No: 1 FIRST THINGS FIRST
My first professional journalist job was with Out magazine, Ireland’s first attempt at a commercial gay magazine, which ran from 1984-1988. It overlapped with my time as the National Gay Federation’s president, standing for election to Dublin City Council, co-running the world’s second International Lesbian and Gay Youth Congress, and the destruction of Dublin’s gay hub, the Hirschfeld Centre; an unforgettably mad, hectic, exciting and difficult period in my life.
In 1986, at the age of 26, I found myself out of work and owed several months’ wages. Out was beset with administrative and financial problems and would struggle to publish its later editions. When the Carlow & Leinster Times refused to print its penultimate issue (having taken offence at a safer sex ad), it was the death knell for the mag.
I had some long conversations with my dear friend and close political colleague, Catherine Glendon, about getting an alternative, newspaper-style project off the ground. We both felt it was hugely important to have a platform for our own stories and a mechanism to promote positive images at a time when none existed in Irish popular culture or the media. Remember this was a time when many newspapers still felt compelled to use the word gay in inverted commas, for chrissakes!