Day is: “Only a truly effective, preventative HIV vaccine can limit and eventually eliminate the threat of AIDS.” A few moments later he continued: “Today, I’m pleased to announce the National Institute of Health will establish a new AIDS vaccine research center dedicated to this crusade. And next month at the Summit of the Industrialised Nations in Denver, I will enlist other nations to join us in a worldwide effort to find a vaccine to stop one of the world’s greatest killers.”

The new vaccine research centre, based mainly in Bethesda, Maryland, was set up shortly afterwards. At the Summit of the Eight (the G7 nations and the EU) in Denver in June a communique was released promising better international co-ordination and to provide resources to accelerate vaccine research.

The history of the search for an HIV vaccine is long and full of scientific terminology that I cannot do justice to here. Instead I’ll look at a couple of research programmes. Of course, the search began long before President Clinton’s speech.

HIV is a particularly tricky virus to develop a vaccine for because there are so many strains and it evolves so quickly. The HIV DNA sequence can even change within infected human cells. Early hopes for a vaccine were frequently dashed as trials proved to be ineffective. Scientists first estimated that one would be available within 5 years, and here we are nearly 40 years later without one.

One of the earliest hopes for a vaccine came from veterinary science. In 1969 Dr. William Jarrett, Professor Veterinary Pathology at Glasgow University, discovered a virus that causes cancer in cats. He called it FeLV (feline leukemia virus).

Over in the USA in the 1980s FeLV researchers noticed that some cats exhibited wasting symptoms that were being seen in gay men who had developed a new disease. For that reason Dr. Robert Gallo of the national Cancer Institute began looking at FeLV to see if there was a link to the human cases. Gallo discovered there was a human version of the virus which he named HTLV-III (human T-lymphotropic virus-III). After further research this name was abandoned in favour of HIV. Because Dr. Jarrett had developed a FeLV vaccine Dr. Gallo believed it could lead the way in developing an HIV vaccine. Tests and trials proved unsuccessful.

The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) was formed in 1996, the year before President Clinton’s speech. It was set up following a meeting arranged by the Rockerfeller Foundation in 1994 in Bellagio, Italy, involved 24 of some of the leading authorities and researchers on HIV. The IAVI founder, Dr. Seth Berkley, states that vaccine research was not being funded adequately at the time. With the support of 70 organisations Berkley added his voice to President Clinton’s and was another influence on the communique from the Group of Eight Summit.

There have been many tests and trials over the years, and many different medical angles have been investigated. In 2018 I wrote about the possibility that cow cells could give scientists at IAVI a clue to finding one area of research.

Until a vaccine is developed the world must rely on prevention, treatment and drugs. Just two months ago HIV drugs began to be tested on volunteer covid-19 patients in the hope that they will ease the symptoms or even stop the virus from replicating.

With covid-19 dominating the way we love our lives at the moment lets hope that vaccines for both covid and HIV can emerge soon.

HIV : Do Cows Give Us Sweet Hope?

Tomorrow is World AIDS Day. More than three decades after HIV was discovered we still can’t develop a vaccine for it, though there are several areas of research that offer hope. Last year one new line of hope came from a surprising source – from the origin of the word “vaccination” itself – cows.

Vaccination also links us back to my article on Monday in which Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu featured. Going back to one of my earlier articles about her we learn that Lady Mary was instrumental in bringing the practice of smallpox inoculation into the West and influencing Edward Jenner’s pioneering experiments in vaccination.

The research with cows which is giving hope of developing an HIV vaccine was undertaken by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and was published in the journal “Nature” in summer 2017. The report’s author was the Director of Antibody Discovery and Development, a young, openly gay, organic chemist called Dr. Devin Sok.

Like an industrious ant Devin Sok has followed a sugary trail that that led him to IAVI and research into HIV and cows.

In 2004 Devin began studying chemistry at Stanford University, earning a bachelor’s degree four years later. With his specific interest in organic chemistry and glycans he went to study for his PhD at Scripps Research Institute.

After a while he seemed to be drifting around the various laboratories with no real focus for the future and he was on the verge of moving to Harvard when someone suggested he have one more look at the labs at Scripps. Devin found one where he could study glycans and have challenging research to follow. The lab was run by Dr. Dennis Burton, co-Chair of the Scripps Department of Immunology and Microbiology. He was also the Scientific Director of IAVI’s Neutralising Antibody Centre. This provided Devin with a definite aim in his research, and he began working on how glycans can help create HIV antibodies.

While at Scripps Devin helped to co-found a group in 2011 of lgbt scientists in the San Diego area called QuEST – Queer Engineers, Scientists and Technical Professionals. It included members from several universities and laboratories around San Diego, including the Scripps Research Institute.

I’ve mentioned glycan several times. What are they? They are also sometimes called polysaccharides. I can’t claim to be any kind of expert in biology but from what I can gather glycans are sugar molecules that coat most animal and plant cells. They act as a sort of shell or envelope and are more complex than the sugar I put in my coffee a few minutes ago. The HIV cells are also coated with these glycans which protect them. Thankfully scientists have found out just about everything there is to know about HIV cells, their structures and DNA. Unfortunately, there are thousands of strains of HIV and each has a different DNA sequence.

