Pride season is currently in full swing in all its colour and vibrancy, across Ireland and also internationally. This year has seen more welcome new additions to our Rainbow calendar here at home, with predominantly rural locations such as Tipperary, Wexford and Fermanagh all having hosted or set to host their first Pride events. The huge importance of these celebrations and the pivotal role they continue to play in fostering visibility and community solidarity cannot be underestimated. Indeed in our own Burning Issues 2 report of 2016 – the largest ever research into the views and priorities of LGBT+ citizens up to that point – the overwhelming majority of respondents (in excess of 80 percent) told the NXF that Pride was more important than ever.
The National Gay Federation (NGF) as we were then called was involved in those early commemorations of the Stonewall Riots which gave birth to the modern Pride movement. The Irish Queer Archive is replete with fascinating accounts of those early years of advocacy and campaigning. For Gay Pride Week ‘80, curator Tonie Walsh recounts a group of about 60 gay men and lesbians in Grafton Street handing out pink carnations and a booklet with information about the seminal events at Stonewall a decade previously.