Ireland is a visual treat with ancient stone walls, historic cities, colorful villages, sprawling green pastures, great ocean cliffs and warm hospitality. A three week drive around the entire periphery of the island revealed famous sites such as Dublin’s Books of Kells, Blarney’s Castle, the Giant’s Causeway, Waterford’s crystal factory and the grim war wall-murals of Derry and Belfast. Threaded throughout all these famous venues is a thriving and struggling gay and lesbian life force that was given legal birth in the early 1990’s when homosexuality was decriminalized. Since then, many organizations, individuals and activists have pushed for an equal share of modern Ireland’s social and economic prosperity. Gay marriage has been legal since November 2015.
Dublin’s Liberal Downtown
Dublin resonates with images and sounds both ancient and modern. As I walked into a gay/mixed café/bar called The Front Lounge, located only steps away from Dublin Castle, I could hear Christ Church Cathedral’s 18th century deep bell tolling six blocks away. Suddenly slicing through the sonorous chime like a jack hammer was the ramrod roar of a Kawasaki motorcycle charging past and round the corner of O’Neill’s Victorian pub with its stained-glass windows.
Inside the Front Lounge an assortment of patrons huddled over their Guinness, Cokes or Beaujolais chatting with friends as they gestured with cigaretted hands punctuating their talk. The Front Lounge is a gay/mixed place with high ceilings, (photo left) lots of floor space, comfortable sofas and a lunchtime food bar. Along the walls are paintings and sculptures bathed under display lighting.
(Unfortunately the Front Lounge closed in 2016 but I keep the story for its cultural value here.)
I listened for a while as four men in their twenties and thirties bantered and asserted their momentary thoughts about friendship, job security, a new outfit, changing flats, and gossip from a recent party. Each one of them had a cell phone that seemed to chirp every twelve minutes. From their accents it was obvious they were not all Irish. As it turned out no one in this little clutch was. One handsome dark man spoke Spanish. When I asked him from where he replied,”from Columbia—but my father is Irish”. Another member of their circle was from Brazil, a third from Paris and the other from Italy. Modern Dublin is busy, gay and very international.
The capital is a remarkably comfortable metropolis in which to be a gay or lesbian denizen. In no small part is this due to the esteemed former President Mary Robinson (former UN high commissioner for Human Rights) who as a young solicitor took her own government to the European Court of Human Rights because of its anti-gay statutes still lingering on the books from an obsolete moral era.
She and co-counsel David Norris won their case and the Irish parliament was left struggling to modernize their legal thinking about homosexuality or face censure from the European Union, something Ireland could ill afford. In the ten years since that landmark action, Ireland has made up for lost time with some of the most pro-gay protections and equality laws in the European Union.
Literary Dublin
Dublin is also unique in the prominence and visibility it gives to its literary figures—gay or straight. James Joyce’s visage has at least two statues around town (photo right).
In Merrion Park, gay icon Oscar Wilde (once imprisoned for loving another man) has a dramatic—if not a quietly flamboyant–presence in colored marble. His unusual reclining statue (photo left in Merrion Square) is located across the street from his childhood home, now a museum owned by the American College in Dublin.
A nearby book store sells postcards with the faces of Irish writers: in addition to the two well-knows with statues, there are J.M.Synge, Jonathan Swift, Sean O’Casey, Brendan Behan, W.B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Bram Stoker, and George Bernard Shaw.
And this literary tradition is not just an historic artifact. In the October ’02 issue of Gi magazine (Gay Ireland) four of Ireland’s most respected living writers are profiled—all happen to be gay: Jamie O’Neill (author of ‘At Swim, Two Boys’, recently made into a mainstream film), Colm Toibin (nominated for the Booker Prize in 1999 for ‘The Blackwater Lightship’), Frank Ronan (awarded a top Irish prize for his 1989 ‘The Men Who Loved Evelyn Cotton’) and Keith Ridgway (debuted in 1989 with the intense ‘The Long Falling’).
So it should not be surprising that in such a literate town would be found a gay bar called The Wig & Pen, a “straight friendly” pub where writers bring their works-in-progress to read or listen to other budding literati.
Perhaps not as poetic or academic, ‘Gi’ magazine is a trendy glossy monthly with slick international fashion pics, gossip and images of celebrities as well as thoughtful interviews. There are serious features about dating, gay families, politics, gay immigrants as well as adverts for more mainstream items as cars, liquor and watches. There are no sex ads in the back. For those, one has to read GCN (Gay Community News), the monthly newspaper which has here-and-now entertainment, news and events. The third gay rag is Free! which are strictly gay-scene happenings at the various clubs, bars along with party gossip.
Via globalgayz.com by Richard Ammon
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