Thu 18 Aug 2011 In: Health and HIV View at Wayback View at NDHA
t Sir Paul Reeves, the religious and civic leader and ex-Governor General, who will be buried today, leaves a remarkable legacy for our gay community. Even before Sir Paul was appointed Governor General by the Lange government he was active in support of glbt people. He quietly helped counter some of the religious opposition to homosexual law reform in the mid-1980s. Then he signed on, as Governor General, to the fight against HIV and its effects on gay and bi men. In the mid-1980s HIV was new and terrifying. Truly terrifying. All over the country gay men were getting horribly sick and dying. There was still debate, even in medical circles, about what it was, how it was contracted, how it acted on the body. There were few, if any, effective treatments and any that were emerging were so toxic they caused ghastly side-effects. HIV always led to AIDS and sickness and death, sometimes in only a year or two. It was the “gay plague.” The public face of HIV was the cadaverously gaunt, middle-aged gay man lying listless in a hospital bed, skull-faced, dull-eyed, skin blotchy from karposi's sarcoma, body wasted away to skin and bone. Hospital staff and visitors were required to wear protective gowns and masks – to protect the patient from infections as it happened but it added to the 'untouchable' stigma – and some medical personnel wouldn't even treat people with HIV. Into the terror waded the homophobes who stirred up anti-gay fears and the reactionaries who saw the emergence of HIV in our community as a sign that we were indeed filthy, peverted and damned. Many of the gay men dying of HIV/AIDS weren't even out to their families at that stage. Too often families stayed away from their dying sons and brothers and uncles. So glbt friends stepped in, caring, nursing, keeping company, toiletting, soothing, advocating, paying funeral expenses. The - mostly glbt - carers created support networks and quite quickly those groups coalesced into a one stop shop for support, prevention, research and advocacy... the NZ AIDS Foundation. But the NZAF was all too easily seen in some influential circles as just a bunch of homos trying to justify their 'reckless, sex-obsessed' lifestyles, as a stealth project to promote the 'homosexual agenda.' Even in the corridors of Parliament and the Ministry of Health there was a surprisingly strong view that public money should not be spent 'promoting gay sex' and propping up men who were probably getting what they deserved. Despite the developing professionalism of the NZAF, the huge commitment to prevention and support which was initiated by the gay community and the magnificent commitment of most HIV specialists, some GPs and a fair few social services folk, HIV was as unpopular a cause as it was possible to get. It was, literally and figuratively, the kiss of death. Then a nationally respected leader, a man of acknowledged intelligence, humanity and gavitas agreed to become the first patron of the AIDS Foundation. “NZAF Patron: Sir Paul Reeves, Governor General.” Powerful words backed up by a public and personal commitment from the second most powerful person in the country. It was, quietly, a turning point and its significance has never been sufficiently acknowleged in public. From that point on the immensely important work of the NZAF was harder to knock back: Surely this outfit must be respectable if the Governor General has signed on? Surely what they are trying to do must be important if it has the public support of the Governor General? At the very least his patronage muffled the religious opposition. But it wasn't only his own patronage and the doors it opened which were Sir Paul Reeves' gift to our beseiged community. Following in his footsteps, right through to Sir Anand Satyanand today, every successive Governor General has become NZAF patron in an unbroken line which has underpinned its hard work and helped silence its, and our, critics. At least on the subject of HIV. Consider the better lives that all glbt people are able to lead these days compared to pre-Homosexual Law Reform times. Consider the respected place the fight against the HIV epidemic has amongst public health initiatives. Consider the resultant comparatively low incidence of HIV amongst gay men in New Zealand compared to simliar nations and communities. Then consider Sir Paul's dignified and humane part in those achievements. Quite a legacy. - Jay Bennie GayNZ.com Content Editor Jay Bennie - 18th August 2011