North Atlantic Skyline - - Photographs from the west of Ireland (Galway, Mayo, Clare, Limerick, Roscommon and even Leitrim)

Pride of Place

Gay Pride Parade flows down Shop Street in Galway this afternoon.

Bród Ireland (Galway Gay Pride Festival) takes place this weekend. The Galway Advertiser reports that the organizers have received a single hate email, which called the march a 'proud to be a wife beater march...'. And to think people call homophobes ignorant (this one was probably the only homophobe smart enough to send an email... Just to add to his/her blood pressure, here's a few snaps from the march.

Didn't see any politicians in the march, though Labour had a banner there[UPDATE: Ebby informs me that Mayor Niall O Brolchain opened the parade in Eyre Square ]. They should have tried to get Maire Geoghan Quinn, since she was the Minister of Justice (and Galway Fianna Fail TD) that decriminalised homosexuality in 1993. It's interesting to look back at the Dail debates that took place at the time. Her political achievement was considerable - many senior politicians in her own party were against it, as were many in Fine Gael, the main opposition party then and now. Michael McDowell (then a novice opposition PD politician and now the Minister of Justice) gave a very supportive speech in favour of the proposed new law, and mentioned in passing the problem of overcrowded prisons meant that that serious offenders were getting out earlier[This week, the Inspector of Prisons described the present attitude of the Minister and his officials as 'fascist and frightening'.] Less edifying was Fine Gael's Brendan McGahon's contribution in the same debate, who managed to combine bigotry and an almost hilarious lack of irony in the same statement :-

Homosexuality is a departure from normality and while homosexuals deserve our compassion they do not deserve our tolerance. That is how the man in the street thinks. I know of no homosexual who has been discriminated against.

The debate preceding the Decriminalisation Bill was on a amendment (by Tony Gregory) to a law which would have outlawed hare coursing. Brendan had clearly far more compassion for fluffy creatures that certain humans in his contribution :-

I would ask the Minister to prevent the suffering of these gentle inoffensive animals now and to accept the reality of this Bill which Deputy Gregory had the initiative and courage to introduce. The vast majority of Irish people are sickened by this “sport”.

Unlike gay-bashing, presumably.

The real reason that the debate was happening at all was because Senator David Norris had taken [and won] a case to the European Court of Justice. He made his contribution to the debate in An Seanad (the Seanad debates make good reading: here, here (having the sort of argument you wouldn't normally expect in the corridors of power, here and here (the same bill also impacted the laws against prostitutes, since the age of consent was set equally for men and women at 17)). Ms Geoghan-Quinn had been busy that month - she had already decriminalised suicide, opening the debate in An Seanad with a short history of suicide as a criminal offence

Suicide is a common law offence. It was not created by Statute but formed part of the ancient unwritten law of England as interpreted by judges. I cannot offer a satisfactory explanation as to why it was originally made a criminal offence other than because it was regarded as self murder. The fact that the perpetrator of the crime of suicide was dead did not prevent the common law from imposing penalties. Up to 1870 the property of a person who committed suicide was forfeit to the State and it was the practice in England to bury a person who committed suicide at a crossroads with a stake through the heart. This practice was only prohibited in England in 1882 by the Interments (felo de se) Act, 1882 — Felo de se being the legal Latin term for suicide.

Camera = Canon 5D , lens = Canon 24-105mm@80mm, ISO=250, aperture=f9, speed=1/320 sec.

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Posted by Monasette at August 26, 2006 07:31 PM