With the election of Leo Varadkar to Taoiseach, Ireland has become only the fourth country in the world to have an out gay prime minister. While the Irish mainstream media have celebrated the fact, the response from many in the LGBT+ community has been cautious at best. It’s a paradox that would have been unimaginable in 2007, when Varadkar irst entered politics

says Brian Finnegan

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.

The interesting contrast was that the LGBT+ community was not in celebratory mode. Activist Anna McCarthy wrote on GCN’s website that heralding his election as a success for equality was dangerous “because it is saying that having a gay man elected is enough for it to be an achievement for the equality movement overall, even when his success is based on sustained opposition to people who are also marginalised”. Newstalk broadcaster, Dil Wickremansinghe wrote on thejournal.ie, “I feel Varadkar’s political success has been mainly down to the fact that he has assimilated to the point where he has turned against minority groups,” while Irish Times columnist Una Mullally described his election as “a strange victory for many LGBT people whose politics are rooted in solidarity, equality and standing up for minorities.”