Since the 1990s scientists have known that HIV has holes in its glycan envelope. However, HIV evolves quickly and it soon mutates to fill a hole. Scientists have yet to find any means of targeting them and getting antibodies to push their way through them. Denis Sok’s 2014 doctoral thesis was on the subject of finding weaknesses in the HIV glycan envelope.

Glycan holes are just one area of research into a possible HIV vaccine. One other main area is into research into antibodies produced in HIV-infected humans. These have tended to be produced about two years after the patient is infected. However, only about 10-20% of infected people produce them, and as I sad earlier, HIV can mutate to protect itself and the antibodies produced don’t protect the patients against the new mutations. It has also been difficult to replicate these antibodies to make them work for immunisation.

Which is where the cows come in. No, not to provide the milk to go with the sugar in my coffee but because of their immune system.

Devin Sok and his Scripps Institute colleagues have been experimenting with animals that HIV doesn’t effect. They are injected with HIV immunogens (molecules designed specifically to create the production of antibodies) to see if the animals produces the appropriate antibodies. There were some antibodies produced but none of them were anything resembling those produced by the 10-20% of HIV patients.

At Scripps there was a professor carrying out general research on the antibodies in cows and Devin worked with him to find out if cows cold produce the appropriate HIV antibody.

After the cows were given the HIV immunogens they began producing antibodies within two months, a surprising difference to the two years it takes in humans. Even though cows can’t contract HIV they were producing antibodies against it.

Devin’s research elicited a lot of media attention because of the unusual bovine emphasis. The new cow antibody doesn’t produce an answer to the problem of creating an HIV vaccine but it helps us to look into how cows can create the antibodies so much quicker than humans and see if their structure can be replicated in patients.

It’ll be a long time before scientists work out all the answers and solutions. Could the cow antibodies themselves work as a vaccine? Could they attack glycan holes in the HIV envelope? If cowpox vaccination helped to eradicate smallpox could the cow’s HIV antibody help eradicate the virus in humans?

Devin Sok’s continuing research into glycans and antibodies is just one of the many areas that many talented scientists are working on, and it is encouraging that new research provides hope that an HIV vaccine will be possible in our life-time.

Around the World in Another 80 Gays : Part 17) Kiwi Connections

Previously : The Canary Islands gave Spain the world’s first openly lgbt winners of national pageants – Miss Spain, 32) Patricia Rodriguez (b.1990), and Mr Spain, 33) Daniel Rodriguez (1993) – as well as Spain’s first lgbt regional president, 34) Jerónimo Saavedra (b.1936), and the first transgender member of a regional parliament, 35) Carla Antonelli (b.1959), but the first transgender member of a national parliament was 36) Georgina Beyer (b.1957).

36) Georgina Beyer entered politics in the 1990s, being elected to the local school board and then the Carterton District Council in 1993. In 1995 she campaigned as the world’s first openly transgender candidate to mayoral office, being elected Mayor of Carterton. Georgina’s rise to national politics is remarkable even for a non-transgendered politician. Within seven years of first being elected to a local council Georgina became a member of the New Zealand parliament, in a traditionally conservative seat.

In parliament Georgina Beyer did not shy away from espousing the rights of the lgbt community and sexual issues. In her maiden speech she made reference to New Zealand’s place in history by her being the first openly transgender elected member of any national parliament and urged politicians to follow this up by being a world leader in both gender and indigenous rights.

One area in which Georgina had an influence was in the understanding of prostitution. The New Zealand parliament had been investigating ways to decriminalise prostitution since the 1990s. The debates for the Prostitution Reform Bill 2003 were something in which Georgina was not afraid to speak about her own experience as a sex worker in the 1970s.

The defining traumatic incident which led Georgina to realise there was a real need for change was in 1974 when she was a sex worker and was gang-raped. Like many women in that era Georgina felt powerless to do anything about it. Society was very much of the opinion that “women like her should expect abuse as part of their career choice”, as it was often expressed. For Georgina that was an unacceptable attitude and she brought her views and experiences into the parliamentary debate. For many politicians their eyes were opened to reveal the life of a prostitute about which they had never known and their voting was shaped by it. The bill was passed and became law in June 2003, decriminalising prostitution, preventing exploitation and giving sex workers the same legal rights as every other employee.

The other central issue to Georgina’s parliamentary career was the rights of indigenous groups. She has Maori heritage through both parents, though as a child she was less interested in that aspect of her life than in her gender identity. Her parents in the 1950s were typical in New Zealand in that they played down their indigenous heritage in favour of their white European heritage.

This European attitude was encouraged by the Establishment, the politicians and bureaucrats who ran the country and were white, mostly of British ancestry. The old colonial model of society was still dominant in New Zealand and many aspects of indigenous and Maori culture were being forgotten, dismissed or ignored. This extended to the traditional Maori gender and sexual identities.

