This article by TheBody.com's Olivia Ford first appeared on TheBody.com website here.  

Please Note: The videos included at the end of this article are sexually explicit in nature. MAY NOT BE SAFE FOR WORK. Watch at your discretion! 

What if you were having a hot time with somebody new -- and a hard question about playing it safe came up? What if there were videos out there that brought up these questions via scenarios just like the ones happening in bedrooms and locker rooms all over the world -- without holding back a bit on the action? 

From steamy online videos to hilariously fun, sexy parties to raise awareness within communities, Philadelphia's PleasureRush! program is committed to bringing sex-positive, pro-pleasure messages and activities back into HIV awareness, especially among LGBT communities of color. 

"People have a right to have a healthy and pleasurable sex life, regardless of orientation, gender identity or HIV status," says Elicia Gonzales, (below right) executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Latino AIDS Education Initiative (GALAEI). She spoke with TheBody.com about the program -- and how other HIV service providers can incorporate a sex-positive outlook into their work 

OF: Tell us a bit about PleasureRush!: How did the idea for the campaign come about? What community needs were you responding to?

EG: Going through school, I knew that I wanted to be a sex therapist. I thought I would be the next Dr. Ruth. I have a master's degree in human sexuality education and a master's in social work. When I got into the HIV field, I felt that my legacy, if you will, would be to "bring sexy back" to HIV prevention. Obviously, this was when Justin Timberlake's song was very popular. [laughs] 

The driving force behind PleasureRush! has been the need to talk about sex within the world of HIV, where surprisingly it often doesn't get talked about enough. Prior to coming GALAEI I worked at the Mazzoni Center, where I made some attempts to have a sex-positive perspective by throwing an event in honor of National Masturbation Month -- which is in May, in case you didn't know -- promoting the notion that masturbation is literally the safest sex of all. And it was met with some mixed reviews -- in part, I believe because it was focused more so on female sexuality and female masturbation, and those two things are oftentimes incredibly neglected when it comes time to talking about HIV and HIV prevention. But for other folks it was seen very positively and a step in the right direction. 

"Sex is something that can be both pleasurable and healthy."

When I came to GALAEI, I knew that I would have an opportunity to bring home this notion that sex is something that can be both pleasurable and healthy. At the time my "co-conspirator" if you will, Norman Medina, who was working at GALAEI at the time, he and I really started to brainstorm around what we could do to get this idea off the ground. And hence PleasureRush! was born. It's been in existence now for almost two years. May 2011 was our official launch. 

PleasureRush! acknowledges the connection between pleasure and health. It supports an understanding that sex and sexuality are healthy, natural and an integral part of everyone's life. It's focused specifically on the LGBT community, and our claim is that people have a right to have a healthy and pleasurable sex life, regardless of orientation, gender identity or HIV status. 

What are the components of the campaign? 

To date there are primarily two components, but we are in process of turning this into a fully operational program. The first consists of our "What If" video series. The "What If" videos are created to entice people and engage them in dialogue around sexual scenarios that might happen to them. There is a series of seven videos that are now at our blog. They're considered pornographic in nature, so some of them have been flagged by YouTube and taken down. But we will just keep putting them up.

Encounter 1: What would you do if you find yourself in a situation like this?  (See the first video below)

So each "What If" video asks, "What if you were in this situation?" -- where you are in the heat of the moment and you had a difficult decision to make. It could be around using a condom, disclosing your HIV status, whether or not to get an HIV test, whether or not to engage in quote-unquote "risky sex." But the point is that it's showing real-life scenarios that would really happen. And begging the question "what if?" That's one of the more established components of this project that are out in the world right now. 

