Brendan Courtney

It is a frightening time.

So the very first Pride I did... These are all little fact shock people.

First of all, what Daniel said again, lying in bed at night, self-loathing, hating yourself as a teenager.

It's really torturous.

It's a really horrible time.

And then you...

you get this real gift of self-love where you actually realise this is just who I am and you need support of gay community news or these organisations which will help younger people, really work with younger people so they don't feel isolated, so they don't suffer as much as they're going to suffer.

But I, you know, I remember the first Pride I did with Declan Buckley, who's a regular contributor in here, one of our friends, one of my best friends.

We went on our first Pride march in 1991, so two years before homosexuality.

It was decriminalised.

I was 19.

And the older gays said, bring an umbrella.

And we were like, is it going to rain?

And they were like, no, because people came down from Moore Street with boxes of rotten fruit and threw it at us.

And that was part of the process.

Now, we were 19 and 20.

We knew we were part of the political movement.

We knew we were on the right side.

of being ourselves, because we were strong, confident, and had come from really liberal, accepting families, which was key, by the way.

The people who didn't come from those families, we've never seen again.