Most of the Pacific islands have gender identities that often seem complex to non-Pacific people. Gender communities like those of the Tongan leiti which I mentioned several weeks ago don’t use the definitions that the lgbt communities in the West often confine themselves to. As well as being transgender Georgina Beyer has identified herself as takatapui, a Maori word originally applied to the devoted partner of someone of the same gender, and in modern times to a member of the western-style lgbt community in general.

Pacific gender and sexual identities have survived the enforced European labels from the colonial period and have seen a resurgence in visibility and pride in recent years. This has led to much more scholarship into pre-colonial identity that deals with all aspects of the modern indigenous Maori culture.

One of the leading publications which covers a huge amount of research dealing with Maori culture and heritage is called AlterNative. It’s founding editor was one of Georgina Beyer’s former school teachers, 37) Dr. Clive Aspin.

Clive Aspin was a novice teacher at Papatoetoe High School in Auckland when the teenaged Georgina Beyer enrolled as a student. On leaving teaching in 1992 Clive moved into health care and specialises in the impact HIV/AIDS has had, and still has, on the Maori nation. At the same time he has been encouraging the community to regain its distinct heritage and culture.

As part of his work with HIV/AIDS in the Maori community Clive encourages those of traditional gender variance to take pride in their own heritage, hence his involvement with AlterNative. This publication covers a wide range of research topics from education to philosophy, and from health to entertainment. Clive has contributed articles to this and other academic journals on the history of Maori sexuality and gender.

The recognition of gender diversity in the Maori nation is revealed in one of the earliest, and still one of the most popular, love stories in Maori legend. The story finds its way into song, books and plays, and features the love between Himenoa and 38) Tutenekai.

Next time : We sing of love and war.

Putting A Stamp On AIDS Awareness

 

There have been many ways in which HIV and AIDS awareness has been promoted. One that is easily overlooked is postage stamps. Stamp collecting is a huge pastime around the world and many children, including myself, get the collecting bug by being introduced to stamps. Serious philatelists often concentrate on one or more theme depicted on the stamp rather than collect every single stamp that has been issued.

I was quite surprised to find that there are many collectors of stamps issued for World AIDS Day and HIV/AIDS awareness in general. I wasn’t aware of that many stamps on the subject but digging deeper I found that there are hundreds of them. The strips of stamps above and below come from just the first rows of AIDS stamps which appeared when I googled the subject.

AIDS has been highlighted on postage stamps since 1988. Several nations issued stamps to commemorate the first World AIDS Day held in that year, including the ones pictured left which were issued by San Marino.

In 2009 the Universal Postal Union (UPU) started an initiative to promote awareness of the disease with the use of other material such as postcards, posters and leaflets for use in post offices. The UPU was created in 1874 and became a specialised agency of the United Nations in 1948. Over 20 nations have taken part in the 2009 initiative, including Burkina Faso, Kazakhstan, Russia and Iraq.

There are also philatelists who specialise even further and concentrate on collecting stamps depicting famous people, past and present, with HIV/AIDS. More often than not these stamps make no specific AIDS reference and are issues to commemorate the individual.

AIDS awareness stamps continue to be produced. According to Stephen Lorimer, webmaster of the AIDS On Stamps website (and women’s roller derby referee), the only year in which no known AIDS awareness stamps were issued was 2015.

Stephen Lorimer could be regarded as the current world authority on AIDS stamps, but if anyone can be described as a pioneer it is Blair Coldwell Henshaw (1949-2002). Blair was a gay man growing up in Canada. He was a keen stamp collector from his childhood but didn’t start to specialise in AIDS until the first one was issued in 1988. Blair was himself diagnosed with HIV in 1985. He stated that he had no fear of dying because he had been brought up with the frequent presence of death as a child. His mother was a “death-sitter”, someone who stayed by the bedside of those near the time of their passing. His mother instilled in Blair the belief that death is natural no matter what circumstances that may invoke fear and pain and should not be feared itself.

Throughout the following years Blair collected thousands of AIDS stamps and related postal ephemera building it into a collection which may well have been the largest collection of AID-related stamps in the world. His enthusiasm developed into a series of newsletters beginning in 1993 which gave news of new stamps and other postal news and encouraged readers to start their own collections.

Blair had noticed by 1992 that Canada hadn’t issued an AIDS stamp. He began lobbying the government and postal service who received hundreds of suggestions for themes every year. Blair’s suggestion was granted in 1995 and the first Canadian AIDS stamp was issued in May 1995 to commemorate the 11th International AIDS Conference that was held in Vancouver.

Following Blair’s death from AIDS-related complications his whole stamp collection was auctioned off. One of the 72 lots was the entire AIDS stamp collection. It was purchased by John Keenlyside of Vancouver who donated it to the Simon Fraser University Special Collections department in 2004.

In the 21st century the postal service worldwide has declined because of the improvement in communications and email, but I hope commemorative stamps will continue to bring awareness to social and health issues for as long as they exist.