The other piece of it that we have done so far is engaging community. One of our primary goals is to bring conversations around sex and sexual health to the masses, if you will. So in May 2011 we had our kickoff event, which was the launch of the first video. This past May, we partnered with ScrewSmart, which is a sex-positive burlesque-type troupe in Philadelphia that's fantastic and amazing. We did a game event at a local bar based on the board game Cranium, but we called it "Creamium" and it was, again, in honor of Masturbation Month. It was hysterically fun sex education, and 110 percent sex positive. We invited community folks to come to this local bar that is very community focused, and we had a few vendors, and the highlight of the night was that random contestants got together and played this great game of Creamium -- asking questions about you know HIV, masturbation, favorite sexual positions -- but all very fun and silly and campy while also providing a sex-positive education message. There are pictures all over our Facebook, so you can look it up. We are going to do it again in May for Masturbation Month. 

We also did an event on November 8 that was sort of a spinoff of the popular erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey, as a kick off of Philadelphia Leather Pride Weekend. It was also all sex positive, with more of a focus on the kink community, as in the book. The focus was more on the queer community end, but talking about how people can explore different acts of sex and sexuality that don't necessarily involve more vanilla kinds of traditional sexual expressions. 

We have a crazy fun time with the community celebrations. We got a ton of positive feedback. People are bored of just going to a bar and drinking and hanging out. They want a lot more interactive stuff to do, and we absolutely gave them that -- but in addition to that they learned all kinds of stuff that they might not have thought they needed to know, or known where to turn for, you know? 

We probably also made some matches, because there were so many people getting pretty close to each other and playing the game that they would not have otherwise been talking to. So it turned in to a dating night too, I think. 

That's excellent! And it's all happening in the context of HIV awareness and HIV prevention -- so folks go off and have their fun, but they have all this great information and ways to start dialogue. 

There were condoms and lube everywhere, gloves everywhere! Our hope is that we continue to do these community organizations, not just at bars but also at different community-based organizations and even schools. We're working right now to figure out how to create an under-18 project. Obviously youth as early as nine and 10 are exploring sex and sexuality -- and forget talking about pleasure when you're talking about youth and sex. People are really uptight about that. Luckily we have folks on staff, myself included, who are trained to create curriculum, so we want to make something that's youth friendly as well. 

Encounter 2: "What If" sex was creative and safe? "What If" you could have a hot time without breaking the flow of playing? (See second video below)  

How do you get feedback on the videos and the online component? Is there a form that people fill out after they've watched it, or is it more word-of-mouth or comments on the blog by which you get responses? 

That's another thing that I need to put out there. This program is all volunteer run, it's not funded in any sort of way, so our capacity is limited to just working with volunteers and doing some of this stuff outside of work hours. As a consequence of that, we haven't devoted as much time to drumming up publicity around it. So some of the videos get comments while others don't, but we hope that the videos will entice people to engage in dialogue and respond back to us about "liked it," "loved it," "hated it," "what are you doing?" -- that kind of stuff. So right now it's just a few of us who are working on promoting the videos, primarily through social media, Facebook and what-have-you, and encouraging people to please give us feedback, good, bad or other. 

The point isn't that you love it; the point is that it entices you to talk about it. You can hate it, but at least you thought enough about it to make a comment, and that's our goal. It's just to get people having a conversation they might not otherwise have. 

Why do you think there has been this reticence to embrace sex-positive, pro-pleasure messages when it comes to HIV prevention? 

Fear: Fear-based practices have prevailed from the beginning of time when it comes to sex. Fear about pregnancy has always been at the forefront, as has fear about getting HIV since the beginning of the epidemic; and there's always fear about promoting homosexual behavior. Because HIV, from the beginning, has been known as a gay disease, any talk of promoting sex when it relates to HIV is, I believe, automatically equated to promoting homosexual sex. And so that is the ultimate taboo. 

"When you use that word [pleasure], I think it provokes some fear for some folks -- because why would you possibly be encouraging people to do something that's pleasurable when doing that thing is putting them at risk?"

