What is therefore needed is an analysis of Bailey’s data. Why are persons in homosexual relations prone to be in illegal lottery scams? Is it because they are faced with discrimination at the workplace and cannot get or retain a legitimate job? Or are they suffering disproportionately because of the economic hardships? Is it that their lifestyle requires big bucks?

Additionally, some persons who appear to be sporting a homosexual lifestyle have been noticed to shop in groups. Is it that they are proud of the lifestyle and want to flaunt it, or are they afraid of violence and feel safe in a group? It seems to me that there needs to be more research done on persons within this community.

Not surprisingly, Jamaica’s lonely gay rights group, J-FLAG, was concerened that this would give homophobes one more reason to beat the shit out of gay men. Much more surprisingly, Jamaica’s top cop was also upset by the statement; although Bailey refused to retract it, his boss apologised on behalf of the Jamaican police.

It happens that J-FLAG has roped Miss Jamaica and her gay brother into a new campaign that aims to start chipping away at homophobia:

I’m in two minds about it. On the downside, the phrase “unconditional love” implies loving someone despite some hideous deformity in their character. I love my brother even though he’s… (sharp intake of breath, try not to hold your nose)…gay. On the more positive side, it does make sense to try and start from where the target audience is, and it’s clear that most of the target audience in Jamaica are very far from being ok with gay brothers. So far, indeed, that the national TV station has refused to carry the ad.

I’m interested that Rev Dick felt the need to point out that Jamaican political satirist Owen Blakka Ellis, who has had the gall to say that being gay isn’t so bad, was a “returnee from Canada”. Obviously he’d be pro-gay, then, Canada being a paradise for over-entitled whiny gays, seems to be the implication. It’s true that Canada’s at the other end of the gay stigma spectrum from Jamaica.

I have been accused (with some justitification) of being impatient with people who pull the stigma card when they have things so relatively easy. But this beautifully written, nuanced essay about young gay men in Canada from Michael Harris reminded me that “relatively easy” does not mean “easy”. The tornado that was AIDS has been more or less dissipated by treatment in Canada, but the wreckage it left has indeed shaped the landscape for another generation. Read it, please (pdf here).

The screen shot above shows a small corner of Filth Fair, a new, quite clever word game app commissioned by the somewhat staid scientists at The Wellcome Trust to go with their new Dirt season. On the left, the app before the Apple censors rejected it. On the right, the revised version. Even then, it has a 17 age rating; though the censors don’t have to give reasons for their decisions it appears that they remain upset about the use, hidden within the painting/puzzle of the words sex and pornography.

I remind you that these censors sit in a country which allows pregnant girls to marry at 14 in some states. To see a fig leaf on your phone, though, you have to be 17.

The Apple censors didn’t apparently, think there should be any age restrictions on homophobia. A recent app from Exodus International that seeks to cure people from the affliction of being gay was released with no age restrictions. Needless to say, there was quite a bit of protest. I’m glad to say that sense beat the censors, and the anti-gay app has been removed.

If you’re in London, I’d urge you to visit the Dirt exhibition. Perhaps because of my own dirty mind, I got roped in to writing a chapter for the book of Dirt, that goes with the exhibition. There’s quite a lot of fun stuff in it, quite apart from the sex and drugs bits.

So instead, I’ll have a rant about something that is somehow still shocking to me: the lengths to which loopy anti-abortion groups in the United States will go to deprive women of safe contraception and sexual health care. The target, once again, is Planned Parenthood. Over a one-week period last month, men went in to the sexual health service providers clinics in 11 cities, claiming to be sex traffickers seeking services, including abortions, for the underage girls they’ve enslaved. That would be a really dumb strategy for a real sex trafficker — in the US, even more than in Britain, the authorities are under pressure to find the army of enslaved girls that the abolitionists conjure up at every turn. It’s a well-hidden army; though a massive UK crackdown led to over 500 arrests related to selling sex a while back, it didn’t yield a single trafficker. Not that that has stopped the abolitionists’ conjuring. Shame on The Guardian for not referring back to its own excellent investigative work in this area.

