It’s not his sexuality that may hamper Varadkar

World of Politics with Harry McGee

The most mercurial and brilliant don’t always rise to the top of the tree. Back in the 1970s, the journalist Nell McCafferty wrote a column for The Irish Times about the cases that came up in Dublin District Court. In September 1975 she reported about a peculiar case in Court 4.

The Court was cleared of the public and two men were brought before the judge. Both faced charges of engaging in a homosexual act in the cubicle of a public toilet. One of the men was married, the other single. The married man’s wife was in court with him. Both pleaded guilty.

A lot of the discussion in the case surrounded the notion that this was an aberration, and that drink and other circumstances had overtaken both men. The judge was reassured that both could be ‘cured’. Throughout the case, what had happened was described as disgusting and abnormal behaviour. Both were fined and warned about the consequences of a reoccurrence.

That is less than 40 years ago and is a reminder that homosexuality was a criminal offence then, (theoretically at least) punishable by a prison sentence. Eight years later, in 1983, a young man walking through Ringsend Park in Dublin died after being set upon by a gang of youths in an act of so-called ‘queerbashing’.

Not only did the young men not get custodial sentences when the case came up in court, they were also feted when they returned home to their neighbourhood. A protest organised by those campaigning against the unforgivable leniency of the sentences was also attacked by locals in the area.

It was Máire Geoghegan-Quinn who as Minister for Justice finally decriminalised homosexuality in 1993 – perhaps the act in a Ministerial role for which she will be most remembered.

Society has moved on hugely since then. The stigmatisation of gay people has gradually subsided and that has emboldened more people to declare their sexual orientation in public: though I’m sure it’s a big step and some just don’t have the confidence to do it. Most people are related to, or know, people who are gay. It’s that personal close-up experience of knowing what kind of human beings they are that has made the difference.

Leo Varadkar is not the first Irish politician to state publicly that he is gay. David Norris has been open about his sexuality throughout his adult life. In the current Dáil there are three other openly gay TDs – Dominic Hannigan and John Lyons of Labour as well as Jerry Buttimer of Fine Gael. If you go across the water to England there have been gay members of Cabinet for a generation (Labour’s Chris Smith springs to mind) and the leader of the Scottish Tories, Ruth Davidson, is also gay.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.