When you recognize that HIV is a sexual condition, the consequence of people who are in the throes of passion -- whether they love each other or not is irrelevant, it doesn't matter who the players are -- then you can start having conversations about what motivated people to want to be sexual with somebody else, and usually it's pleasure focused. When you use that word, I think it provokes some fear for some folks -- because why would you possibly be encouraging people to do something that's pleasurable when doing that thing is putting them at risk? 

And when you couple that with homophobia, sexism, racism, all these -isms, you're going to get a world of people who don't want the message of sex as pleasurable and healthy getting out there. We're fighting against people who are anti-woman, are anti-gay, all of that. That's a powerful force of folks to fight against. So these projects oftentimes have to get kind of softened a little bit. Even Dr. Kevin Fenton, the now-former director of HIV/AIDS for the CDC (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), got a little pushback because he wanted to include the word "pleasure" in the definition of sexual health, and had to kind of water it down by calling it "sexual fulfillment," for political reasons. I completely applaud his effort and know he was going in the right direction and have every intention of working alongside him, to make sure that pleasure is included in these conversations moving forward. I know it's political, I get that; but the fact that pleasure was taken out of the CDC definition just demonstrates how powerful a force we're working against. 

It sounds like GALAEI's work, and the work of the PleasureRush! program, are focused on communities beyond just the Latino community, despite GALAEI's name. But could you talk a little bit about this campaign as it relates to Latino communities specifically? Was there a particular need among Latino LGBT communities that sort of led that has led you and the folks that you've been working with to create PleasureRush!? What has been the response to the program in Latino communities? 

I think that there's a particular need to highlight the fact that Latino communities aren't necessarily any more homophobic or sexist or what-have-you than other communities. There's this myth out there that if you're Latino, you're automatically against homosexuality, you're homophobic, your Catholic -- there are all these myths out there about the Latino community that I have not necessarily found to be true. 

In fact, I had the good fortune of interviewing several Latinos from across the world, primarily South America and Mexico, and in the U.S. as well, at the XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., in July 2012. I didn't ask a leading question; I just said, "Can you tell me what you think the role of pleasure is in HIV prevention?" All I got was positive feedback from folks about the need for it, and talking about it specifically in Latino communities, and the fact that it's a shame that we haven't already been discussing these very real and important issues within HIV prevention specifically for Latinos. The people who are in our videos, some of them happen to be Latino. We have a video now that's primarily in Spanish, with English subtitles 

Because we recognize that the myth that Latinos are a little bit more conservative or traditional, or would potentially be against a campaign like this, is just not what we are finding to be true. However, at the same time we also know that sexuality in general remains a taboo topic in many Latino cultures. You don't talk about sex period, let alone sex between same-sex people, let alone pleasure, let alone sex outside of a marriage, or sex outside of procreation. So those sorts of things still exist. I'm not saying that they don't. But what I am saying there is a need and a receptivity from Latinos to this project. 

Say there are folks out there reading this article or your blog, who are working in conservative HIV organizations, who really want to start their own campaigns that are pro-pleasure and sex positive, and incorporate some of these more honest messages and imagery into their work, but might not know how to start those conversations, whether within their organizations or as independent volunteers. What advice or guidance would you give to them? 

The first thing would be to call us at PleasureRush! [laughs] One of the things that we're working toward is developing toolkits specifically for providers so that they know how to make their agencies, their work, their curriculum more sex positive. Our hope is that we create toolkits that are specifically designed for providers, whether they work in HIV or family planning, so that they know how to incorporate sex-positive language, messaging and images into the work they're doing -- so that people feel like they're not doing it alone, and that they don't have to reinvent the wheel. There is stuff already out there that's sex positive; it's not a new concept. In fact, when HIV first got here in the '80s, HIV community work was far more sex positive than it is now. It's not reinventing anything. 

