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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
So the question we're asking now is whether the Pride celebration is the easy celebration that perhaps we all think it is now. Brendan Courtney is here and he says that it isn't and that the gay community is scared. Brendan, thank you for coming in.
Great to see you.
You're going to tell us about this great event that you're involved in at the weekend and we'll get to that as well.
Yeah.
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Chapter 2: Is Pride the easy celebration we all think it is?
But why are gay people scared?
So we're weirdly kind of in a similar vein to the Me Too movement. We learned to look over our shoulders. As Panti said, we check ourselves when we're at bus stops. What gives the gay away? So we've come through school being othered. So in my generation particularly, we're very used to feeling like that. These are very familiar feelings.
There is just a general rhetoric we're seeing online of hate. We're all very aware of that. So anybody of difference is a victim to that right now. And it's being, I suppose, it's weaponised verbally. We're seeing it physically weaponised.
And as somebody who's been attacked twice on the streets of our city, and I'm not going to get into the details of that right now, but I've actually physically had it. I look over my shoulder a lot more than I did. I was talking to your lovely producer and I was sort of saying, you know what, I feel like we've been a bit quiet about it. I feel like we should be sounding the alarm.
We're frightened. We are frightened as a community. We're much more cautious and we're not asking for anything. We're not asking, like, after marriage equality, we got equal rights and we were really happy. We're just asking to be tolerated.
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Chapter 3: Why does Brendan Courtney believe the gay community is scared?
We don't look for much. We don't use many schools. We don't have many kids. We're a very independent, you know, little section. The other thing that's really important to say to people, and I saw this, I'm quoting somebody else.
Every single gay person you've ever met, me included, you've ever seen, you've ever sat in their salon chair, they're a doctor, a nurse, a lawyer, whoever they are, every single gay person you've ever met has, as a teenager or a tween, laid in bed at night knowing they were different and hating themselves.
You go through a period just before you come out of self-loathing like you've never imagined. You don't want to be different.
You know, I don't know if you heard the piece we did with Daniel Pitcher, who works here in Newstalk, and he came in to talk to us about that. And he is openly gay and has been for some time, but he still struggles with it. And part of the reason why he struggles with it is because of what you've just described. So there is a little bit of fear around it.
And I think that after marriage equality, people think, oh, that's fixed now. That's done. And we don't need to worry about them anymore. They're OK now.
Oh, that's exactly it. And in fact, we said, that's it, that's done. You know, we were all down the George waving our pride flags, delighted with life. And we did feel it was done. And we were ready to move on and get on with our normal lives and live, you know, be just like other people. I used to say, there was the whole phrase, gay best friend.
And I would say, make pay, brother, because pretty soon, brethren, they're going to see we're just like them. We're just normal people. But it has rode back. 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.
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Chapter 4: What experiences contribute to fear within the LGBTQ+ community?
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. Lots of them have just disappeared into drugs, into other places, wherever, they're just gone. People who don't have supportive families disappear. It happens. We were lucky. But I feel this Pride on the 27th in Dublin, I'm nervous.
I'm nervous we're going to have some sort of nervous, you know, some sort of negative faction on O'Connell Bridge shouting at us. When Pride is not a gay march, Pride is a celebration of inclusiveness. And at its core, for me, it's still always as a protest to remind people not to let go of our human rights.
Ireland has changed so much in our lifetime since we were in school, like unbelievable for both of us. So we're very proud of that. We need to hold tight with that and not lose sight that there are anybody of difference in our culture right now doesn't feel safe.
And I wonder what it is that you, or can you pinpoint what has changed?
there's a confidence when people unite and hate. And there's an access point where they can do that online. So when people unite, I hate them.
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Chapter 5: How has the rhetoric of hate impacted the gay community?
Oh, I hate them too. And hate is a much stronger emotion and it peddles much more views and it keeps our attention for longer, as we all know those things about, right? I actually genuinely think unregulated social media will be like smoking in cinemas in 20 years' time.
I think our grandkids will go, you could... I find it hard to disagree with that.
I really do think it will be.
I think that's where we're headed.
