The weekend before last, I was at a beautiful wedding in Ireland. It was an idyllic occasion of two young women celebrating their marriage. Everyone spent the weekend talking about how full of love we all were. About the same time, and in the following days, horrific violence against gay people would unfold.
A young man was beaten in Dublin city centre because he was gay, two men were killed in Sligo, where another man was assaulted and survived.
The juxtaposition of these two Irelands is some kind of version of heaven and hell. But it is a juxtaposition. Violence against LGBTQ+ people in Ireland occurs with unfortunate regularity. And simultaneously, it is now viewed, generally, as abhorrent and unacceptable.
In the aftermath of the killings in Sligo, I grew frustrated with some of the language used. I was annoyed that gardaí used the term “hate-related motive” and that this was repeated by journalists and politicians. There was no mention of homophobia.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of two seismic events, less known outside the LGBTQ+ community in Ireland
When I turned on the radio, I was aghast that it wasn’t immediately leaders from the LGBTQ+ community being interviewed about the horrors in Sligo, but local priests and politicians.
Perhaps the media was struggling to contextualise something so awful, but there was a sense of obfuscation. As journalists we all know the difficulties in being specific about unknowns and reporting on crime. I’m also sure my reaction was infused with my own resentments, that I was projecting the context of past grievances on to the present.
The violent events in Sligo are almost beyond belief, and yet, we have been here before. This year marks the 40th anniversary of two seismic events, less known outside the LGBTQ+ community in Ireland, but ones that should loom as large in our history as any national event or figures. In January 1982, Charles Self was murdered in Monkstown, Dublin.
The investigation that followed runs like a tributary of scars through the LGBTQ+ community. Men were effectively rounded up and fingerprinted by gardaí simply because they were gay – 1,500 people were questioned. Gardaí turned up at people’s homes and workplaces, outing them. Many gay men left the country as a result.
Inevitably, because of this deeply homophobic, unjust, and bigoted process, the investigation was effectively botched and the murder remains unsolved.
Indeed, a garda who himself was fired for being gay at the time, subsequently spoke to journalist Conor Lally in 2019 about his experience, saying “I feel [the Garda] carried out a witch hunt into the gay community . . . they confined a lot of the inquiry to the gay community. The investigation was aggressive, heavy-handed, done in a horrible way.”
Suspended sentences
That same year, in September, Declan Flynn was beaten to death in Fairview Park by a group of male teenagers who perceived him to be gay. Those who were charged and tried were given suspended sentences and walked free.
At the vigil in Dublin on Friday, friends in the crowd spoke about the awful symmetry of these events with our now contemporary horror, expressing despondent outrage that we were somehow back there again. But we are not back there.
As the week progressed I thought less about these new violent bookends in Irish queer history of 1982 and 2022 and focused more on the gap between those years, and what has changed within them.
When I watched the gardaí in Sligo deliver a press conference on television, gently asking any other potential recent victims of violence to come forward, saying that they would be listened to, I thought about the Charles Self investigation where such humanity among gardaí was utterly lacking, to the detriment of justice. The framing of discretion is of course problematic as it potentially compounds shame, but what a change all the same.
When I heard Evan Somers talk about the attack he experienced near The George, his strength was pronounced. This is the resilience LGBTQ+ people are forced to build.
He spoke out, he went on the radio, he gave interviews to journalists. He did this, not only because he is brave, but because the society he lives in has built capacity – thanks to the work of LGBTQ+ people – for him to be heard, respected, and comforted.
On the Late Late Show on Friday, when Ryan Tubridy highlighted the impact these killings and attacks had on the LGBTQ+ community, he said, “there is no place for homophobia in Irish society today. None.”
What has also changed is that I believe that now even if in practical terms it does not pan out that way. How desperate that it needs to be said. How awful that carnage can still be wreaked. How hopeful – cold comfort to Aidan Moffitt and Michael Snee’s families and friends – that we stand together as a society in grief. The changes we’ve undergone are clearly not enough.
Darkness will always descend, but it does not have to be the dominant tone of our landscape. What has changed, is a collective maturity in meeting hate with love, however flawed, and however, tragically, necessary.