You can call us and we'll help guide you through the process. I would also just look at what the responses are from the people you're serving. Are you only talking about HIV in terms of the medications that people are taking? Do your intake forms include questions like: Are you enjoying your sex life? Are you having sex? Why or why not? Is sex even talked about in your office space at all? That would be a place to start. Because I think there is oftentimes a sense that HIV automatically means not necessarily a death sentence, but a death to your sex life. We at GALAEI are sex positive, and so we are having conversations with our clients, be they HIV positive or high-risk HIV negative, around "You can still have a pleasurable sex life. You deserve it!" We believe it's a human right. 

"If the thought of having a conversation with a client about sex scares you, then don't have that conversation until you're ready, because your discomfort is going to speak volumes."

To providers who are considering their own documentation, their own questions that they're asking of clients, first and foremost -- and I hate to sound like Gandhi -- but start with yourself. If the thought of having a conversation with a client about sex scares you, then don't have that conversation until you're ready, because your discomfort is going to speak volumes. So, it's about getting in touch not necessarily your own sexuality but your own stuff, with your own comfort, around your views on sexuality. This is bigger than just individuals and what they do in their bedroom. This is about messages that we got at an early age from our family, from our church, from our teachers, from our lovers. It's pretty deep, and it's a societal condition. Get in touch with that, get in touch with GALAEI and we'll be fine. [laughs] We'll be sex positive together. 

In closing: I want people to be open-minded -- be it funders, community folks or ourselves as providers. Just be open -- that's all I ask. Even as providers, I think oftentimes we feel like our hands are tied because of lack of funding. There's ways around that. PleasureRush! is not publically funded, and we're doing this. I don't want to jinx it and I don't want to say we will never get public funds! But if you have an idea that you think needs to happen, and you believe in something with all of your might, there is a way to make it happen. 

For more information about PleasureRush!, their videos and other community activities, check out the PleasureRush! blog. You can also "like" PleasureRush! on Facebook. 

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. 

Olivia Ford is the executive editor for TheBody.com and TheBodyPRO.com.  

Copyright © 2013 Remedy Health Media, LLC. All rights reserved

Editor’s note. We’ve featured Andrew Christian underwear ads before  more than once because we like their unabashed embracing of homoerotic themes, often with roots in the adult gay movie genre. And of course they are fun (and great content for us when news is otherwise thin).

Today we can say that at least one has messaging centered on safer sex and condom use.  While the lads here (see below) have an innocence which seems  lost in the age of steadily reducing condom use, undetectable viral loads and the like, you can’t blame the Andrew Christian kids  - and The American Health Care Foundation (AHF), with whom they teamed up on this one - for trying.  

Also included below is a more typical, raunchier Andrew Christian release from last year, Tag Me. Not a condom in sight.

The interesting thing about Andrew Christian videos is that there are uncensored versions on the company’s own website.  Go ahead.  Look.  They are here, but you'll be entering Not Safe for Work territory. (That same warning should also apprly to Tag Me below, by the way.)

Many people will know Dr. Sean Rourke, Scientific and Executive Director of the Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN). He’s approachable, eloquent and clearly highly committed. You’ll get a sense of all that in the video which follows where he talks about The Smoking Project.

I don’t want to paraphrase what he says, but one of the frustrations of anyone involved in the research field must be the historic difficulty of turning research in to practice. “I think the OHTN’s role is to provide the evidence to make healthy choices” he says in the interview below, “not just to look at the problem but the solution.”

In the interview you’ll see that the OHTN, in collaboration with PositiveLite.com, is taking that evidence-based approach to health promotion one step further with The Smoking  Project, announced today at the OHTN Research Conference.  It comes from the recognition that people living with HIV have much higher smoking rates than in the general population, often for good reason, but the impact on PHA health, longevity and quality of life needs to be addressed. That's a wellness issue whose solution will, I think, comfortably fit in to the variety of other solutions to help people living with HIV live healthier and longer that we already provide.  And an important one too. Many experts would say, in fact, that stopping smoking is the best thing someone living with HIV can do for their health, bar none.

