Jean-Philippe Bernié
Roger-Luc and I are comfortably seated around a coffee at Montreal’s Mie Matinale, and the interview begins.
JPB: Roger-Luc, tell us how Gay Globe started.
RLC: Initially, I created a website called The National. The magazine Le Point had existed since 1998. At one point I contacted the owner at the time, to tell him that his magazine was completely of poor quality, there were spelling errors everywhere, and he said to me » Ah, come to my office, « I go there, it was on Frontenac Street, and he said, » You will become editor, you will correct the texts. That’s how I started, and it lasted a year and a half. He really did not have the business bump, it cost him ten times what it should have cost him. Sales did not fit well, he said, « Oh, I’m going to close the magazine. » I told him, « I buy you, how much do you want? « . I missed it a bit, I phone my father, I tell him « What do we do, we negotiate? My father says, « Give him what he wants, then go out to the door. » » That’s what I did. It was in 2002. I relaunched sales, I converted into four colors. In 2010, I changed the name to Gay Globe.
JPB: What motivates you to continue?
RLC: It’s exactly like music. I learned to speak other than speech. I learned to speak with a musical instrument, and journalism makes me talk without me saying a single word. I write. If I did not write, I would be harmed. Right now I can not play horn, and I feel bullied, because that at this moment it was the object of the consequences of a damage of water.
JPB: Let’s talk about your musical career, you’ve been a conductor, horn player at the Nice Philharmonic and at the Cannes orchestra and in several orchestras in the South of France (Toulouse), how did you become a horn player? ?
RLC: Ah, it’s very very curious, in high school 1 the music teacher, Mrs Poitras, made us choose an instrument, and she told me try the horn, I played the trombone at the time, and I I noticed then that people admired me when I played the horn because it was extremely rare to see it, to hear it, and every time I played, people turned to look at the instrument, which makes that I became a diva (laughs). It’s an extremely complex instrument to master, it’s been a disaster for seven years, and at one point, it develops naturally with a good teacher, and it becomes beautiful. The sound becomes beautiful. There is not a horn player who has the same sound as another, and I found it beautiful. When I gave lessons at the Wind Ensemble of Regina Assumpta College, I remember, at the first class I gave there were five horn players, and I played them a passage to show them how the French vibrato the horn could be beautiful. The American or British horns, nobody vibrates, only the French and the Russians vibrate. When I finished, there was a student who said, « Oh, wow. » That’s why I play horn. For the « Wow ».
JPB: How did you integrate your career of horn player and that of journalist?
RLC: In Montreal, it’s always been the cultural third world at the musical level. Those who are there are just about all volunteers, they do not want to pay people. In France, it’s the opposite. I replaced everyone on the Côte d’Azur from San Remo in Italy to Toulouse. And they paid dearly. But here in Montreal, it did not work. So, I knew the magazine RG, I thought they had beautiful, well done, so I contacted them to know if they wanted me to do a cultural column, they said yes, and every month it was like that. Then after it became animal chronic, investigations, I filled five, six, seven pages.
JPB: In all these years, you have touched on a lot of topics, what are the most delicate, sensitive topics you have had to deal with?
RLC The trans question. It is an extremely aggressive community, which has a hard time taking care of themselves, and they want to force people to assume them. They do not want to go through all the steps we went through, we cheer them, that is, explain, show the example, talk about it. They want to get straight to the point by being quite violent. I know trans book writers who are being abused on a daily basis on Facebook, and that’s a very difficult question, and it’s very difficult. If you do not say exactly what they want, they treat you like an enemy.
JPB: Are there taboo topics in the journal?
RLC: Yes. Pornography. It’s a family magazine and it’s the deal I had with René Angelil that makes me stay family.
JPB: Are there any topics outside pornography that are too sensitive or too controversial to be treated?
RLC: Yes. The Muslim question is very complex. When we want to talk about it and we want to openly criticize that religion, we receive a lot of retaliation.
JPB: What are the fights that must now be fought?
RLC: I think it’s against ourselves that we have to lead them, because society now wins, laws protect us. When Duhaime said we had won the big fights in Quebec, and the gays did not have to claim as before, he got himself right, but he was right. But there are things within the community that must be broken or stopped. Example: 20 years ago, walking in the gay parades with the ass in the air and chaps, it could advance the cause. But we are 20 years later, and your ass, at 70, can you hide it a little?
JPB: But there are always people who claim.
RLC They are complainers. And why are they complainers? Because they receive subsidies. You will notice that as long as you pay an organism to scream, it will scream.
We demand equal rights! Yes, but you already have them! We want more! Which ? These are old demons that must be settled.
JPB: So there is a lament industry …
RLC: I love the expression. No lament – it’s too good. There is an industry of laughter (laughs) subsidized by our pockets and we have to stop this. There are many organizations that survive only because of the threat they pose to some politicians.
Roger-Luc reflects, then resumes:
RLC: In fact, I find that the community is aging badly. There was a time when we dominated fashion, culture. It’s not that anymore. We were the lighthouse of a lot of subjects at one time and now we have aged badly.
JPB: It may be a sign of normalization. We are much more accepted, and therefore much more ordinary, and therefore there is less need to express oneself in one way or another.
RLC: There is that, but there is also the fact that 30% of homosexual men have died of AIDS. The gay community has paid a very high price in its creativity, fashion designers, creators, artists. It fell like flies. At RG magazine, they are almost all dead, except me and the publisher. We spent our time in the hospital and going to HIV-AIDS centers to accompany them to the end. Until 95, it was falling. And it was a lot of young people. So it made a void. I was too shy to fuck, so I did not get anything, and that’s what saved my life back then.
JPB: To conclude, what are the challenges facing the gay community?
RLC: People think that we are about to find an HIV vaccine and then we can fuck without condoms, but in fact we are headed for two health disasters. The first is multiresistant gonorrhea. In Quebec, she appeared and we are almost unable to cure her. No matter how much antibiotics you give, it does not work. So there are currently people who are dying of gonorrhea septicemia. That’s terrible. And there is a disaster that is worse and that will cost the community a lot soon, is that now we know the direct link between throat cancer and HPV, the papilloma virus. The problem is that in the gay community, oral sex is extremely popular. So many men are carriers of HPV, and with the years there will be cancers of the throat everywhere. There is no prevention, except vaccination by Gardasyl, but the problem is that it is necessary to vaccinate very young children. Once the contamination is done, it’s too late. What needs to be done, and I’ll talk about it in the next edition, is to say it, to explain it. We must return to safer sex practices.
There is also the problem of PrEP. Many people say they are PrEP and actually are on triple therapy, undetectable. There is a huge cheating with that. Since PrEP has arrived, HIV has been rising while it is expected to decline. That’s the drama.