In the months and weeks before Leo Varadkar was voted into the number one spot in the country by his party members, there was little mention in the Irish media of his sexual orientation. By comparison, stories across the world were all about Ireland possibly getting a gay prime minister. The latter wasn’t too surprising, given that newspapers in America or India aren’t too interested in the minutiae of Irish politics, while the muting of his sexual orientation in Irish reporting denoted an interest in policies over personal life that’s typical of the Irish electorate.
However, in the days after Varadkar became the leader of Fine Gael, the Irish media was full to bursting with stories about us having a gay Taoiseach and what that might mean for the country. The tone was self-congratulatory; the story was about the same Ireland that voted for marriage equality, the mature, liberal country that’s left the domination of the Catholic Church behind to become a world leader in openness and diversity.