Planned Parenthood immediately suspected that no trafficker would be that dumb. Certainly not 11 traffickers in different cities in a week, when such a thing had never happened before. Though it smelled like a hoax, they dutifully reported the alleged trafficking to the FBI and asked for an investigation. Now Loopy anti-abortionist group Live Action has admitted, with some pride, to their juvenile prank. They’ve released two of their “undercover” videos, to which they’ve they added juvenile-prank-style title screens.

My personal favourite: “Planned Parenthood Gets the Pimp Discount for His Underage Sex Slaves”. I will say that the clinic manager in New Jersey sails pretty close to the wind. But then which of us who has tried to provide services for people in need who have nowhere else to go does not bend the rules? As Planned Parenthood says: “Falsely claiming sex trafficking to health professionals to advance a political agenda is an astoundingly cynical form of political activity.”

Compared to this, the standard operating procedures in the AIDS world — using Global Fund money to buy 4x4s for officials — seem somewhat tame.

Update: (or rather backdate). Steve sent me this interesting reminder of an earlier assault on Planned Parenthood. Sigh.

The East London Borough of Hackney is trying to wipe lap dancing clubs and sex shops out of my back yard. I’m pleased to see men of the cloth joining me in pointing out that since the businesses are perfectly legal, it is not the goody-two-shoes local councilors’ job to abolish them.

The Vicar of St Leonards Shoreditch, says it is not for the local government to impose a moral code on its citizens. I agree with Paul Turp that it’s inappropriate for the council to decide which (absolutely legal) businesses may and may not operate in an area already desperately short of jobs. But I myself am especially infuriated at the way they are trying to do it.

I stumbled on the council’s clumsiness a couple of months ago, when I was responding to a call for opinions about a new one way system. There on the website was a “Consultation” asking for our opinions about a new sex shop licensing regime. Along with a paper telling us why they’ve already decided what they are going to do, there’s a draft of what they are planning to do, and a questionnaire.

Here’s the key paragraph from the planned policy:

1.5 The Council has considered the character of its wards and determined that the appropriate number of sex establishments for each ward is nil. It will not allow further licences to be granted where the appropriate number is exceeded. Please refer to paragraph 5 for more details.

There follows another nine pages of gumph before one gets to the critical paragraph 5. What that does is list the total number of lap dancing clubs, sex shops and erotic cinemas the council has deemed appropriate per ward:

…and so on, for all 19 wards. And then the coup de grace:
“5.1.4 There is no right of appeal against a decision based on this element of the Policy.”

So all that precedes and follows it, including the detailed description of the appeals process should your application get turned down, is null and void. It appears that the “consultation” itself may be null and void. Despite putting forms on its web site, the Good Governors of Hackney have decided that “Any unsolicited comments will not be taken into consideration”. And just to hedge their bets even more fully against undesirable opinions such as those of the highly respected vicar of one of the most socially engaged parishes in east London, we have this:

“2.4 The Licensing Authority will give due weight to the views of those consulted and amend the Policy where appropriate following responses received. In determining what weight to give particular representations, the factors to be taken into account will include:
• who is making the representation (what is their expertise or interest)
• what their motivation may be for their views
• how many other people have expressed the same or similar views
• how far representations relate to matters the Council should include in its Policy.”

Having spent many a long year living in countries where I am allowed to pay taxes but not allowed to vote, this is my first real experience of grass roots democracy at work. I’m looking forward to seeing whether our concern that men and women in Hackney ought to be allowed to do whatever work they please within the limits of the law is upheld in this process. Any readers who live in Hackney, or know anyone who does, are urged to respond to the consultation before December 13th.

The kerfuffle surrounding the Pope´s comments on condoms continues. As the gender of hookers allowed to use condoms switched in translation, the Pope´s spokesman was asked to clarify. Apparently, HIV-infected people can use condoms to protect their partners:

“Whether it’s a man or woman or a transsexual.”

Of all the men I know who regularly wear dresses, Benedict was the last I expected to be embracing the rights of transgenders to protect themselves and their partners from HIV infection.