So far, things like smoking cessation programs have not been widely offered or  even referrals made, by organizations that serve people living with HIV, or to any great extent, by their doctors. The Smoking Project wants to change that, while coming from a place that recognizes that people living with HIV need solutions tailored to their history and their circumstances. That often includes  support.

We here at PositievLite.com have aired more than a few articles on the issue of smoking and HIV in the last few months.  We’re not anti-smoking zealots. Rather we recognized, after carefully reviewing the research, including the OHTN’s, that there is an unmet need here.  So we decided some time ago  to put a  spotlight on an issue that hasn’t hereto been given the attention it deserves

But more than just highlighting the issue, we are delighted to be teaming up with the OHTN on this joint initiative. You’ll see both our logos on project material, and both Sean and I will be playing an active part in the project’s leadership.

That we are partners with the OHTN  on this initiative marks, of course, a significant step in PositiveLite.com’s evolution, which makes us both happy and proud. Like the OHTN we are not just interested in identifying what are the unmet needs in the community we are so much part of, we want to be part of the solution too.

In any event, why talk more?  As I said at the beginning, Sean is an eloquent speaker. I’ll let him tell you about The Smoking Project.

Hurricane Sandy didn’t take a big bite out of Toronto and environs this week, but it did dump a lot of rain.  Which lingered – and lingered – and lingered.  Lingered right over Halloween in fact.  How dare it! Gay Christmas (OK, that's Pride, but you get the point), not ruined but dampened mightily.

But who cares if the makeup was running a bit.

So the umbrellas were out on Church Street this past Wednesday, but so were the boys and girls, unfazed and dressed  to the nines. I somehow thought they would be – that’s why my partner came out from our rural hideaway to enjoy the fun. And there was lots to see. There is nothing that can stop a wet but determined drag queen strutting her stuff, after all, or any of the others for whom this  night is a big occasion, not to mention a huge opportunity to act silly.

But let’s face it, Halloween is not really about the scares anymore, is it? True we go through the motions of dragging out the ghouls and the goblins along with the pumpkin-themed tack, but who’s scared by all this? No, this holiday is all about being unselfconsciously, outrageously silly.  Or at least for those that celebrate.  And there is something really quite admirable, I’d suggest, for a grown man wanting to look like a fairy princess for one night – and then doing it. In the rain.

No way you’ll find me badmouthing silly here. Silly is a very good thing in my book. We have far too little silly in our world, so it’s great to see it in full flower on places like Church Street, whatever the weather.

And maybe the connection with HIV is a little tenuous here.  But I can’t help thinking that, of the fun-loving gay men parading up and down here being truly outrageous, at least one quarter, maybe a bit more, are HIV-positive. That they were cold and wet, maybe skimpily dressed even, really matters not a bit on this one night of the year.  I admire that immensely.

We should all be more silly, I think.

Even the guys from AIDS ACTION NOW! were out on the street, being inventively silly and serious, dressed as old hags, handing out leaflets that highlighted the witch hunt that is criminalization these days.  Good stuff!

In any event, here’s the silly video I made.  See what you think.

“...Segregation, determination, demonstration, integration

Aggravation, humiliation, obligation to my nation,

Ball of confusion, Oh yeah, that's what the world is today...”

The Temptations: Ball of Confusion 1970

You may have caught the recent CBC news clip, or read about it in Xtra where Fan Wu, a University of Toronto student who graduated from Douglas Collegiate in 2010, put forward the idea of a queer-centric school for Toronto. The idea being that you would be able to provide a safe environment in which the school curriculum could be taught from different angles. History for instance would take on a different flavour if seen through LGBT eyes. It’s a natural follow-on from the Toronto Triangle program which over the last fifteen years has provided safe learning environments for kids who needed both a break and support from being LGBT in a normal or oppressive educational system. Since then it has evolved into something much more than just crisis intervention but remains by definition, small-scale.

You may then wonder why, what seems to be a piece of local news, would be of interest to this particular foreigner observing from afar? The fact is that this concept is a very interesting one which will probably split communities both straight and LGBT.

