Articles

Published in Plenitude - Your Queer Literary Magazine Feb 23, 2015 Daniel Gawthrop (New Westminster) Commenting on a favourite gay novel: “Reading Alan Hollinghurst is a guilty pleasure on par with eating foie gras: you know you probably shouldn’t—the very idea seems decadent and passé, redolent of neocolonial tastes—but oh, how the finer notes linger on the palate. “Hollinghurst’s class-conscious novels, which typically explore some aspect of failed nostalgia for the British Empire, offer delicious ...

Octogenarians from opposite ends of Myanmar's religious divide offer a progressive example with their friendship SPECIAL TO THE NATION - May 9, 2014 YANGON—In Myanmar these days, it is often said that the only obstacle to genuine democracy is the older generation: those who remember the 1962 coup, served under the military dictatorship, and continue to cling to old ways of thinking. Get the geriatrics out of the way, it is said, and real change ...

Pope Benedict XVI wants out. Who will hold him accountable for his sins against humanity? By Daniel Gawthrop Posted in The Tyee on February 11, 2013 For all his predictability as a cleric and thinker, Joseph Ratzinger—the man everyone knows as Pope Benedict XVI—has always retained a capacity to surprise. And this morning’s announcement that he is stepping down as pope on February 28 certainly qualifies as a humdinger. Even his Vatican aides were “incredulous” ...

Twenty years after Peter Jepson-Young’s death, the centre that bears his name is synonymous with inclusive, cutting-edge programs. By Daniel Gawthrop Published in the Georgia Straight on November 15, 2012 When Peter Jepson-Young died of AIDS on November 15, 1992, the man better known to British Columbians as “Dr. Peter” had one last wish: that a foundation created in his name be used to help people living with HIV/AIDS who were less fortunate than him ...

By Daniel Gawthrop Posted on thetyee.ca, August 4, 2012 Tomorrow afternoon, as he waves to the Denman Street crowds from one of North America’s largest processions of drag queens, leather men, and dykes on bikes, Vancouver Canucks centre Manny Malhotra will play a big role in helping slay the dragon of homophobia in professional sport. Just by showing up at the Pride parade, along with Patrick Burke of the “You Can Play” project and Canucks ...

Posted on thetyee.ca, February 19, 2012 I'm a gay lapsed Catholic who’s moved on. Yet I allow Benedict XVI to bedevil me.
Here’s why. By Daniel Gawthrop On January 9, Pope Benedict XVI made fresh headlines by declaring that gay marriage undermines “the future of humanity itself.” This statement went further than his earlier pronouncements on the subject, which described same-sex unions as merely a threat to the family. Like all his other public statements ...

Posted on thetyee.ca, September 27, 2010 Heroes are complicated and none is perfect. Case in point: the famed AIDS Diary doctor.
By Daniel Gawthrop This month marks the 20th anniversary of a remarkable event in local television news broadcasting: the debut on CBC's Evening News of AIDS Diary, a five-part miniseries -- later a weekly segment -- that introduced viewers to Peter Jepson-Young, a 33-year-old medical doctor suffering from AIDS who would one day become ...

Books: Then We Take Berlin by Stan Persky
SUGGESTIVE READING / Postmodern genre-bender still sizzles Posted on xtra.ca, April 15, 2010 In each issue, a prominent literary Canadian recommends a queer-authored book. In this installment, non-fiction writer Daniel Gawthrop recommends Stan Persky’s Then We Take Berlin: Stories from the Other Side of Europe (Knopf Canada, 1995). Shortly after Then We Take Berlin’s release, a rather obtuse Globe and Mail critic had this befuddled response: ...

COMMENT: Burma’s generals go scot-free Nonintervention lets the world’s worst dictatorship terrorize with impunity. By Daniel Gawthrop Published in the Georgia Straight on October 4, 2007 As September drew to a close, the world watched with increasing revulsion as protests led by Buddhist monks against the brutal dictatorship of Burma were violently crushed by the same military thugs the protests were aimed at. TV coverage of jubilant marches gave way to scenes of tear gas, ...

Review of Ian Burma’s Murder in Amsterdam, posted on thetyee.ca on November 2, 2006 Provocateur Theo van Gogh's murder wasn't the only ugly end in Amsterdam.
By Daniel Gawthrop On November 2, 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was riding his bicycle to work on a cold and dreary autumn morning in Amsterdam when a stranger rode up beside him on another bike, pulled out a gun and shot him in the stomach. Van Gogh ...