It's time to acknowledge those whose contributions to glbt life in New Zealand have been unhelpful, or worse.

The 2009 GayNZ.com Dishonours go to...


The ACT Party - for services to blind dogma
Everyone in Parliament voted to end the Partial Defence of Provocation madness, except ACT. Remembering the Copeland bill against same-sex marriage back in December 2005, this is the second time that ACT has voted against the interests of LGBT New Zealanders.

The party chose to disregard the Law Commission Report on the issue and some might argue that this has much to do with the prominence of populists and social conservatives like David Garrett and John Boscawen within what was supposed to be a centre-right socially liberal party.


Auckland Regional Public Health Service - for services to inaction and arse-covering
Despite knowing for ages that Glenn Mills was knowingly exposing young men to his HIV infection, and apparently aware that his 'behaviour modification' counseling sessions were going nowhere, Auckland Regional Public Health Service declined to report to the police what was a clearly criminal offence. Perhaps the creaking Public Health Act failed to give them strength of purpose.

But when confronted by GayNZ.com Daily News about the situation they engineered a delay of a few days "when we will be able to give you more detailed information" and then used that time to quickly run to the cops with the damning file, thus attempting to cover their own arses, whilst having left young men vulnerable to HIV infection for months while they pussyfooted around a "sensitive" issue.


Beenie Man - for services to murder incitement

Beenie Man

"Come to Jamaica and kill gays!"
"No, no I didn't mean it, I hate no one!"
"Slit the throats of gays!"
A month after he was dropped from Auckland's Big Gay Out, this foul-mouthed Jamaican reggae singer with a world-wide reach continues to proclaim that he doesn't mean harm to gays and yet continues to perform his toxic anti-gay trash, most recently in Uganda.

Who knows where Beenie Man's head is at? Who cares? Well, we gay people care. Especially when we read of the appalling rate of murders of our glbt brothers and sisters in Jamaica and of the Ugandan government's populist determination to kill and imprison gay people under a proposed law change.


Nikki Caro - for services to butchery

Nikki Caro

For ruining the movie version of such a wonderful book, The Vintner's Luck. How? By chopping out the gay bits. The book's author Elizabeth Knox said she cried for a week!






Mike Colwill - for services to profit before people
He protested that he only wants to make a buck by seeing more people have access to HIV testing and thus deal a blow to our currently heightened HIV diagnosis rate. But Colwill, who runs importers and distributors Head Start Testing, didn't consult any health or HIV authorities about his plan for adult shop patrons to take home a nifty little HIV rapid test kit to confront what might be the most shocking development of their lives alone in their bathrooms or bedrooms.

And the consequences of naive folk being shown an on the spot test result implying dubiously that their prospective sex partner is free of HIV are too awful to contemplate.

After concerned gay venue owners and GayNZ.com sprung his plans Colwill scrambled for the moral and medical high ground but never quite erased the feeling that he had put profit before people. So far the much-vaunted improved support material has yet to be sighted and it appears very few of his kits have been sold.


Scott Dunning - for services to hot air

Scott Dunning

At the start of this year no one had heard of Scott Dunning. By April he was suddenly the 'go-to guy' for a variety of different LGBT groups and events, including the high-profile Hero Party. 2009 is now over and so is Dunning's involvement in most of them, but what a roller-coaster ride it was.

One minute he was thrilled to get community feedback on his cobbled-together-at-the-last-minute Hero Party (which he may or may not have been involved in organising depending on whether it suited him on a particular day), the next minute he's on the GayNZ.com Forum calling some of his critics "complete and utter f*ckwits." Perhaps the Hero brand had reached its use-by date, but we'll forever remember the erratic and self-promoting Dunning as 'the man who finally killed Hero.'


Jevan Goulter - for services to elder abuse

Jevan Goulter with Carmen

Yes, he's only 21, and yes, he did front up to all that criticism, but we still wouldn't rely on him as far as we could throw him. Tranny icon Carmen Rupe's friends begged Goulter not to bring Carmen over from Sydney for an ill-conceived 'joint birthday' fundraiser. After all that effort the poor dear ended up with only $500, nowhere near enough for the mobility scooter she needs.

And everyone's still waiting for the make-good $1,000 he pledged in November for the scooter fund. This isn't the first time a Jevan Goulter idea has gone wrong, and Mr. Ideas is running out of friends in Auckland and Wellington, where they've heard it all before. Many times. Look out Christchurch!


Glenn Mills - for services to inhumanity

Glenn Mills

Unknown to practically anyone this bisexual man for years trawled our communities for vulnerable young victims. He used his looks, boyish charm and his 'older man' status while passing himself off on dating sites and in gay venues as almost a decade younger than his 40 years. He exploited every opportunity he could engineer to keep his dick hard by forgoing condoms and thereby passed on his HIV-infected cum dozens, if not hundreds, of times.

Strangely, there are still those who feel Mills was hounded unfairly, and was not solely to blame. But he never disclosed his HIV infection, diagnosed as early as May 2007, to his victims. He groomed them in subtle ways and then he sprung his trap, again and again and again. Mills' death a month ago, while alone in a jail cell awaiting trial on multiple charges, was tragic. But his deliberate actions in life were callous, predatory and shocking.


John Tamihere & Leo Molloy -  for services to homophobia

John Tamihere

Spouting rubbish about gay people on Radio Live was no new thing for Tamihere, but in 2009 the station's management had finally had enough and told him to stop the anti-gay tirades. They even provided counseling.

Molloy, guesting with Tamihere, spouted such homophobic vileness that he will never be allowed unchained behind a Radio Live microphone again. He stuck by his 'gay men treat their bodies like playgrounds' (context: HIV, Glenn Mills, drug use, personal details of his restaurants' homo employees and anything else he could fling at gays) statement though, later saying he was glad he'd said what he did: "I hope I've saved a life."