While reading a recent issue of the excellent anti-consumerism magazine Adbusters, I came upon a stomach-turning article, “The Pain of Others.” (Feb/March 08). In it, there was reference to the cold-blooded murder of a homeless man,  James Beasley (55), in Reno, Nevada, in September 2007.

What does the above have to do with LGBT issues, I hear you ask? As I’ve mentioned sometimes elsewhere, in ‘civilian’ life, I work at a social service agency that deals with the mentally ill.  During that time, I had a client, T., who was homeless, experiences schizophrenia, and identifies openly as gay. No, he doesn’t do alcohol and drugs, and no, he hasn’t been arrested for any other crime than vagrancy. Even then, he was talking loudly to himself, freaking some people in the vicinity out, but otherwise not particularly bothering anyone else.

(Actually, it’s usually people who do alcohol and drugs and experience mental health that undertake violent or antisocial behaviour, and they’re a small subset of people who experience mental illness, according to the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand. Even people who experience psychotic episodes in the context of schizophrenia are more likely to self-harm than harm others).

I’m refering to T. (actually, a composite of several individuals from my case load, with some details changed) because I want to draw attention to the issue of gay homelessness. Some shallow queens would probably want to read T. out of the gay community due to his rotten teeth, sometimes unkempt appearance, and display of ‘word salad’/alogia, as well as his sometime itinerant circumstances. Others of us, me included, would argue that T. and others like him need social inclusion- that is, attachment to more than one social institution or network -to assist his return to optimal mental health.  Many of us would probably agree to that proposition, reasoning that after all, mental illness is due to circumstances beyond an individual’s control, and people shouldn’t be punished for an accident of neuroanatomy.

What about gay men who are struggling with alcohol and drug addiction? If they’re trying to stay on the wagon, then they should be welcomed into our social networks, and encouraged and supported to stay clean and sober. And yes, Stan Waipouri, a late tane takatapui friend of mine, was a good example. Sadly, his drinking problem led him into a situation that he couldn’t get out of, which probably influenced my decision to write this.

Clearly, though, there’s a difference between recovering alcoholics or addicts on the one hand, and violent and obnoxious drunks on the other. The latter should be barred from our venues and social networks, and… then what?

Let’s admit it, lesbians do broader social policy issues much better than us boys, outside those immediately related to HIV/AIDS, although homophobic violence and family policy are also areas of current interest, as is anti-bullying policies and youth suicide, as well as pharmaceutical policy and regulation (or absence) of access.

Outside that, we need to develop relevant expertise, professional subgroups, do the neccessary research and reach out to potential clients, or insure that they get to see us.  If we ignore the problem, then we face the possibility that people will face serious injury or die as a result of our failure to develop welfare groups and care for those members of our community who are experiencing these problems in their lives.  It is precisely due to their experience of discrimination and social exclusion that people who experience mental illness are excluded from employment, accomodation and educational achievement. 

And yes, I think Wellington City Council was justified in moving on alcoholic vagrants who harrass Cuba Mall business owners and pedestrians, given that they’d be better off in supervised accomodation and treatment programmes. And yes, there was absolutely no excuse for those gang thugs to attack Miss Ribena last week.

However, the violence isn’t all one way, as Alison Daines notes in her excellent article on the death of James Beasley and broader issues of homelessness in the United States.  I was appalled to read that hate crimes against the homeless are carried out by young white middle class males in that country,  who presumably do so through dehumanising stereotyping of homeless women and men that renders them “less than human.”

Sickeningly, there are even videos of coerced ‘vagrant fight’ DVD available from some US mall or supermarkets, or else bylaws that it is illegal to give food to the homeless on the pain of a $US1000 fine,  and in desert-dominated Nevada, homeless people die from heat exhaustion or the cold in high summer and winter. In Brazil, rogue cops and paramilitary squads ‘disappear’ the homeless, impoverished gay men, street trans sex workers and other ‘undesirables,’ a legacy of its long period of military dictatorship, again, known as ’social cleansing.’

In order to avoid this situation developing here, gay social service agencies need far more depth. We need to realise that no, we aren’t all affluent professionals working in business or IT professional careers (said the gay social worker…) and establish specific outreach services and targeted welfare groups for specific community members in need, or at risk. LGBT youth groups do this in the context of youth suicide, while the Prostitute Collective’s PUMP and ONTOP do their best to divert young gay men and transwomen at risk from street survival sex, but we need to do more as a community. 

Take one recent Salvation Army report on homeless single men, for example. It’s an excellent document, but gay male homelessness isn’t mentioned. I don’t think that was due to intentional homophobia on the part of the researchers involved, but we do need to ask the question whether gay men or lesbians at risk feel comfortable approaching an institution that tried to defeat homosexual law reform back in the mid-eighties, and whether we need to develop our own welfare groups and research strategies to deal with this. Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and United States already have such organisations, so what the hell is wrong with us?

As for T., I’m happy to relate that although we lost touch, he shifted to a North Island provincial city without a gay community of note, but with adequate and affordable housing for his needs, and that of his asthmatic partner. I was glad he had moved out of his former halfway house arrangement, to tell the truth. He’s been lucky enough to find adequate antipsychotics that work for him, but even so, it’s not exactly a completely happy ending.

However, it is a damned sight better than James Beasley’s senseless and tragic murder, or that of Stan Waipouri, just when he was getting his life back together, and I would also advise readers to look at the photograph of the HIV+ homeless man that accompanied Daines’ original article. Can you really be sure he got it from a dirty needle? What would it mean to you if you were told that he got it through unsafe survival sex in return for food and temporary accomodation?

Recommended Reading:

Jeff Adams, Virginia Brown and Tim McCreanor: “Warning Voices in A Policy Vacuum: Professional Accounts of Gay Male Health in New Zealand” Social Policy Journal of New Zealand 5: March 2007: 199-215.

Leanne Smith, Bonnie Robertson and Lucy Aitken Read: Forgotten People: Men on Their Own: Manukau: Salvation Army Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit: 2006.

Alison Daines: “The Pain of Others” Adbusters 76: April/May 2008: http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/76.php?id=354