Gay couples tell Kathy Sheridan how new proposals to recognise gay 'marriages' could change their lives, 10 years after the decriminalisation of homosexuality
Ten years ago in Ireland, homosexuality was a crime. Dublin had all of two gay pubs - dark, dingy little places with no windows facing the street, one so fearful of being identified as a gay meeting place that Gay Community News, a monthly newspaper, had to be delivered in plain brown wrappers.
This week, details were leaked of an official Irish report recommending the introduction of gay "marriages" and the right of a gay lover to be nominated as a co-parent. So far, no one has batted an eyelid.
"Ten years ago, we decriminalised homosexuality and this report will be launched 10 years later, almost to the day," says Brian Sheehan, co- chairperson of the National Gay and Lesbian Federation (NGLF), and a member of the report project team for the National Economic and Social Forum. "So in 10 years, we've moved from gay people being supplicants looking for favours, to being integrated into Government policy."
A resounding victory then for the gay rights movement? You won't see anything of the great, joyous, carnival through the streets of the kind seen in 1993, when they marched to the glorious chant of "We're here, we're queer and we're not going shopping".
Brian Finnegan, incoming editor of Gay Community News, grins at the "amazing" memory. "Remember, it wasn't just that homosexuality was decriminalised. With the same Bill came an equal age of consent. Suddenly, from nowhere, we were ahead of Britain - pioneers even."
After that, he says, the self-confidence of gay people "just grew and grew". Business woke up to the commercial potential of the Pink Pound. Suddenly, clubs and pubs were courting gays. In rural areas, where horrendous isolation was commonplace, gay country life has been revolutionised by the Internet. Now there are gay discos in rural towns such as Castlebar and Tralee.
Talk to a middle-class, thirtysomething or fortysomething gay man or woman in Dublin today, and they appear to be at ease with themselves and - for the most part - society. The favoured venue for many is The Front Lounge on Parliament Street, an airy pub with good food, comfortable sofas, and big windows onto the street.
Superficially at least, life seems to be a happy mix of the orderly, stylish and spontaneous, an existence usually uncomplicated by mucky children or mundane, suburban preoccupations. And that conforms neatly with the media image that has evolved over the past 10 years.
"The media image has moved from radical/activist/victim to a very definite idea of who gay people are," says Brian Finnegan. "And that tends to be men aged 25 to 35, who like to shop and party; smartly-dressed young, affable, funny consumers, in the mould of Graham Norton and Brian Dowling. The invisible gays are those over 50 or 60, or who are in their teens; they're not the given image now. And the given image is a very easy sell - inoffensive, easily mass-marketed and so, in some way, including us into the mainstream. But in doing that, a lot of gay people are being excluded."
So, even in 2003, an edge of darkness lies around the happy media idyll. Even for those who conform to the given image, almost all have had to engage in the kind of self-examination involving a dozen different types of terror, that the average "straight" is hardly aware of.
It begins with the "emotional crisis" of "coming out", at whatever age. "We come out as sexual beings to our parents when we introduce a boy or girl to them - but in our case, it's with a twist," says Michael, a lawyer. "And in our case, parents tend not to hear anything but the sexual element of it. What you're saying is, 'I'd like you to meet Tom'; what they're hearing is 'I'm having sex with Tom'."
Michael's partner Des, a GP, says: "Straight people are allowed their sexual adolescence, gay people are not. So what happens is that you find people living their sexual adolescence in their 20s and 30s because they didn't in their teens. There is no one to sit you down, no roadmap, to guide you through your 20s. Meanwhile, all your straight colleagues will have advanced and are three steps ahead of you in terms of what they want, sexual boundaries."
All of which explains why the prospect of getting permission to float up the aisle in a pink meringue or whatever you're having yourself - if it ever happens - is not triggering cartwheels on Parliament Street. Many don't even like to call it marriage. Most don't give a fig about marriage as an institution.
"The word drives me mad," says Margaret, an Irish nurse, who shares her life with Elizabeth. "What this is really about is the concept of living together as partners. It's about signing a document so that you and I have the same rights as a married couple - transferable pensions, inheritance tax, the right to nominate our partner as next of kin."
Others want it for similar reasons, but place equal emphasis on its symbolic importance. For Brian Sheehan of the NGLF, it's a pact of civil recognition, giving civil rights in law. It is about the responsibilities inherent in civilly-recognised relationships.
"Civil recognition is a symbol. But what is much more important is that people are treated equally in how they live their lives."
Gay people cannot nominate a next-of-kin for example. A man is nursed on his deathbed by his life-long partner, knowing that his father sits outside in the car, never visiting, but ready to claim his body and exclude his loved one, the moment he dies.
Same-sex relationships have no civil recognition, so a man whose partner is a non-national cannot bring him to this country in the way that a heterosexual may. Gay couples may not adopt a child.
All these disadvantages are held in common with non-married heterosexual couples. Where they diverge is in societal attitudes. The father of a dying heterosexual man would be unlikely to sit grimly in a car waiting to exclude his son's female nurse/lover from his funeral.