Many people have commented that as long as reproduction´s not in the picture, he can say whatever he likes about condom use. I´ve yet to hear of a transgendered woman giving birth, so that might be part of the equation here (though note that women who sell sex to men are also encouraged to “take responsibility”). But I’m in an optimistic mood today, and I think the Vatican could be trying to ease open the door to a more rational existence. Miracles just might happen.

Benedict said condoms were not “a real or moral solution” to the AIDS epidemic, adding, “that can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.” But he also said that “there may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility.”

Some are excited that the Pope seems to be opening the door, if only by a hair´s breadth, to a greater acceptance of condoms. Could this be a turning point in HIV prevention? I´ve been asked. I´d say certainly not. Catholics do all sorts of things the Pope forbids, including using contraception extremely liberally, as long as it suits them. The only time they really take any notice of what he says is when it gives them an excuse to do what they would probably rather do anyway, like not use condoms.

I´m much more excited that the Pope has opened the door for discussion of one of the most neglected issues in the sex trade: male prostitution. It´s not clear from his comments if the Pope had any specific gender of client in mind when he said rent boys would be taking a step towards holiness responsibility by using condoms. Since he is a virgin, of course, any suggestions that male sex workers sprung to mind because of personal experience would be thoroughly scurrilous. But I´ll leave the discussion of the potential consequences of the papal embrace of male sex work to those far better qualified to comment than I.

One friend suggested that perhaps the Vatican should start marketing its own brand of condoms, under the brand name “Swiss Guards”. I like it.

For the news that really does have the potential to change the face of the HIV epidemic, watch this space. Tomorrow sees the release of the results of the first large trial of the use of antiretrovirals among uninfected people, to protect against HIV. Expectations are running high.

In passing, let me say that I think the Pope has more to worry about than latex. I went to mass yesterday in a small village church in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, in northeastern Colombia. I expected the tiny church to be packed, and, arriving only 10 minutes after the appointed mass time, sat about half way back. By the time mass started 15 minutes later, there was only one other person on my side of the church. The whole congregation totalled fewer than a dozen, including the choir and the two dogs that spent the mass licking my toes. This did not stop the young priest barking at us through a massively over-amplified sound system, reminding us that to sin was to walk naked through the streets.

Really, these Catholic clerics. Each to their own fantasy…

One woman, who tends as many in the audience towards the well-preserved Russian hooker look, asked me afterwards whether it was true that HIV could pass through a condom. I get that a lot, so I just explained how daft the idea was. “Ah! I’m a Doctor of Psychology and I didn’t know that,” she said. That slightly floored me, but it was nothing compared with what followed: “You said there was not much good news around HIV. But my colleagues tell me there is, that nowadays homosexuality is 80% reversible.”

This in a country whose capital already allows gay marriage. Apparently there is still a long way to go…

Para los Hispanofonos, aqui la presentacion. Tampoco uno de mi mejores, pero se hace lo que pueda.

The Canadian ruling is the more complex, because it has given us the right decision for the wrong reasons. A judge has said the nation’s blood transfusion service can refuse gifts of blood from men who have had sex with other men. The right reason for this decision is that it is a cost-effective way of reducing the likelihood that sexually transmitted viruses, in particular HIV, make it in to the blood supply. The reason given (which I think sets a bad precedent) is that the blood transfusion service is not bound by legislation intended to reduce discrimination against people who choose anything other than vanilla sex, because it is not a government agency.

Of course that’s nonsense. You shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate against people on the basis of who they choose to have sex with in the private sector, in NGOs, in schools or anywhere else, unless they are choosing to have sex with someone who doesn’t or can’t consent. But I don’t believe that asking gay men not to give blood is discriminatory. None of us has a right to put out body fluids into a pool from which the public will draw, and the judge, Catherine Aitken, agreed, saying: “Put simply, blood donation is a gift. A gift is freely offered, but also must be freely received, or freely declined….There is no requirement under the law for CBS, or any other blood provider, to accept the gift of blood from anyone.”

