On Thanksgiving weekend in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, a man named Scott Jones was stabbed in the back and had his throat slashed. The story became national news for many reasons - the violence of the crime, the small town location - but one of the main ones is because friends of Jones believe that he was targeted because he is gay.
Whether or not Jones was attacked because of his sexuality has yet to be proven, but the story did gain traction nonetheless. I was approached by Vice magazine to write a column on the subject of wether or not Nova Scotia (and Halifax, by extension) is a violent place to live.
An excerpt:
When Taavel died, I wrote and talked about the case in local and national media. It was nerve-wracking. As a journalist, I wanted to tell the actual, factual truth of the matter. But as a gay man, I also held a sense of responsibility to the queer community that I belong to, to say what mattered: we will not be frightened.
You can read the rest of the story, here.
On yesterday's edition of the CBC News, a story by Jack Julian discussed an ongoing outbreak of syphilis amongst men who have sex with men. I have been doing a lot of research around sexual health, specifically amongst queer populations.
Inspired by Julian's story, as well as by other recent readings, I posted an op-ed in my blog for Xtra, Down East.
The essays looks at the ideas around how we discuss sex and sexual health, and how the traditional approaches may be lacking when it comes to educating individuals when it coms to making choices around their own health.
"Imagine if our sex lives were automobiles. For those of us who do drive, we know that it takes time to learn how to drive. But how can you drive if you don’t know how to take proper care of your car, both inside and out? You can know how to put the key in the ignition, but if your car won’t turn over, how do you fix it? You can’t just ram the key in hoping all of a sudden it will turn over and be ready to go. If you get a ding or a scratch, what do you do then? Does your car have less value all of a sudden? No. It doesn’t."
You can read the rest of it here.
