'Pride is casting off shame': Colm O'Gorman on a changed Ireland
O'gorman At Pride That Its A Pride: Colm Dublin Protest Of Celebration Has Roots Lgbt* In
I was driving through West Cork last week and was struck by the number of Pride flags flying in towns and villages across the county. As we drove into Skibbereen, we were greeted by a rainbow flag flying high outside the rugby club, and lots of shops along the main street had them displayed in their windows.
The same thing was repeated in other towns and villages we passed through, and I must say, it really did move me. I know teenage me would never have imagined that towns and villages across Ireland would one day fly the Pride flag, sending a signal of love and acceptance to LGBTQ people in their own places and standing in solidarity with others around the world.
It got me thinking about Pride, its beginnings, and my own experience of it across my lifetime. Pride is grounded in protest, in a demand for freedom and equality. The first Pride has its origins in the Stonewall Riots, a spontaneous uprising against police harassment of the LGBTQ community in New York.
Sick of the oppression and brutality they suffered at the hands of the police, LGBTQ people, led by trans women and drag queens, fought back and a worldwide movement was born. I was just three years old when the Stonewall Riots took place, but they had a profound impact on my life. The events of June 28, 1969 were the spark that inspired generations of LGBTQ activists, me included.
Their refusal to accept oppression and their insistence that they had a right to live their lives out loud and proud, changed everything utterly.
His killers walked free from court, receiving suspended sentences despite the premeditated and brutal nature of the attack.
Declan’s killing and the fury which followed the release of his killers, galvanised the LGBTQ community here in Ireland. The first Dublin Pride Parade took place just a few months later, in June 1983. I was not at that first parade; I was just 16 and doing my Leaving Cert in Wexford. I was in a very dark place.
I had suffered years of sexual abuse at the hands of a priest, and that, coupled with my confusion about my sexuality had left me deeply traumatised, riddled with shame and suicidal thoughts. I ran away to Dublin in early 1984 and discovered the LGBTQ community there. When I found them, I found acceptance, respect, and a place to belong, where I could begin to explore who I was, where I was safe.
I could not have publicly marched or protested at that stage in my life. I was not yet free of the shame and fear I felt at the thought of coming out.
I was 17 years old and living in a country that criminalised me and in a society that saw me as deviant.
However, it was there, in that small community that I first encountered the concept of Pride. For the first time, I was exposed to the principle that I, as a young gay man, was equal in dignity and in rights to every other person. It went further than mere tolerance, that was not enough. It was bold and brave, and demanded that we, our lives, and our relationships, be celebrated and cherished like the lives of our heterosexual brothers and sisters.
It is about refusing to be invisible, refusing to have our humanity, our joy and our capacity for love denied.
It is a bold and proud statement, asserting our right to exist, an uncompromising demand for our human rights and for equality.
Thirty years after that first parade, I was Grand Marshall at Dublin Pride.
I led out the parade and beside me in a horse-drawn carriage, sat my husband Paul and our two almost-grown kids. Paul and I had been together almost 15 years at that stage. Our kids were almost grown. I had been out for decades and working in the public sphere for almost 20 years.
That year’s parade took place 21 years after Ireland decriminalised homosexuality.
I remember looking out at the people who marched that day and thinking that those who were 21 or younger were the first generation of Irish LGBTQ people to be born into a society where they were free to love.
That day we marched together in our tens of thousands. We marched to celebrate the freedoms we had won, and to demand those we have yet to secure. We marched knowing that the next year, we would face a tough and bruising campaign to secure our right to marry, our right to have our families treated with equal respect and regard as other families.
I hoped that what might be most evident to those who watched was that we were a family like any other. We were not especially exceptional. But I knew that for people to know that they had to see it. We were a family. There were those who would deny it, who would insist we could never be a ‘proper’ family. By leading the parade that day, we wanted to prove them wrong.
A year later, Ireland agreed, and we became the first country in the world to enshrine in law by popular vote the right to of same-sex couples to marry.
Pride month is now marked all over the world, and in the many countries where LGBTQ people continue to be persecuted and oppressed, it is often the frontline in the battle for our human rights.
The largest Pride parade in Central Europe takes place in Warsaw, where many thousands of LGBTQ people and their allies marched again this year to protest increasing repression in Poland and in solidarity with those facing similar discrimination in other countries.
In Turkey, activists continue to stage Pride events, despite a decade-long crackdown that has seen tear gas, police baton charges, and arrests used to try shut it down.
Pride works. Visibility can lead to real change.
In June 2015 I marched in Euro Pride, which took place that year in Riga, Latvia, just a month after the marriage equality referendum here in Ireland. I was invited to speak at the march and share a message of hope and encouragement from Ireland with activists in countries where such a breakthrough seemed a long way off. It was an historic event in several ways. The first Riga Pride had taken place a decade earlier, in the face of violent opposition.
On that occasion, the number of protestors against the parade vastly outnumbered the few dozen LGBTQ people who marched. It turned violent, with the marchers coming under sustained attack and suffering appalling homophobic abuse.
In direct response to this violence and abuse, members of the LGBTQ community in Latvia, their friends and families, founded the LGBT rights organisation Mozaīka.
They brought EuroPride to Riga in 2015, the first time the event had taken place in a former Soviet state. I was one of 5,000 people who marched that day, and this time, we vastly outnumbered the protesters. In fact, more people lined the parade route to show their support than to protest.
Later that evening we chatted to a young woman we met on the way to a concert held to mark the end of the parade. She spoke about how things were finally getting better for LGBTQ people in Latvia, about how much the parade mattered. It is hard to hate people when you see who they are she said. Visibility matters.
Just a month earlier, I had walked through thousands of people dancing in the streets in celebration following the result of the marriage referendum. As we left Dublin Castle just after the result was announced the streets were thronged. People were laughing and hugging everyone they met.
Perhaps for the first time, Pride had become a national moment, a symbol of our collective joy as we threw off shame and oppression. A moment for us to acknowledge and celebrate difference, to recognise the work we have done together to become a more inclusive and compassionate society, and I hope, to further commit to that work wherever it is needed. I hope that is at least part of why the Pride flag was on display across Ireland this past month.
That is surely something to celebrate…whatever our sexuality or gender identity. We can all take pride in working towards a more inclusive and compassionate society. It makes us all truly free.