“Why do they still need pride?”
It’s a question many Irish people might ask themselves in June as the rainbow flag appears on flagpoles and in windows across the country.
Ireland legalised gay sex in 1993 and then in 2015 voted in favour of gay marriage. A few months later, the Oireachtas passed the Gender Recognition Act, allowing trans people to self identify as their preferred gender.
However, life for Ireland’s LGBT community is still often very far from perfect.
The community is still at risk of violence and many still struggle to accept themselves.
On The Claire Byrne Show, Newstalk’s Daniel Pitcher recalled how he was recently sitting on a bus with a group of teenagers.
As the bus moved up along the Quays, the teenagers began to discuss whether the Pride flags were really necessary.
“They were looking at them and going, ‘Why do they still need pride?’” he said.
“And I was sitting a couple of seats behind them thinking about what they had just said.”
Dublin Pride. Picture by: Alamy.com.For Daniel, the most striking part of the conversation was the emphasis that they put on the word they.
“‘Why do they still need it?’” he continued
“It's like it almost seemed like I am now placed into a box.
“And when I say I am placed into a box again, that is because I am a gay man and it's something that I have struggled with for years and years.
“Stemming back to when I was probably their age in an Ireland that was a little bit different than it is now.
“Perhaps still moving on from the 70s, 80s and 90s and so on, when it was illegal to be gay, but still going through school in a time where you were still bullied, picked on for being gay.”
Now 35, Daniel grew up at a time when gay people still very much felt like outsiders in Ireland.
To cope, he “put up all these firewalls” around himself.
“What I thought was, I didn't know how other people would react or didn't know if people would accept me,” he said,
“I actually couldn't accept myself and that, that was something that, I've only sort of come to realising maybe in the last couple of years.”
Marriage equality
In the end, it was 22nd May 2015 that changed everything for him.
Ahead of the marriage equality referendum, Ireland had a national conversation about the place of gay people in society and the historic wrong inflicted on them.
“I kind of figured that there was probably not going to be a better time,” Daniel said.
“I was working in a different radio station and reporting on the referendum itself and the ‘home to vote’ thing, seeing those hordes of queues of people coming in on flights to Dublin Airport so that they could vote in this and have their say.
“That gave me confidence.”
People gather as votes are continued to be counted in the referendum on same-sex marriage. Picture by: Alamy.com.He decided to come out on Facebook, wrote up a post, clicked publish and headed out to vote.
“Then on my way down to vote, I saw a number of people going, ‘Oh my God, I've just seen your Facebook status, I had no idea but well done,’” he said.
“The support was unbelievable.”
Afterwards, he went down to the school where he coached sport and the Junior Captain, who was just 14 at the time, came up and told him they had seen his Facebook status.
“He said, ‘Look, we want you to know how proud we are to have you as our coach,’” he recalled.
“I just didn't know how to respond, I was just frozen in a moment of what an unbelievably positive thing to say - and mature from from his somebody age.”
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11 years on, he is “way more accepting of myself now” but understands that things are still often difficult for gay people.
He hopes that by speaking out things can and will change for those who are struggling.
“So if one person is helped today, I would leave this studio a happy person,” he said.
Main image: Daniel Pitcher and Claire Byrne.
