Princess Di and Gay Community

TOPICS: Princess Diana. Diana Princess of Wales. HRH Princess Di. HIV. AIDS. Gay community issues. Princess Di and HIV community. People living with HIV. People living with HIV/AIDS. Ten years since death of Princess Diana in car crash in Paris. Gay community remembers.

Ian Johnson, Out Now
August 26, 2007

Ten years is such an odd length of time. Long enough to witness immense change, yet short enough to leave memories redolent with those sensations that attend things more recent, memories remembered with a freshness, and a sensory clarity, that inhabit our recollections - 'as if it were yesterday'.

The death of Princess Diana is one of those kinds of memories.

The week before Diana died I recall sitting in a doctor's waiting room in the heart of Sydney's gay community, waiting for my appointment, reading that week's issue of tabloid trash magazines - replete with page after page of Princess Diana paparazzi pictures on holidays with Dodi Fayed, getting out of a Harrod's helicopter to get a reading from her spiritual advisor, and dressed in evening dress at official functions.

All terribly normal.

I am loathe to say it but hearing the news of the death of Princess Di is one of those moments - "do you remember where you were when you heard the news?"

I remember too clearly. I was at an 8 year old nephew's birthday ten-pin bowling party deep in the western suburbs of Sydney, on a brilliant almost-Spring Sydney Sunday afternoon. Hearing that news of Diana's death made absolutely no immediate sense at all, and took many weeks to really sink in.

This coming Friday that nephew has invited my partner and I to attend his 18th birthday party.

Ten years passes, and yet the impact Diana has had on the world, and a mainstream understanding for the gay community and its issues, also lives on.

For me personally, I had always quite admired Princess Di - not so much for her royal role, but for her non-conventional role.

When you leave a lucrative secure job as a litigation lawyer, complete with support staff and an Opera House window view office overlooking Sydney Harbor, to set up your own lesbian and gay community marketing business, you tend to appreciate those with a somewhat non-conventional approach to their professional and personal lives.

Diana was such a person.

I have never forgotten that moment when every nightly news bulletin some years before her death screened ad infinitum vision of Princess Diana first chatting with, then touching the arm of and holding the hand of, a man dying of AIDS.

Many members of the gay community have never forgotten that image.

Before then AIDS and HIV were used by the media in an often fearful manner that caused great distress to people living with HIV and AIDS.

In one brilliant moment, Diana with her single gesture wiped away years of pent-up community fear, and released a completely different set of emotions towards people with AIDS. Respect. Even love.

The power of communications and modern media? Sure. But Diana not only knew how to harness this power; Diana often got to choose what she would use that power for.

Of course HIV and AIDS affects all parts of our community - not just the gay community.

Diana was an extremely high profile person that, through her actions, also demonstrated real empathy and clear respect for people who might just happen to be lesbian or gay. Something the GLBT community now feels more justified in demanding, but even as recently as ten years ago, and even sadly sometimes today, does not always really expect to receive.

Gay Market News first noted last month the significant involvement of Diana with the gay community, during the Concert for Diana organised by her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry.

The positive outreach to the gay community as demonstrated by Princess Diana and her actions all those years ago has had a distinctly powerful and long lasting impact.

Ten years is a long time, sure, but there are some things you never forget.

Like birthdays: and a very Happy 18th Birthday to my nephew Matt.

And respect: a heartfelt 'thank you' to Princess Diana - for what she achieved through her actions that helped to improve the situation of people from the HIV, lesbian and gay communities.

Diana definitely did not need to do anything to support the gay community. She chose to.

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