Tonie Walsh
speaker
85 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 27 Jun
Tonie Walsh’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
It's extraordinarily vital, in a word.
That's what it is.
It is exuberant, as you said.
It's colourful.
It's wonderful.
I see people living their lives without fear and shame that are attached to it, when I remember coming out in the late 70s and early 80s.
But that was not an easy thing to do.
No, it wasn't.
And also, too, we have to contextualise that Pride grew out of...
Endemic poverty, the AIDS pandemic, there was a lot of other things happening in Ireland that actually impacted the troubles in the north.
All of these social, cultural and political elements impacted on the way LGBT people had to struggle to find their collective voice.
And also, we have to remember that David Norris was still progressing his constitutional action.
Sex between men was illegal.
Indeed, until 1993 and also until those laws were abolished, it was impossible to advance anti-discrimination and equality legislation.
Of course, James here has been very involved in that process.
We couldn't have had things like Marriage Equality or the Equal Status Act or the Gender Recognition Act until we got decriminalisation out of the way in 1993.
Now, the first Pride Festival was actually more than 40 years ago.
Indeed it was, where two women and eight guys did a protest outside the British Embassy and the Department of Justice, protesting those very British laws that you referenced from the 19th century.
And then if you jump forward a little while later, it was only with the establishment of community spaces like the Hirschfeld Centre and Temple Bar that provided the economic and human resources to progress an actual Pride festival.
And you know, with the first festivals, I mean, I remember going on my first festival in 1980, there were only 16 of us wandering around town and I was brazen as hell, a 19 year old, you know, just up for a little bit of crack.
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