It has to be because it's allowing people to have these vacuums of nonsense with no fact. And it's also allowing people to talk nonsense and accept that they don't need facts because it's opinion. And that pedals hate. And when you've got a society where people feel aggrieved, they're going to blame other people. It starts with the trans, they come for the gays, and then they go for the women.
And anybody of difference beyond that. Anybody with different skin colour.
I had somebody who went for me yesterday on social media, calling me all sorts of names. There you go. I don't tend to go looking for that stuff. But when I see it, sometimes what I do is I reply to them and I kind of, yeah, and I try to be nice to them. And I find generally when you reply to them that they stop. I was hacked or I didn't mean to say it. And some of them will just apologize. Yeah.
This person came back and had another go at me. No. And I just thought, what's going on in your life that, you know, you want to spend your evening calling me awful names? I don't get it. I don't understand it because I think that it must be a really negative experience for the person who's saying those things. Yeah. And yet so many people engage in it.
Yeah. Like a hobby.
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Chapter 6: What challenges do LGBTQ+ individuals face post-marriage equality?
It's toxically... It's an addictive, you know... Hating people. Oh, yeah, because it makes you feel like you've got a voice. And a lot of people feel voiceless. And all of a sudden you give them a smartphone and they feel like they have a voice. It's like I say, would you walk into a pub and scream hateful names at me in a pub? Probably now a few people would, but realistically, probably not.
But you can... Do it anonymously from behind your phone. I always say, God, in her wisdom, invented block. Just block these people. I wouldn't give them any airtime whatsoever. But what does crush me is when it's a mum, a young mum, and she's saying homophobic things to me. I'm like, you're a mum. You don't know what's coming down the line. Like...
You're going to really regret this, you know, and you don't know who they're going to bring into your life. And if, you know, expressing intolerance in front of children is just so bad. It's so bad. There's a couple of other arguments about why it happens. And there are different conversations.
They're around people feeling forgotten, people, you know, their communities not having housing, having education, you know, people feeling that... funds are being siphoned off to someone else. But that's just a way to keep us all fighting in the bottom. So, you know, we give all our money away to capital gains.
Whatever we do at the top, we're not basically sorting out these problems at the bottom. But what can sort it out and what showed us in the last two referendums is people, real stories, like just reminding people that my community are frightened at the moment. And people are like, even my, you know, get my barber, he's a lovely man. He was like, really, are you? I'm like, and that's, so when I...
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Chapter 7: How do societal changes affect the perception of Pride events?
But that's why you need to say it, I think.
I feel this is really dramatic, but I feel we need to sound the alarm. I'm nervous about what's going to happen at Pride on Saturday. Imagine that, this day and age in Ireland. The year before marriage equality, I was attacked on Georgia Street and they shouted, faggot, punched me to the ground.
And it made all the headlines and I had to give an if to out the following night and it took people off the bench. But the really interesting thing about that for me was the people I was with, we were like, oh God, that was terrible. That's not great. We weren't that surprised, right?
Because people had been damaging my shop window and all the kinds of, but what really struck me was my mates, my ally friends, my married sister and my brother-in-law were like, oh my God, that stuff still happens. So it's worth reminding people that stuff is happening and it's happening more and more and more and it's terrifying.
Okay. Now, I want to ask you about the gig of the weekend. Because it is going to be fun. In the Abbey. Very fancy. Gate Community News. The Roast. What is it? Is that being mean to people?
Yes, it is. So what it is, it's talking about... After all we've said. So it's talking about, you know, shouting abuse at people in a safe environment is like the schoolyard. It's a slagging match, basically. And people win points based on it. So it's two teams. It's actually, it's all the best comedians. It's Emma Doran, Shane Daniel, Bourne, Gerold Farrelly, loads, two teams of five each.
I'm the ringmaster, the emcee, as it were. And we did one for Panty last year to celebrate 10 years of marriage equality. And the fact that Panty did the noble call in the Abbey and it was such a success, the Abbey asked us to come back and do another one. So it's a fundraiser. So it's actually showing that you can actually slag people and have banter with people in a controlled environment.
And not be mean while you do it. It's pretty mean, but it's safe. And everybody knows it's safe.
And that's on Sunday.
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