Singer-songwriter John Grant – who is openly gay – has weighed in on Ireland’s homophobia debate. The 47-year-old American – who was diagnosed HIV-positive in 2011 – recently toured Ireland in support of his sophomore solo album Pale Green Ghosts. While here, he did an extraordinary Hot Press interview the night of his Galway show in the Róisín Dubh – which appears in full in the latest issue of Hot Press.

“I think it’s absurd, the whole thing,” he tells Olaf Tyaransen. “It’s totally absurd. People like Panti Bliss have been called faggots their whole lives by people that don’t even consider themselves to be homophobic. I don’t know all the details of it, but I know that a lot of people who are bigots like to say that they don’t have a bigoted bone in their body. That’s just ridiculous.”

As an American, Grant is somewhat bemused by this country’s libel laws.

“I wondered about this defamation stuff, because I know the defamation laws are different in Ireland, but is it defamation if it’s true? I don’t think so. It’s not slander if it’s true.

“People want to get into a semantics game about what homophobia is, but if you are a person who feels that homosexuals should be treated differently, or that they should be governed by different laws, well then you’re a fucking bigot. And that’s fine.

“There’s freedom of speech,” he adds. “That’s great, but own up to it! ‘I don’t think you should have the same laws as other people, I’m a fucking bigot, and that’s awesome. Because your lifestyle, in air quotations, is perverted and wrong!’ A lot of people feel that way, and that’s great – but I don’t like how people can say that and say that they are not bigots.”

In a hugely open, revealing and often highly controversial interview, the singer talks frankly about what he describes as his “crazy sex life” – including the background to his discovery that he was HIV positive. Grant is also critical of the gay community. “There is a lot of bigotry in the gay community, too. A lot of discrimination inside the gay community. A lot of gays against each other, and I think that needs to be looked at, too. I saw Panti Bliss’s speech that she gave at a theatre, that he gave, and I thought that was great. That touched on a lot of things that I felt needed to be said.”
You can read the full interview in tomorrow's Hot Press (with The Riptide Movement on the cover).