I was a teacher for thirty years before illness brought an end to my career and although I taught from ages 8 to 18, I very quickly realised one thing: there comes a point when the kids just don’t believe you automatically anymore; they’ve become more cyber-savvy than you and Google becomes a bigger truth. My favourite age to teach was 10 to 12 because they still accept almost everything you tell them and haven’t yet grown into the rebelliousness of adolescence. It’s at that age that you can still teach the difference between right and wrong, with the kids having a good idea of what you’re talking about. That’s not to say that teaching on an LGBT or HIV-positive platform at that age is really a good idea. In the best of all possible worlds maybe but not in the current climate where moral outrage plays such a political role. Your job may be worth more than your principles. However, I firmly believe that it’s the duty of all teachers to search out situations and deal with bullying of any sort at source; the kids will associate those ideas with particular groups at a later date. Both teachers and kids know that outside the classroom, bullying will happen but thinking it’s a fact of life that’s out of your control is a very bad teaching philosophy. At that age, children can really understand what it is to respect other people and to reject injustice of any sort. Those lessons may well stay in their minds.

I used to start off by admitting my own mistakes. If I got irrationally irritated at a child for some reason, I would apologise in front of both the child and the class. Then, using the same principle, if one child got angry with another, we would stop whatever the lesson was and deal with it by talking it out right there and then. If necessary, apologies would be demanded and hands would be shaken. I used to tell them that it was our duty as a class, including the teacher, to stick together and work as a sort of extended family to make our long periods of time together positive experiences. Our classroom should be a safe place at all times. We would regularly have discussions and debates on topics of the day and every child was encouraged to speak, in the knowledge that their opinion was as good as anybody else’s.

In this manner, I was able to introduce abstract social values and apply them to whatever situation the discussion was about. Everybody was encouraged to admit their mistakes, stand up for others and take responsibility for their actions. There was zero tolerance for bullying and every year, the success of this policy was proved by the number of unlikely alliances that took place in the school yard. If someone else from the class was being pestered, others stood up for them and nobody was excluded.

It was a multi-cultural school; there was no choice! I’m not saying it was perfect; it frequently wasn’t; kids fell out with each other as kids do and very often I had to back down from my own injustices (I was frequently taken to task over unfair homework assignments) but in general the children learned how to interact with each other socially based on respect for the other’s individuality and allowing for the fact that we can all fail at times. If teachers can somehow instil in children that all forms of bullying are absolutely unacceptable and at the same time, constantly show why that has to be so, the message may stick. It shouldn’t be an impossible task but you can’t just write these things on a poster and stick it on the classroom wall; you have to live it as well.

During my last year of teaching, a white, South African, ex-pupil who was then 18, paid a return visit. The first day he’d arrived at the school at the age of nine, he’d told the Nigerian girls in the class that as of that moment they would be at his beck and call (this was before the end of apartheid). It was a cultural shock for him when the girls laughed in his face and told him that’s not how it worked in our school. During his visit, he told me something that I’ve never forgotten:

“I loved being in your class because you taught me how to look at other people in the same way I look at myself and that I wasn’t better or worse than anybody else.”

All that said; I could only make that approach work for kids who were open to social ideas and who hadn’t already formed unmoveable prejudices one way or the other. As I said, the ages ten to twelve are ideal but I do realise that most kids are being educated in schools where the demographic is far less privileged than that of an International school full of ex-pats. The principles for teaching must be the same but the chances of success are much less. You may also rightly point out that sexuality is largely a teenage struggle and unless you fit into the norm, you run the risk of being ostracised and worse, abused and for that reason, the Toronto projects must have value.

The dilemma is; do we want integration or segregation? As one lady points out in the clips; all schools should be safe environments for the socially different but that’s a ‘best of all possible worlds’ scenario and teachers have never been under the stress they are under now, both from their pupils and from the administrations that require every action to be noted in triplicate.