A heterosexual mother will get little sympathy for trying to prevent her child visiting a house where the father has formed a new heterosexual relationship. But supposing his new lover is a man? The forum recommends that a lesbian or gay lover be nominated as "co-parent or guardian of a child" where a gay man or woman has offspring. The flashpoint, should there be one, is most likely to be here.
Up to now, gay adoption has rated little attention in the Irish context. "But now, I hear a lot of talk about children - it's not something you would see in older gay people," says Des. "But as gay people gain in confidence and settle down, and you look around and see the mushrooming of non-denominational schools where the atmosphere might not be so awful for a child of gay parents, people are beginning to think that maybe you can create something positive in this world for your children. Definitely people are exploring that."
Meanwhile, an Irish support group for the parents of gay people is currently dealing with the case of a 10-year-old boy who says he is gay. The challenge for the parents is not the boy, but in how to raise the issue with the school principal, because they have no idea how the latter will react.
The 10-year-old's early discovery of his sexual orientation is not unusual. Des, now in his 30s, says he knew when he was seven. "Even then, he knew he was a Big Maureen," chortles Michael.
"My mother said she knew when I was two. I liked the Sound of Music," jokes Brian Finnegan. On the other hand, Elizabeth, a nurse in her early 40s, says she never knew she was gay until Margaret, now her long-term partner, told her she loved her some five or six years ago.
"I went out once or twice with boys but I never saw the point of it unless they were taking me to a cup final", says Elizabeth wryly.
Some 50 per cent of people recognise their sexual orientation while still under the age of 15. Yet, as anyone vaguely tuned into schoolboy culture is aware, there is no greater insult than tobe called "gay".
"School is the most vulnerable time," says Brian Sheehan of the NGLF. "In class, sexual orientation is covered only in terms of tolerance of gay and lesbians out there, not for someone who is actually right here in this class. Concerned Parents Against Bullying say that 100 per cent of the calls reported to them around the bullying of boys, feature homophobia as at least a part of it."
Early school-leaving is the least of it. Young gay men are seven times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers; lesbians are two-and-a-half-times more likely to attempt it.
Even in 2003, fear - perceived or real - is a constant companion. While legislation can create the conditions to facilitate equality of participation, it "cannot of itself guarantee equality of outcome", says the forum report. "Many LGB (lesbian, gay and bisexual) people are still hesitant to 'come out' and make their sexuality known in Irish society, fearing negative consequences, such as discrimination or social isolation, if they did so."
The report quotes a recent European values survey which found nearly 30 per cent of Irish people surveyed said they wouldn't like to have a homosexual as a neighbour. The only places which scored higher were Northern Ireland, Greece and Italy.
The fact that just 3 per cent of the cases going to the Equality Authority are on sexual orientation grounds, doesn't surprise Brian Sheehan. "It may be about a lack of awareness but it's also because, to make a complaint, you have to declare something about yourself - and that may be to a bed and breakfast proprietor or a school."
For some, this is next to impossible. It could be the gay man who experienced severe mental health problems after his partner died tragically and who, even after four years of psychiatric visits, could not bring himself to tell the psychiatrist that he was gay. Or the young farmer who has learned by osmosis from school, church, family and friends that "being gay is vile".
These are the people whom Brian Sheehan believes this report is for, the huge invisible, marginalised cohort who already suffer disadvantage in terms of poverty and/or social exclusion, and for whom being gay compounds the misery and isolation.
"I'd be very positive about what has happened in the last 10 years on many levels," says Brian Finnegan of GCN, "but socially, I think we have a long way to go. We're not talking about urban areas. We're sitting now in a straight pub where gay couples can express affection without anyone batting an eyelid. But this is just a pocket of Dublin. You're not going to get that on O'Connell Street. And the same is true about Galway and Cork - they're small pockets."
While for affluent, middle-class gay, lesbian and bisexual people, equal rights would be a fine thing, they have the resources to unravel many of the legal difficulties that pertain to unmarried partnerships. "I don't know of anything that suggests we are much more disadvantaged than an unmarried couple, from a legal point of view," says Michael. (Always excepting that heterosexual couples do have the legal option of marriage).
Margaret and Elizabeth call it "the middle-class bypass". Access to lawyers, having the mortgage in both names, knowing that wills are crucial, and that living wills - governing next- of-kin - are "usually abided by", are part of the bypass.
They have never encountered hostility of any kind. Then again, they have been careful not to - as some put it - "rub people's noses in it". They are strictly "non-scene", love the National Concert Hall, have a house full of good books and wine. They are happily integrated into their own extended families and the lives of a vast cross-section of friends. And - "being nurses and very handy", laughs Margaret - they're hugely popular with the neighbours.
Michael and Des report no hostility either - "or nothing blatant anyway . . . But we're well-heeled, articulate professionals. We live in leafy Dublin 6. The CV reads well. But it's also the case that a lot of people in the same situation as we are, are not out. There are some very important people in Irish business life in their 30s and 40s who would keep their private lives exceptionally ring-fenced from business."
However, Michael, while "out" to family, friends, the law firm and everyone who knows him, would always be "very careful" about how to handle invitations involving clients: "Where the partner is invited, we would still talk about whether it is appropriate . . . so there is a little bit of self-censorship. It's so subtle . . ."
And so it remains.
Some names have been changed at the request of the interviewees