I know it’s slightly late for St Paddy’s Day, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to discuss the current situation of Irish LGBTs.

Apart from Oscar Wilde and Roger Casement in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contemporary Irish LGBT history really began in the nineties. The delay was attributable to the stultifying rural-based conservative Catholic social order that dominated the Republic of Ireland until it entered the European Community in the seventies. After that, it benefited from the Common Agricultural Policy and realised that there were investment opportunities available, as well as the chance of accelerated techological development. Benefiting from the Common Agricultural Policy, Irish society changed dramatically, with greater urbanisation, more access to higher education and even greater secularisation.

This has its upsides and downsides. Dublin now has its own complement of heroin addicts, but contraception and divorce are legal, although abortion is banned in Ireland itself under a constitutional amendment in 1983, so women are forced to travel across the Irish Sea to England if they want to terminate their pregnancies, which they can do, unobstructed.

As for homosexuality, it was decriminalised finally in 1994, but only after Dail Senator David Norris brought a case before the European Court of Human Rights charging that Ireland was violating the European Convention on Human Rights through maintaining the criminalisation of male homosexuality. The European court found in Norris’ favour, and decriminalised male homosexuality with an equal age of consent (17). In 1998/2000, it also passed inclusive anti-discrimination laws.

Civil unions may also be on the way, as liberal and leftist Dail Parties are supportive of either civil unions or UK civil partnerships, although the Irish Socialist Party and Greens also support same sex marriage proper. In the Dail, there is still debate over what form lesbian and gay relationship equality should take.  As for the transgender community, they appear to have won the right to have their reassigned gender stated on official documents like passports thanks to a recent court case.

What about the Irish Christian Right? Given recurrent scandals about clergy paedophilia and non-celibacy, it’s weaker than one might expect. There is a tiny conservative Catholic “Christian Solidarity” Party opposed to abortion, LGBT relationship and parenting equality and greater European involvement, but it is insignificant, and has never been elected to the Dail, even given Ireland’s Single Transferable Vote (STV) electoral system, which rewards demographic concentration rather than party proportions of the vote as MMP does.

Truly then, the Emerald Isle is full of old and young sods!

Source:

Eibhear Walshe: Sex, Nation and Dissent in Irish Writing: Cork: Cork University Press: 1997