Competing AIDS drug bills meet some opposition

My last piece for the month (finally) appeared on the Xtra.ca national page today. This was completed well over a week ago, but a glut of Pride-related stories from around the country kept pushing it back until now. This builds on a piece I did several months ago after attending a press conference on the topic, but there have been several developments since then. I'm looking forward to seeing what develops out of this come autumn, as I'm sure there will be more chapters to this tale just yet.

Gay Bloc MP Réal Ménard plans to resign

I have a quick piece up on the national page of Xtra.ca today, which talks about the planned resignation of Bloc MP Réal Ménard.

Ménard, being one of the six gay and lesbian MPs in the House, is someone I've been following quite a lot since I started up in the Press Gallery, although he's someone I haven't followed as much as the others simply because the language barrier was often an issue - he's largely uncomfortable in English, and while I can converse in French, my skills as a translator are pretty marginal. Nevertheless, I'll be sad to see him leave as he was a genuinely nice guy on the Hill and almost always had time for me.

NDP, Bloc accuse Liberals of stalling refugee bill

The piece I have up today on the national page of Xtra.ca is actually sadly overdue. The piece ended up coming in about a week late thanks to the enormous difficulty in scheduling the final interview (I will remind everyone this was the crazy final days of the spring sitting of Parliament, where absolutely everybody was in a manic dash to get as many things accomplished as possible, and unfortunately sometimes media requests turned into days-long episodes of phone tag. But I digress). And even when I did file the piece, there were delays on the website end of things. But it's now posted.

This particular bill I've been tracking for a while now, and this issue of it being stalled in committee has been coming to a slow boil, but it's now getting some attention. I have no doubt I'll be keeping an eye on it (as much as I am able) when Parliament resumes in autumn, as this is something the community is treating as an important issue.

Gay MPs critical of Conservatives' tough-on-crime agenda

I have a piece on the Xtra.ca national page today talking about Conservative justice bills, mostly around bill C-31. While it was fairly interesting to write, it was a bit delayed because a couple of my sources were difficult to get in touch with. Nevertheless, everything made it through okay in the end.

AIDS activists say US travel requirements are 'discriminatory, intrusive'

I have a new piece up today on the Xtra.ca national page, which pretty much serves as a follow-up to the piece on the HIV travel ban from the other day. And whereas you'd think it would be a piece of cake considering all the work and research I'd put into that previous piece, this one wasn't. In fact, it was a pretty difficult and indeed frustrating piece to write, largely because many of the sources were all giving me contradictory information that on the surface didn't make sense, but the deeper one would dig, the more one found that there wasn't much of a story at all. Many of the accusations were specious (that this new waiver process was quietly put in for June 1st, that the paperwork is more draconian than ever), and it took some digging to get to the bottom of everything - which I eventually did, and I will note, the Ottawa Citizen didn't. Overall, the piece came together - a little later than I had initially hoped, but there was a lot more to dig through than I had initially thought - and I will note that in the end, it does end up serving as a companion piece to the first piece, and that everything worked out in the end.

Gay MP Mario Silva works to combat anti-Semitism

My second piece on the Xtra.ca national page arose from a press conference I attended this morning at the Charles Lynch Press Theatre in the Centre Block on Parliament Hill. It wasn't terribly well attended by media, and most of the media was there was of the more ethnic variety (Omni and various Jewish news outlets) - and the gay press, thanks of course to Mario Silva's involvement. Nevertheless, I kept it relevant to the readership, and ensured that the bigger picture was presented. I also took a couple of photos, hoping they would be included, but my editor chose not to include them, so here's one of them, just to give you a sense of the scene.

Critics wary of changes to sex offender registry

The first of two pieces I had on the Xtra.ca national page today is a story that I have a feeling I'm going to be writing an awful lot about in the near future. It was a bit of a crazy writing process, grabbing as much commentary as possible and writing it up in the space of a few hours, and knowing that I had two more pieces to write the following day, I worked some "overtime" to get this one finished up. (Of course, overtime is a relative concept when you work for yourself, but I do try to keep regular daytime hours in order to maintain some semblance of a work-life balance).

There was some discussion after the fact about how I wrote the lede for this story. While I have no doubt that this is a significant issue for my readership, I ended up writing this to highlight how the government was using the "moral panic" as an electioneering tool. One of my editors felt that I should have instead gone for a bit more of a direct appeal to why this issue matters to the readership - though I'm not sure that I'm sold on the rather alarmist tone of his suggestion - something to the fact about how the way you or your friends have sex could land them on this registry for the rest of their lives. After all, there are still many criminalised sexual acts in this country (like, apparently, threesomes). He said that I wrote it in the style of a Globe and Mail piece - but he didn't mean that in the most complimentary manner.

I see his point - and I should better craft my ledes for my readership. But at the same time, I don't want to go the tabloid route and make every headline about how this is the end of the world. It's certainly food for thought, however, on how to better work on my craft.

Iceland Elects Openly Gay Prime Minister - A World First! + Thoughts From the Hill - June Edition

I have two pieces in the new issue of Outlooks, on stands now, and the big news is that the magazine has gone glossy and expanded. I'm extremely proud of the step that they've taken, and I can't wait to see the print copy when it arrives. Being a glossy will mean additional challenges - like the fact that all of my deadlines have now been pushed up by three additional weeks - but I'm very much looking forward to what's to come.

The first story in this issue is about Iceland's new lesbian Prime Minister, and given the fact that little has been said about it to date was something I felt worth mention, but not only that, I gave us a bit of reaction from our out gay and lesbian Parliamentarians here in Canada.

The second piece is my June edition of the Thoughts From the Hill panel, with the thematic topic of "What does Pride mean to you," complete with some Pride photos of two of the three panellists.

You can download the full issue in .pdf format here. (My Iceland story is on page 14, and Thoughts From the Hill is on page 15).

A "unique prism"

In the foyer of the House of Commons today, after a blitz of scrums and interview for the piece I was working on (which should be on Xtra.ca tomorrow - check back for me to post it here), one of the CBC reporters started chatting with me, asking which story I was on. When I told him, he said that my beat (being largely the GLBT angle) is a "unique prism" on these issues, and it's important that I'm covering them. That was pretty awesome to hear. Plus, having another journalist email me later and giving me props on the questions I asked for one of the scrums was also pretty cool.