Sir, - Eddie Holt's review of the RTE programme The Love that Dare not Speak its Name (Weekend, August 19th) was on the whole a useful critique, although his quibbling over the use of the word "gay" usually signals a kind of blindness on the part of even the most intelligent liberal heterosexual. After all, the right to name oneself is given to virtually every group now in our society and the one little word we claim is not much when you consider the contribution through literature of so many gay people to the development of the English language.
In any case the language acquired much of its richness from adapting to change. The word "gay", for example, in Elizabethan/Jacobean English meant a prostitute of either sex and by Victorian times had been colonised by the simpering moralism of the Patience Strong school of poetry. Personally I feel it has been reinvigorated by being taken over by the movement for Civil and Human Rights for Homosexual People and is certainly preferable in the minds of survivors of the 1950s like myself to the word queer, which was then in use.
My principal reason for writing is that Mr Holt says in his review: "Norris has frequently appeared less aware of the political discriminations faced by Northern nationalists. Perhaps becoming so conscious of your sexuality as a mark of identity can have a consuming effect."
I do not accept this. Naturally, as an interested party, my view may not be regarded as completely unbiased. However, I would like to place the following facts on record.
I was one of the founders of the Southern Ireland Civil Rights Association in 1971. This group was created specifically to fight for the rights of nationalists and Catholics in the North of Ireland. It was actually at the initial meeting of this group that I first came out publicly as being gay, provoked by the smugness of many of those present who assumed there was no discrimination at all in the South. Thus I nailed my colours firmly to the mast as far as discrimination in the North was concerned at a pretty early date. I consistently supported the Birmingham Six and Guilford Four, even when that was not either popular or profitable. When approached to become a member of the independent Carraher Inquiry I immediately agreed, though my services were not ultimately called upon.
Two years ago I was an independent observer at the Ormeau Road at the invitation of the nationalist residents. I have spoken out consistently as a member of the Church of Ireland against the situation at Drumcree and in fact was commissioned by your newspaper to write an article which was strongly critical of the leaders of my own Church in this matter.
I would, moreover, suggest that an impartial reader of the Seanad Report would not conclude that I was insensitive to the suffering of the nationalist/Catholic minority in the North. Of course I am also sensitive to the suffering imposed by both Republican and Orange paramilitaries. Perhaps the strength of my opposition to acts of terrorism carried out by extreme republicans has given the impression that I do not care for the suffering undoubtedly experienced by members of the minority community in the Six Counties, but this is a matter of perception rather than reality. - Yours, etc.,
Senator David Norris, Seanad Eireann, Baile Atha Cliath 2.