THE Irish language and LGBTQ communities should work together and support each other, according to a new publication that will be launched this week.
Written by Dónall Mac Giolla Choill, a native Irish speaker from Donegal, the essay was commissioned as part of Liú Lúnasa and Outburst Arts.
Explains Dónall: “It’s about the experiences of growing up in the late '90s and the early part of this century in Belfast as somebody who would identify as queer and the whole sort of way that we look at identity and we look at visibility.
“When I came here first the gay community was very much in a ghetto in one place and kept in one place and years before I came here the same could be said of the Irish language. You spoke Irish in a certain place, you lived in a certain place and you operated in a certain place. But it is now moving out throughout the city, throughout the country and throughout the whole of Ireland. And my essay basically says that the Irish language community and the LGBTQ community are no longer in a ghetto and we need to work off each other as two communities.
“I’m lucky, I’ve a foot in both camps, in the Irish language community and in the queer community but we can learn from each other, we can work with each other, we can support each other.”
Dónall says the 3,000-word essay, which is written in Irish and translated into English, has taken on a wider significance in recent weeks with attacks on ethnic minority communities in Belfast.
“There are places where you put up a bilingual sign and the Irish would get scrubbed out. There are places where you can still get beaten up by walking hand in hand with a same sex partner and there are places where you will be beaten up if they think you’re Muslim – even though you’re actually Hindu – but people don’t know the difference between the two. And I think the more the people in the minority come together and support each other and work with each other the stronger we become and there is more to unite the people here in the Six Counties, there is more to bring us together and that’s basically the substance of my essay.”
A barman recently started speaking in Irish to Dónall in Belfast city centre because he noticed the gold fáinne Dónall was wearing on his lapel. Dónall says he looks forward to the day when that ceases to become a wow moment and is accepted as normal.
“A few years ago I was in Fountain Street and these two young men walked past holding hands. For a split second I went “wow”. Now, I wouldn’t even pass comment. When that becomes normal, when it stops being the wow factor, I long for that day.
“I look forward to the day when I don’t have to check himself. Am I wearing the fáinne in the wrong side of town? Am I too gay looking?”
Dónall’s essay will be launched on Thursday at 6.15 at the Outburst Arts, Royal Avenue.
