THE LAST fortnight has been a quietly momentous one for gay men and lesbians in Ireland. We may indeed be passing a watershed in the acceptance of homosexual people as full and equal members of society. The first open conference of gay, lesbian and bisexual primary school teachers was held in Dublin. The funeral of Stephen Gately was notable for an affection and admiration that went beyond his status as a pop star and embraced his life as a pioneer for gay men in the music industry. Donal Óg Cusack's decision, elaborated so eloquently in today's Weekend Review, to be open about his sexual orientation broke through another barrier of silence. It should not require courage to be honest about one's own identity, but Cusack's declaration is as gutsy as anything he has done on the field of play.
There will always be bigots, but the public reaction to these three events has been pleasingly low key. Most Irish people understand quite well that teachers, even in small rural schools, are as likely as anyone else to be gay. They understand instinctively that the grief of Stephen Gately’s civil partner is no less profound than that of anyone who has lost a beloved spouse. They know that the manly virtues of the hurling field – strength of body and character – are incompatible with stereotypes of gay men but not with the reality of their lives and talents.
Yet we need to remember that these breakthroughs in respect and acceptance come against a continuing backdrop of fear. Both Stephen Gately and Donal Óg Cusack came out as gay at least in part to pre-empt being “outed” by the tabloid press or rumour-mongers. Many of the teachers at the conference still find it impossible to identify themselves in public.
For those teachers, and for anyone who works in a religious-owned school or hospital, there is still the wicked anomaly of the Employment Equality Act which makes it lawful to discriminate against those who pose a risk of “undermining the religious ethos of the institution”. Given that a “religious ethos” can and often does include prejudice against homosexuals, it is easy to understand why many feel the need to hide their sexuality.
There is, indeed, a flat contradiction in State policy in this area. The Department of Education recently produced, in collaboration with the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network, very welcome guidelines for schools on dealing with homophobic prejudice and bullying. This is a very important step forward, but it sits uneasily with the maintenance of a legislative context in which gay teachers are themselves bullied into silence.
This is not, however, just another issue of Church and State. The fear for gay men and lesbians is often about how they will be treated by their own colleagues and their immediate communities. It’s about the snide remarks in the staffroom, the homophobic chants from the terraces, the belittling jokes in the pub. Unless society as a whole wants to demand that a large minority of its citizens be condemned to living a lie, it has to be prepared to treat sexual orientation for what it is: a natural, and naturally varied, part of human identity. For citizens to be equal, they do not have to be the same.