Leo marches with Pride, and makes promises for future
On Pride weekend, it looks like the battles have all been won, says Donal Lynch, but Irish gay people are survivors, not winners
PRIDE of place was reserved for our first openly gay Taoiseach as he led the annual LGBT parade in Dublin yesterday in a historic moment watched by the world.
A carnival of colour was on show as an estimated 30,000 people swarmed the city streets.
The country’s new Taoiseach was clearly the star of the show as he addressed the crowd. Global news organisations sent teams to cover the event.
Mr Varadkar said it wasn’t his “first Pride”, but pointed out it was the first time a Taoiseach had marched in the annual celebration. “I don’t think for a second that my election as Taoiseach made history, it didn’t.
“It rather just reflected that our society has changed so much and changed for the better in the last couple of years.”
He said he had a personal sense of gratitude to those who “fought the good fight” when it was a difficult thing to be an LGBT activist.
“When Pride started in 1992 only 200 people took to the streets and many of them were derided but over time they grew in numbers, built up a movement — activists, friends and allies — and they made my life possible in a way it might not have been.
“So I don’t think I have in any way changed things for you. I think all of you and all of you who are part of this great movement have changed things for me and for tens of thousands of other people and for that I am very grateful.”
He pledged that the fight for LGBT rights, human rights and equality would be “stencilled” to his office for as long as he holds power.
“There are three things I want to particularly emphasise for this community. I want to, first of all, take and press for marriage equality in Northern Ireland. “Secondly, in my office as Taoiseach, in my work overseas, I want to defend the rights of LGBT people all over the world. Our rights are under attack and I will use my office for as long as I have it to make that point to countries in international forums. “And, finally, something I felt very strongly about when I was in the Department of Health was the sexual health strategy we published, and the time absolutely is now to act up to the sexual health challenges that we face.”
The Taoiseach, who spent part of his first full week in office holding crucial Brexit talks in Brussels, was flanked by senior Fine Gael figures. Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald and newlyappointed minister Regina Doherty also joined the carnival.
Many of those taking part said — regardless of personal political affiliation — Mr Varadkar as Taoiseach had sent out a powerful signal worldwide that Ireland was now a much more tolerant place and marked a new era for members of the LGBT community here in the Republic.
THE rainbow, aside from being the symbol of the gay community, also signifies a happy ending. And for the past two years, the dominant narrative in Ireland has been that gay people have reached their crock of gold.
After millennia of DUP-style disapproval, we have recently become almost Scandinavian in our LGBT friendliness. The marriage referendum was handily passed, we got our second gay cabinet minister, our first gay Taoiseach. The public pushed the Panti movie to the top of the box office charts and with only slight irony she could call herself the Queen of Ireland. We had a gay traveller on Big Brother.
The Pride parade, which took place yesterday, has morphed from protest march into corporate sponsored pageant, indistinguishable from Paddy’s Day or any other sanctioned day of drinking. Even the roughest of inner city pubs will have a rainbow flag fluttering outside them this weekend.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the land that we “dreamed of, once in a lullaby” is already here.
In reality, society belatedly wrapping itself in the rainbow flag came just a bit too late for most gay adults in this country. They haven’t, by and large, clamoured to get married (indeed several leading lights in the referendum, including Panti, said they never wanted to) — less than 1pc of gay people here have done so. They are still less likely to be in relationships, more likely to suffer from depression, more likely to commit suicide.
Outliers like Leo and Donal Og Cusack aside, gay people are as invisible in politics and sport as they were a decade ago. Coming out still mostly means leaving the small town you came from and making your way to Dublin.
The false idea that the referendum was a revolution was understandable, because everyone who told their story during the campaigning two years ago gave the impression that a community’s problems would be solved by a yes vote.
They presented themselves as potential winners, rather than damaged survivors. The film of the scenes at Dublin Castle was like a gay moon landing moment (and film was needed for the movement; there is only grainy footage of the Stonewall Riots).
It spoke of a sweeping attitude change that had made its way to every corner of the country. It belied the fact that acceptance of gay people is still far away from being a given in the family.
It’s easy, as Dorothy Parker said, to be kind to people you don’t care about, but coming out is still a very big deal to parents and children — most Irish parents would still be disappointed if their child were gay. Hearts and minds aren’t shaped by changes in the law. The “checking yourself ” that Panti promised would be swept away by a yes vote is clearly still very much in operation; only a tiny number of business leaders, sports stars, and politicians are out — a number of prominent ones are conspicuously not.
And the mainstreaming of gay rights has not really helped gay health. We’ve swung so far from the early 1990s hysteria of the Aids panic that we now refuse to even acknowledge that there are concerns about addiction and promiscuity that aren’t rooted in religious moralism.
This has meant that when an issue like the public availability of PrEP (the HIV prevention drug) is discussed, it is seen as a minority clamouring for a right, rather than a symptom of a broader problem. Last year, the HSE began to investigate chemsex — mixing sex and drugs — and found that one-third of those Irish gay men who they tested had combined cocaine, ketamine, crystal meth or methadrone and above all G, with sex, creating a public health storm in the making. Rather than looking at helping a vulnerable population of young men — it’s mental health again — the solution seems to be to presume they know what they’re doing, give them PrEP and let them get on with it.
These issues and others are part of the problem with Pride having become so corporate. It’s hard to look serious about transforming attitudes, demanding rights and shaping health strategy when your message is sponsored by Smirnoff. The marriage referendum, like Repeal, should be a beginning — but honest leadership is needed and it is unfair to ask accidental activists like Panti to do everything.
Leo might be transformative for gay people in this country — or he might be like Obama: a symbolic representative of a minority who does little to change the reality of the brethren on the ground.
A month before Leo was appointed (in the face of huge rural opposition), just a few hundred yards from Leinster House, there was another sinister missive from the old Ireland he now stands astride. A man wandered into Dublin city centre and daubed the phrase “faggots drink here” all across the front of The George, the city’s biggest gay pub.
They quickly painted over the graffiti, but perhaps it might have been some oldstyle gay subversion to simply leave it there — a reminder that Pride is still needed, and we’re not over the rainbow yet.
‘Outliers aside, gay people are as invisible in Irish politics and sport as they were a decade ago...’