Ireland's same-sex marriage referendum: A whole nation will now decide if I should be an equal citizen

As a canvasser, I met people ‘undecided’ who were treating the referendum like some constitutional game of X Factor

Ross Golden Bannon
Friday 22 May 2015 15:00 BST
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We’ve kept our chins up and braved it for the last seven weeks. Knocking on doors in wind and rain, sometimes just two of us facing hard, cold eyes. I pulled my punches in the updates I shared online. I didn’t want people to know that in the very place where I grew up, in Sutton and Howth, such seemingly desirable neighbourhoods, it was generously peppered with people saying 'No' to me on the very doorsteps where they welcomed others. Sometimes polite, sometimes rude, often sneering, people were delighting in telling me they’d be voting against me. People ‘undecided’ were treating the referendum like some constitutional game of X Factor. Others just didn’t care enough to vote, others felt it was a point of grammar. My existence, just a point of grammar.

Every. No. Hurt.

So many of the faces were faded faces of mums and dads I’d known as a child, echoes of their children still there, but now hardened by who knows what? A definition, a word, a failure to step away from empty intellectualising? A refusal to consider that their grandchild might be lesbian or gay?

Every 'No' brought me back to these same roads 35 years ago when I was a gay child, knowing I was different, not fully realising why. Not really understanding why the boys at the top of Glencarraig minced in front of me and called me Lionel Blair, but knowing it was best to take the long way to the shops. “He’s a dawdler,” said my mother. I wasn’t, I just always had to be on guard for who might be around the next corner and I had to take a circuitous route to get the ‘messages’. “He’s careless”, said my father. I wasn’t, I cherished the beautiful things he gave me but boys in school tore them from me and crushed them because I was a puff. I pretended I’d lost the polished, stainless steel geometry set he’d given me.

Here the fight goes on, as I stand in a windswept car park with a 67-year-old grandmother and an old childhood friend who knows the complexity of what it is to be human. We started knocking on doors and we remained polite in the face of the vilest insults. We didn’t bully anyone, we just politely moved on. Then more people joined us, and as they did my prejudices were challenged. They weren’t lesbian or gay, they were straight people joining the campaign. They’d decided to take time away from family and kids, husbands, wives, girlfriends and boyfriends and were standing shoulder to shoulder with me. For a while I was the only gay in the village again but this was different and powerful. I kept thanking people for being there. Until our 67-year-old sage told me to stop being so apologetic: “We’re here because it’s the right thing to do.”

On Sunday last we did a massive canvass in Howth Village and we stumbled across a gang of boys from my old school, St Fintan’s CBS, Sutton. That school had been the unhappiest of places for me, I nearly didn't make it through those years. I held such little value for myself that I failed at just about everything. Society, family and school valued me so little how could I value myself? Despite the loyalty of some good and brave school mates I was badly bullied, but I was so ashamed of being bullied I never even told them. During one crisis the deputy headmaster tried to reach out to me and intimated he knew I was gay. I thought it was a trap: I was so scared to be truthful as at that time homosexuality was illegal. I had already heard of a man who had been forced into electro shock conversion therapy. I was terrified I’d be taken away to an institution. So last Sunday, when I spotted the familiar yellow and wine of the St Fintan’s uniform, as they were raising funds for the school rugby team, I offered them Yes Equality badges as a challenge, maybe even revenge. They were only sixteen or seventeen. Fresh faced and honest, I couldn’t believe it when they took the badges and asked for more for their friends. I wish life’s time-lines were different and I was a St Fintan’s pupil now.

The reform of the Constitution is all too late for me, but that’s okay, I am not canvassing for me. I have missed the ordinary little relationship rehearsals all my teenage friends had. Luckily, it is not too late for a gay friend of one of those amazing St Fintan’s boys. The vista of his life will now be different, in fact, if we change the Constitution, his life’s aspirations will be the same as his straight school mates. Don’t vote yes for me, vote yes for a happier future for the next generation

Twitter: @goldenshots

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