Of course, Queer-centric, or LGBT-friendly schools shouldn’t be necessary because all schools should provide a balanced social and educational environment where kids feel safe in being who they are. However, it just may not be realistic as yet. Look at the problems of race and culture which are taking decades to be resolved. Adding LGBT issues to the mix shouldn’t on the face of it be that difficult but in the real world kids still have to survive largely on their own.

Providing safety for children should be a given and in that sense, if there’s no alternative, then ‘segregated’ schools may well provide a sticking-plaster solution but the aim should always and untiringly be to change attitudes in all state schools.

It does make you think though. We prefer to go to LGBT-only bars, LGBT parties, discos, saunas and even cruises. Why, because we feel more comfortable there; we can be ourselves amongst like-minded people. So should we deny our LGBT teens the chance to be educated in a similar space? You may even have fantasised about the possibility of an LGBT state, or island, totally independent from hetero-normative influence but let’s face it, the biggest attraction of that sort of fantasy would be the greater chances of hooking up! Have you ever sat on an LGBT committee! Bitch-slapping becomes a new art and you want to run away screaming after an hour. Our local LGBT tennis club was a microcosm of how a gay state may be run – you spend four hours debating the first two points on the agenda and then woe betide you if you piss off madam chairperson! The idea of an LGBT-run administration heading a nation fills me with horror, however, that may be just me.

Segregation in any form is also one of the most loaded words of the 20th Century. Hitler took it to apocalypse levels and separated Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals to exterminate them. All it needed was a different coloured star to reduce you to an ‘untermensch’ and the frightening thing is that many of the people in conquered lands helped the process along. The reverberations caused by segregation in the United States and South Africa are still being keenly felt as black people seek to establish an equal identity. Even so-called civilised societies seriously considered shipping off all people with HIV to an island separated from the rest of the population (yes Sweden, you did!). It can go horribly wrong. So does segregation actually create prejudice? History suggests it does and integration may be a far better method for ensuring less visibility and therefore more acceptance within a society; you can then effect change from within.

Taking all that into account, I’m still not sure that Fan Wu and the people behind the Toronto Triangle Program are wrong. When all’s said and done, it must be better to at least provide an option where LBGT kids can find an educational haven, safe from the sort of oppression that inhibits their development. If things have got to be so bad that it’s a choice between social isolation and misery and an environment where their potential can be realised, it’s probably a no-brainer. After all, societies across the western world provide ‘shelters’ for the homeless, for abused women and children, for drug addicts and even for prisoners just out of jail – the systems are in place, they just have to be adapted. The question is, do you want it to be this way, or do you want to give society the chance to sideline us even further because we’ll look after our own so to speak?

Personally, I found the very idea of any form of segregation abhorrent. To my mind, society has to fix itself and we need to take an active role in doing that. Ignorance and abusive attitudes should be eliminated through education. However, now I’m not so sure. History surely tells us that societies just don’t fix themselves and utopias don’t exist. Stigma and stereotypical prejudices may well be part of human nature and thinking that we can change that on a nation-wide scale may be an illusion. So maybe we should look after our own whenever the opportunity arises and maybe that will show the world that there are alternatives and that prejudice is wasted energy. I just don’t know anymore. I do know that this sort of project in Canada would be unthinkable here in the Netherlands because we live under the illusion that we live in one of the freest and most tolerant societies in the world. We don’t; it’s a veneer and if you scratch the surface the same stories appear here as anywhere in the world. A world in financial crisis doesn’t help matters; in those times, societies pick on their weakest because somebody has to be blamed. The Republicans in the States have built a whole campaign around that concept. So my final word on the matter is good luck to those with the courage to present controversial ideas for improving the lot of LGBT people. I’ll be following any progress with great interest.

The following YouTube clip, produced by Xtra is an interesting look at the views of people on the street on this matter, although their interviewees could be said to be a desired demographic. Whether this reflects the views of the population as a whole is another matter.