Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I stress how welcome this motion is and express the Civil Engagement Group’s full support for it. I do not want to endlessly repeat comments that have been made so I will echo the gratitude expressed to those people who, over decades, brought us to this point, although I will not namecheck them all again.

The motion has many different strands about the history of criminalisation of gay men in Ireland, the history of protest against LGBTQI+ oppression, and more. I want to highlight how the criminalisation of gay men was just one dimension of the larger conservative othering and suppression of queerness and gay men which was expressed in law but also in social stigma, religious dogma, erasure in terms of health provision and so on.

One connection I would like to make between these various strands is to highlight how the criminalisation of gay sex contributed directly to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. Dr. Nina Holmes, writing in the Irish Examinerin recent years, highlighted that the health education efforts directed at the gay community in Ireland were inhibited by the status of male homosexuality activity until decriminalisation. It was left to grassroots organisations to put themselves at risk to get information out there. It is notable that Ireland’s first AIDS pamphlet was issued not by the Department of Health but by the independent group, Gay Health Action, in 1985. The criminalisation of gay men and gay sex prevented the sharing of public health information which could have saved lives but it also helped to provide a moral cover or alibi for the failure to respond to the AIDS crisis.

This is where the blaming rhetoric came in. It was not until 1987 that the Irish Government launched its own AIDS awareness campaign and, unsurprisingly, it advocated abstinence as a solution. “AIDS Don't Bring It Home” and “Casual sex spreads AIDS” were the slogans. It is important to remind everyone that people living with HIV are now thankfully able to live long and healthy lives. Modern medication can reduce the virus in the bloodstream to undetectable levels such that people living with HIV can have unprotected sex with their partners without ever passing on the virus. Perhaps it is also time to consider a State apology for the atrocious response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s.

I also bring to the attention of the House the role that Ireland can and should play on LGBTQI+ issues internationally where criminalisation, oppression and persecution persists in other jurisdictions. In Uganda, members of parliament recently passed a controversial Bill which will make homosexual acts punishable by death. Last summer, three men were sentenced to death by stoning in a Sharia law court in northern Nigeria after they had been convicted of engaging in homosexuality. We must condemn these actions as a House in the strongest terms and we must also use our diplomatic influence to end the persecution of LGBTQI+ people around the world. I would welcome updates from the Minister about the work being undertaken internationally by the State in this respect through our diplomatic and multilateral channels.

I will conclude by weaving some threads between criminalisation and oppression and also between the past and the present day. It is deeply disturbing to see attacks globally on trans people at present. We need to historicise this and realise that the attacks on trans people’s social and legal rights are interwoven in exactly the same way that social oppression of gay men was interwoven with their ultimate criminalisation. In order to make the act of gay sex illegal, gay sex had to be socially smeared. Groups worked to infect society with a paranoia and a fear around gay sex to stigmatise it, including falsely associating it with paedophilia. Rhetorical efforts like these helped to create and maintain criminalisation or to remove legal rights in different places all around the world. We are now seeing a similar dynamic play out in the present day with our other LGBTQI+ friends and peers where people are creating a similar paranoia about the physicality of trans people. Concerted efforts are being made to see trans people as threatening and to generate unfounded paranoia about what bathrooms they use or what lockers they share. To make it very clear, we are seeing the exact same dynamic play out. We have also seen trans people being accused of being paedophiles or sexually deviant, just like gay men were. In the past couple of years, we have seen the far right accusing trans organisations of grooming and the spreading of totally unfounded conspiracies about these organisations.

Just like a manufactured moral panic was historically used to create and maintain a criminalisation around gay men, we are now seeing a similar moral panic being used to try to remove the legal rights of trans people. We are seeing certain groups attempting to use this manufactured hysteria to justify pushback against our self-identification laws in Ireland. We cannot lose the thread of history here. It is beyond time that we right historical wrongs against gay men. If we do not learn from our history, we are doomed to repeat it. It is crucial, therefore, that we learn lessons by looking back and understanding how society allowed this social contagion of fear and hatred towards gay men to spread.When preparing for today's speech I was thinking of Foucault's work on madness and crime and punishment. Again, it was the words of Senator Norris on happiness that reminded me of Foucault and I will finish by quoting him.

Sexuality is a part of our behaviour. It's part of our world freedom. Sexuality is something that we ourselves create. It is our own creation, and much more than the discovery of a secret side of our desire. We have to understand that with our desires go new forms of relationships, new forms of love, new forms of creation. Sex is not a fatality; it's a possibly for creative life. It's not enough to affirm that we are gay but we must also create a gay life.

Those words capture Senator Norris's statement about fighting for happiness.