DUP Assembly member Iris Robinson has been criticised for telling a live radio programme that homosexuals could be "turned around" with psychiatric help. ( The Irish Times, June 7th.), writes Frank McNally
DATELINE: Belfast, August. Tension was high across the North last night after the climax of the annual gay marching season - the Belfast Pride Parade - was metaphorically re-routed.
The move was widely expected. But supporters had applauded earlier yesterday as thousands of gay men and lesbians set out from the parade's normal starting point, bound for Royal Avenue, which runs though the city's predominantly heterosexual central shopping district.
The colourful marchers, many dressed in drag, carried banners protesting at the erosion of their culture and customs, and expressing determination to follow their traditional route regardless.
But at the entrance to Royal Avenue, their way was suddenly blocked by a 20-foot-high barricade manned by Iris Robinson and a large force of psychiatrists, couches at the ready.
There, addressing the marchers through a loudhailer, Mrs Robinson read out the terms of the recent Book of Leviticus decision on the parade: namely that it was an "abomination" and did not enjoy cross-community support.
She then called on the marchers to "turn around" peacefully, adding - with unusual emphasis - that they should go "straight" home. This was perfectly possible, she said, and professional counselling was available to help them achieve it.
The marchers responded by formally handing over a letter of protest at the barrier. Then popular local drag artiste Lily Von Tramp addressed the crowd from her platform heels, urging them to remain calm, while explaining that they had been refused their constitutional right to march the "queens' highway".
In broadly similar vein, she went on to lead the marchers in a spirited if unorthodox rendition of the British national anthem. After which, the group's leaders called on their marchers to retreat in a dignified manner. A spokesman later insisted that the change of orientation this involved was purely geographical.
Nearby, residents in the fiercely heterosexual enclave of East Belfast welcomed the attempted re-routing, while Mrs Robinson reiterated her call for the gay community to enter immediate face-to-face talks with a Christian psychiatrist friend of hers who had helped others in their position.
But the marchers remained camped out (no pun intended - this is still a metaphor) near the scene last night. Spirits were high as they partied into the small hours, dancing and singing songs, including a slightly rude version of The Sash My Father Wore.
A spokesman for the group said nothing had changed, and they were as "committed as ever" to following their preferred route, however controversial other people considered it.
Still on the subject of walkers, there was a flurry of letters on this page recently from outraged Dublin pedestrians, angry at the invasion of their space by cyclists. Fair enough. On behalf of the cycling community, I apologise for the excesses of our militant fringe.
But while pedestrians are probably entitled to an even higher position in the hierarchy of self-righteousness than cyclists, they are not without faults themselves. And along with my apology, I wonder if I might also offer them a small note of criticism. If we cyclists are to avoid your footpaths, is it possible that you pedestrians might stay out of our bicycle lanes? I don't mean the ones on public roads, necessarily. If walkers want to share with us the thrill of never knowing when we will be mown down by a reckless motorist, good luck to them. No, I mean those special cycling routes in public parks - the ones with colour coding and little bicycles painted at intervals to let walkers know that they should be somewhere else.
Even here, I don't mind the occasional stroller intruding, just so long as he gets out of your way in time and looks gratifyingly apologetic. But such pedestrians are unusual in my experience. And the enjoyment of, for example, the Phoenix Park's bike paths is greatly diminished for cyclists by the numbers of walkers who clog them up, with the same sense of entitlement as they do the public footpaths.
These are not just strollers, either. Unfortunately, public parks attract high numbers of "power walkers", who pump their arms violently as they go, in such a way that a cyclist approaching from the rear and mistiming his passing manoeuvre even slightly can be knocked clean off his bike.
There are other risks too. Casual walkers who use one hand to hold a mobile phone and the other for gesticulating carry the added danger of being unpredictable. And don't get me started about dreamy young lovers, whose lack of lane discipline even on ordinary city footpaths is one of the biggest risks faced by bicycle couriers at this time of year.
But these summer evenings, the power-walkers are out in force in all the parks. And I can only explain their serial misappropriation of cycle lanes - rare as such things still are - by the fact that, for aerobic reasons, they have to hold their heads up while walking and thus never see the markings on the ground.