Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

June is Pride month throughout the world. It is 52 years this month since the Stonewall uprising, when LGBTQ+ people in New York city rose up against police harassment and violence. Since that time, the movement for gay liberation has spread to every country in the world. Every June, the community celebrates and takes stock of the journey travelled and the journey yet to come. Stonewall's tradition of resistance and struggle lives on, despite attempts by the corporate world to co-opt and monetise the issues. Here in Ireland, much has been achieved, but homophobia is still alive and kicking, as shown by recent events in Waterford and Ballyfermot. Meanwhile, the Government failed to challenge the homophobia of the church's new sex education programme for our schools or to insist on objective, factual sex education for our students.

The EU projects itself as modern and liberal, yet same-sex unions have not been legalised in five countries and same-sex marriage has not been legalised in 13 countries. In Poland, there is a state-sponsored ideological war against the LGBTQ+ community, and so, too, in Hungary, which banned adoption for same-sex couples late last year and now has banned what it describes as "the display and promotion of homosexuality" among under 18s, thereby criminalising large numbers of young gay people in that country.

EU governments have been far too quiet on the issue. The Irish Government has been far too quiet on it. What does the Minister of State intend to say and do at the European Council? If governments fail to act, then it will be a revival of the Stonewall tradition, a tradition of militant struggle from below, along with international solidarity, that will hold the key to challenging these regimes and approaches.

See this speech in context