I do agree that the exclusion criteria are a little draconian. “A man who has had sex with another man even once since 1977 is not allowed to donate blood in Canada or the United States,” says the blood service. In terms of HIV, what we’re most worried about are brand new infections — people who have lots of virus in their blood but haven’t yet got enough antibodies to HIV to show up on the screening tests that blood banks use. Those are the ones more likely to lead to the “tainted blood scandals” (blerch) that got the voters so exercised about blood safety in the first place. Blood donated by people who’ve been infected for longer will get picked up in the normal screening process so it’s not quite such a drama if they give blood. In most countries, it make it more expensive for the taxpayers who foot the bill, because blood is pooled into batches for testing, and any reactive test, including false positives, mean the whole batch gets thrown out. (Canada tests individual units so that’s less of a problem).

Activists whine say that refusing to accept blood from gay men tars them with the brush of “AIDS victim” and reinforces stigma. “Not everyone who is gay has AIDS”, declared Kyle Freeman when he brought the case against the blood service that precipitated the ruling. Well of course not. Not everyone who is gay has HIV, either. But in Canada, a gay man is around 20 times more likely to be infected than a heterosexual (pdf) (51% of HIV infections are concentrated in the roughly 4% of sexually active adults who are gay men). If gay guys think that fact is stigmatising, they might want to reinvigorate HIV prevention efforts in their community. Screening men who have sex with men out of the pool of blood donors is not discrimination, it is common sense. (As an aside, I find it interesting that no-one seems to be whining complaining about the rights of drug injectors being violated because the blood service won’t accept their blood. Surely their rights are being violated in exactly the same way, even though they are actually less likely to be infected with HIV than gay men in some Canadian cities).

Meanwhile, across the border, American courts continue to chip away at the great edifice of true discrimination against people who choose their sex partners according to their own taste, rather than that of the Sex Police in groups like the Traditional Values Coalition. Hot on the heels of a ruling that repealed a ban on gay marriage in California, another California judge, Virginia Philips, has ruled that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule that makes it impossible for openly gay people to serve in the military is unconstitutional. This is very good news indeed; let’s hope the mid-term elections don’t scare the administration and the Senate into prolonging the agony for gay men and women who want to invest their lives waging war on behalf of the citizens of the US.

Thanks to Sarah Chown for nudging me to write about this.

Catholic priest Rev. Kevin J. Gray, who used to preach abstinence, celibacy, humility and heterosexual norms in Connecticut (just up the road from where my mother sings in her church choir), has been done for stealing US$ 1.3 million from the Church and blowing it on expensive hotels and male escorts, according to the Associated Press. But he did more than just pay for an occasional admiring squint at their abs. He paid their rent.

My own rent boy’s reaction: “Where do I sign up?”

SANGRAM has long worked constructively with sex workers, to the fury of Congressman Mark Souder who stomped on USAID until they shut down funding for SANGRAM. In a letter to USAID as bombastic, self-righteous and threatening as any I have seen, Souder pontificated about the Bush administration’s record in promoting family values and women’s rights.

“There is a tragic irony in the fact that this administration seeks to elevate women in the United States to some of the most important positions in the country…; yet, USAID has funded groups outside the United States that promote the ultimate degradation of women.”

Souder might know something about the degradation of women. Six weeks ago he resigned as congressman after 15 years, admitting to having an affair with a staffer. He started off on script, apologising for the pain he had caused his supporters. But then, with breathtaking arrogance, he stuck up for his own hypocrisy, saying “The ideas we advocate are still just and right.” I’m sure his wife agrees.

Here’s the pompous windbag being fake-interviewed by his girlfriend about the importance of abstinence-only education programmes.

Of course abstinence-only programmes are only meant to work until people get married. Since both Mark Souder and his squeeze Tracy Jackson are married, they hardly count as failures of morality-based sex ed, do they?

(Thanks to Paddy Woodburn for pointing out the Seshu profile and setting me off wondering whatever happened to that windbag Souder…)