The first things I notice as the shuttle pulls into Whistler Village are the rainbows. 

Richard Kaye noticed them too. "It's just nice to see," he tells me, sitting by a roaring fireplace at Thursday's après ski, surrounded by many of the 16 friends he brought with him to WinterPride from London, England. 

"Whistler has never been an unwelcoming place," Kaye says, "but it's nice to see a formal recognition of gay and lesbian skiers."

The prominent display of rainbows was one of the first things Dean Nelson and his co-investors implemented when they rescued Whistler's ailing gay ski week from imminent collapse in 2006. "If we take this on, we need to make sure the community is behind us," he told Whistler tourism and businesses at the time. "We need to greet our visitors and show them they're welcome."

Five years later, Kaye feels the welcome is now woven into Whistler's fabric. "It all just seems very casual and easy and not forced," he says. "I like that."

Even today's rain couldn't put a damper on Kaye's group. The gang stayed inside in their pyjamas and watched a British costume drama on PBS, Tom Sleigh tells me. "That sounds very gay, doesn't it?" he laughs after a moment's reflection.

"It was quite butch, though," his partner, Chris Byrne, interjects with a wicked smile.

"We were looking for an organized ski trip and saw that Pride was on," Sleigh says when asked what drew him to Whistler this week. "It's nice to be around like-minded people. It lowers the barriers to conversation."

An hour and a half into the après-ski, the room is packed. Attendance is up this year, beating even 2009's pre-Olympic numbers, Nelson says.

Since buying out his original partners in 2008, Nelson hasn't had the easiest ride, given the world economy's crash and all. "It's been a challenge, but I think we've weathered the storm pretty good," he says. "I think we've shown our community and our sponsors that the event just keeps getting more and more stable." 

Now if only it would stop raining. Costume dramas aren't really my thing.

For all of you who've always longed to see Sesame Street's muppets get it on, celebrate porn, swear and cop to racist thoughts, Avenue Q is for you!

But opening night at The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts proved the award-winning musical is about more than merely naughty muppets.

It's about the life lessons Sesame Street never taught us. It's about finding ourselves, our purpose in life and our place in society. It's about coming out on every level, one step at a time, even when it's hard or the path is poorly marked. It's about growing up. It's about not needing to know every answer right now. 

This bit of wisdom was brought to you by the letter Q, a group of singing, stripping muppets and an odd Gary Coleman character. Makes sense to me.

There was word from Vienna today that a group of about 50 activists staged a die-in and shut down the Canadian booth in the exhibition hall at the International AIDS Conference yesterday.

The protest came in response to the Harper government's ongoing refusal to support safe injection sites and other harm reduction measures adopted by the Vienna Declaration. Harper's delegates refused to sign the declaration on Monday.

"Given that some of the recommendations outlined in the Vienna Declaration are inconsistent with Canada's National Anti-Drug Strategy and current federal drug policy, Canada will not support the document," Charlene Wiles, of the Public Health Agency of Canada, wrote in an email, according to the CBC.

Chanting, "The war on drugs is a war on us! Support harm reduction now," the activists wrapped the Canadian booth in tape and covered it in signs and copies of the Vienna Declaration. 

"Canada has missed an important opportunity to show leadership in the struggle against HIV and AIDS," Canadian harm reduction activist Zoe Dodd said in a press release. "There is overwhelming evidence that harm reduction strategies are effective in combatting HIV transmission. Canadian criminalization of drug use is fanning the flames of the AIDS epidemic."

Xtra's correspondent at the conference, Phillip Banks, says a gay activist from Toronto was expelled from the conference for destroying the Canadian booth's banners.

(Photo by Daniel Grace)  

Tonight's opening-night performance of The Lion King in Vancouver gave me goosebumps.

The actors embodied the animals they played, their movements were fluid, feline and sensual, their costumes amazing. The music was stirring, the overall effect breathtaking.

It was the most original, thrilling production I've seen in a long time. Reminded me of Cats so many years ago...

The only off-note was the sudden, jarring heterosexualization of Scar.

I mean, what was that all about? One minute he's the deliciously evil gay uncle, revelling in his campy villainy. Next thing you know, he's making unwanted advances on Nala! Huh?

When he said he needed a queen I didn't think he meant it literally!

Seems to me this production of the Disney story was a touch too mindful of the criticism the Mouse Company took for the original film. By all means, do a better job of consistently incorporating and celebrating African culture, making the good guys as black as the bad guys, and empowering the female characters.

But de-gaying Scar?

Now you've gone too far. 

What would Elton John say? 

A BC Supreme Court judge has acquitted an HIV-positive man of aggravated sexual assault, even though the court found he failed to disclose his HIV status to his boyfriend and had unprotected sex with him.

"I have concluded that the Crown has failed to prove that the risk of HIV transmission here — 12 in 10,000 sexual encounters or 0.12 percent — meets the standard of significant risk of serious bodily harm that must be met to turn what would otherwise be a consensual act into aggravated sexual assault," Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon ruled today.

Fenlon found that the accused had unprotected sex with his boyfriend three times. She also found the accused deliberately lied about his HIV-positive status, and that his boyfriend would not have agreed to have sex without a condom had he known the truth.

The question is: did the accused's failure to disclose expose his boyfriend to a significant risk of harm? 

No, Fenlon ruled, it did not.

 

"In my view, a risk of transmission of 0.12 percent is not material enough" to constitute a serious risk of harm, she ruled.

Fenlon based her finding of statistical probability on Dr Richard Matthias's (pictured above) expert testimony that the risk of transmission in this case was just 4 in 10,000 per unprotected act of anal intercourse. The accused here is a bottom.

"From a legal point of view, this case means that unprotected sex will not necessarily lead to a conviction even if the accused failed to disclose," the accused's lawyer, Jason Gratl, said outside of court. 

"From a practical point of view, however, both disclosure and protected sex is the wise option to avoid prosecution altogether," Gratl added.

Translation: this verdict does not decriminalize HIV in Canada. But it's a step in the right direction.

It's an acknowledgment that merely being HIV-positive and failing to disclose does not automatically make someone a criminal. It's having undisclosed, unprotected sex where there's a significant risk of transmission that's a crime — at least for now.

"This verdict should not be understood to mean that the court condones the behaviour of the accused," Fenlon made a point of noting.

"He had a moral obligation to disclose his HIV-positive status to his partner so that the complainant could decide whether he wanted to take the risk of engaging in unprotected sexual activity with the accused, no matter how small that risk. But not every unethical act invokes the heavy hand of the criminal law," the judge ruled.