It’s over six months since the historic legislation

It’s over six months since the historic legislation was passed which decriminalised homosexual relations between consenting adults above the age of 17 in Ireland. Since then gays and lesbians here have been coming to terms with the new sense of freedom and integration which has been the logical outcome of that long-overdue decision. The landscape has changed greatly, of that there can be no doubt and gays and lesbians have been enjoying a far greater visibility than had ever been the case before. And yet there are some strange anomalies.

In this issue of Hot Press, we publish an eight-page focus on the mood among gays here. During the preparations for it, a couple of us put our heads together to compile a list of people for a short honours list of sorts – people whose contribution to the fight for gay rights, gay health and gay happiness has been an inspiration. We began to throw names into the ring, and the longer we went on, the more startling the evidence became. One contributor, himself gay, summed it up: “It’s crazy,” he said, “here are all these people I know and I know they’re out – and yet I can’t really say whether they’re officially out or not. In fact I don’t think they are.” And he listed off a dozen names of well-known figures, some of whom you feel must be so close to being out it’d make no difference to the public perception of them at all and others whose careers you suspect might be devastated. Either way an aura of secrecy remains, a suggestion that there is something in here to feel guilty about, something to which attends some vestige of a sense of shame.

Which is why I find Emma Donoghue’s piece which introduces the special so refreshing and inspiring. She is beautifully, wonderfully upfront and full of the real joys of being sexually true to yourself. John Farrell contributes a very fine and moving autobiographical piece which is similarly inspiring. And by and large, this was the thrust of the exercise on this occasion: to celebrate rather than to become too deeply embroiled in wrestling with the dark clouds that hang over us all, gay and not-so-gay alike as the turn of the century encroaches.

We have not dwelt on the issue of AIDS at any length here and it is a deliberate omission. There will be other times to speak on these things and other deadlines to meet. And I have a feeling that we’ll be coming back to this issue again – and maybe talking to some of those dozens of people who are there, cooling their heels in the background. For the moment, however, to those who contributed, thanks.

• Niall Stokes