WORDS: CHRIS GODFREY
So what brings you to Northern Ireland?” asks Tom, my cab driver, as he pulls away from Belfast International airport. I offer a brief, tentative explanation: I’m a journalist for a gay mag and I’ve been sent to find out whether Northern Ireland’s reputation as a homophobic country is a fair one. With that assured authority which only cab drivers possess, he launches into a history of Ulster’s gay rights movement.
He covers a lot of ground: the favourable shift in attitudes since The Troubles; his wife’s gay best friend; the civil ceremony (one of the country’s first) he attended; how the best nights out in Belfast are at the gay bars; and how their patrons never give you any trouble.